1970 Crabb and Shubb Psychedelic Humbead's Map of the World

This is an iconic 1970 Earl Crabb and Rick Shubb map of the world, the last of three different editions of Humbead's Revised Map of the World. Celebrated for its place in the history of the West Coast folk scene and the hippie counterculture, the map depicts a world reimagined from this perspective. Much like the 1969 edition, San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, New York City, and Cambridge dominate one large continent, with Southeast Asia, North Africa, and Boston making up the rest of this landmass. Places within these cities are illustrated and labeled as well, adding some detail to the map. In San Francisco, for example, Golden Gate Park is illustrated, and Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Santa Barbara, and Marin County are labeled. In New York City, Washington Square Park and Central Park, while Harlem, Chicago, and New Orleans are dots on the map. Southeast Asia is situated between San Francisco and Los Angeles, while the entire continent of Africa is situated between Cambridge and New York City. Nashville sits at the center of the continent, perhaps a reference to Crabb and Shubb's love of folk music.

This Pangea-esque continent is illustrated on a beige background meant to represent the ocean given that it is labeled as 'The Farspooming Ocean' and 'The Whelming Brine'. Gigantic scrolls of parchment are also illustrated underneath the continent and bear a list of over 1,300 names - the population to which the map's title refers. Among the celebrities references are Stanley Kubrick, Salvador Dali, Peter Cushing, Pablo Picasso, Stan Lee, and John Lennon. The whole is surrounded by a border that borders on the nightmarish. Fantastical beasts appear everywhere, psychedelically colored with numerous limbs, all reminiscent of the beasts described during the acid trips in Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In many ways the border defies explanation; it simply must be viewed to be appreciated.

Publication History and Census

This map was created and published by Rick Shubb and Earl Crabb (Humbead) in 1970. Three different editions of Humbead's Revised Map of the World were published in 1968, 1969, and 1970. A well-known and celebrated piece of 1960s West Coast history, these maps are rare on the market today. The only example we are aware of in an institutional collection is part of the David Rumsey Map Collection at Stanford University. No records of the 1970 edition are catalogued in the OCLC.