The independent city, on purpose.

CitySurfing is a map of the places a city is actually made of: the taquería, the record shop, the frame shop, the family bakery. The chains are filtered out at the door — if a place is a brand's location rather than somebody's, it doesn't get a listing.

There are no ads, no promoted results, and no pay-to-play ranking. Search results are ranked by what you typed, nothing else.

Where the data comes from

The base catalog comes from OpenStreetMap — the map made by neighbors — under the Open Database License, starting with Salt Lake County. When something's wrong at the source, fix it on OSM: our next import inherits the correction, and so does everyone else who builds on the commons.

Run one of these places?

Claim your listing to tell its story, fix the hours, and say what you make — free, and it stays free. Create an account as a business owner, then reach out from your listing's page; a human verifies and attaches you. No robot decides who owns a shop.

Run something that moves?

Food carts, trucks, bike taxis, street shows — anything without a front door lives on the street layer. A business owner account can drop a pin saying where you are and until when; pins cost a few dollars in credits, which is what keeps the layer spam-free and the lights on. What money never buys here: ranking. Search results and the board are ordered by relevance and time, full stop.

Coming

iOS and Android apps, built on the same open data. This site is the base camp.

Who runs this

CitySurfing is operated by Kismet Software LLC, doing business as CitySurfing — a small software company, which feels right for an app about small businesses.