I contacted Lon (on yahoo groups bike messenger forum) and here is his response for your edification...
Hey Jon-
Thank you for your interest! Yes, absolutely the
project is still ongoing - has been for nearly five
months now and I haven't even started the REAL
cartography yet. It's taking so long because Paul and
I want to make a genuine commercial go with this; and
for that, we need our own copyrighted map - which
means making our own from scratch.
...ok, I was about to mention the map available from
the SFBC, but I just went through that discussion
thread and see that it's been well covered...
First. We intend to include grade information in a
manner similar to the SF Bike & Walking Guide. This is
an exceptionally useful map that many messengers use
along with their Crossstreets. Many have expressed the
want of aspect <grade direction> info. We really
haven't figured out how to address this one yet.
Manually adding 'arrows' on individual blocks is
extraordinarily prohibitave as there are close to 20k
individual 'blocks' in SF. That said, I've considered
the possibility <and technical challenge> of idicating
aspect with a chevron of 'negative space' in the grade
color. This, for the sake of clarity and cleanliness.
Next. The crossstreet index. This is not a street
index that will fit on one or two sheets of paper;
it's an index of a street's cross street for any given
block. In the Crossstreet Directory of old, the vast
majority of the book was comprised of the index, with
the center twenty pages or so being the actual map
<which was a terrible map at that>. The index was/has
been invaluable to messengers, the map often only
needed to locate some esoteric street or alley. Rand
McNally's index survives in their Thomas Guide of SF.
Even in this 'enormous' 8 1/2" x 11" book, the index
takes up 35 pages of very small print. Basically, the
actual map, while important and neccesary, is almost
secondary.
Uhm. Oh, points of interest, landmarks? There's plenty
of tourist maps that fill that niche. We did breifly
debate on whether to include Maritime Plaza on the map
<an old messenger inside joke>. Or the 1500 block of
Montgomery?
Printing. We're a ways from that bridge, but Paul has
some ideas. Tyvek and laminated pages, while great
ideas, would make for Crossstreet that we'd have to
sell for $35 rather than the $7.95 that Rand McNally's
sold for; and, we'd probably still lose our shirts.
Besides, how would we ever get repeat customers if we
made the things indistructable?
This is a project born of love and neccesity. Rand
McNally took away one of a messenger's most valuable
tools, the ones we still have quickly disolving into
tatters. A replacement needed to be made and by who
better than the ones who've relied on it most. While
we're at it, we figured, why not improve it. For one
thing, the last Crossstreet published was last updated
in 1992!
I'm not registered at bikeforums, so do feel free to
repost this.
-Lon