Ok, this might seem an odd subject for a thread, but something on another thread set me thinking. We live in all kinds of different villages, towns and cities, aoll over the world, and our home environments can obviously be very different. We sometimes see photos of the best bits, the tourist attractions and so on (and there have been other threads about those), but what about some pictures of the more ordinary, every day environment that the locals live in and go about their daily business in without really thinking about it, if you see what I mean? You know, the bits that are just normal places that we shop as locals, that might be great, or a bit grubby, or a bit out of date, or whatever - the kind of places we just go to without thinking about them, and thinking about how different they might look from the kind of places other people might be shopping in as part of their daily lives. Kind of the bits we think of as being 'our home town', sort of thing, not the bits visitors necessarily pay any attention to. There's lots of different kinds of places even within the same country - in the UK, for example, they might be very old, or very newly re-developed, or mid-20th century design (because of bomb damage to the old town). I'm sure there are such contrasts within other countries (and certainly between small villages and big cities). It would just be kind of interesting to see some of those different every day places, rather than the 'fantastic local places you just have to come and see' sort of stuff for a change. The fact that we all type away on here together, but come from such different local environments all over the world, is a kind of fascinating thing in itself. There are a couple of the centre of my original home city, Swansea - obviously very familiar places to me: Oxford Street: Union Street: The Market: So what are the familiar, every day scenes like in your home towns?
This is the West End Historic District in downtown Dallas... lots of restaurants and it's within walking distance of my building. Locals mix with tourists in this area. When it comes to food shopping... more is better! We also have lots of ethnic markets. Folks here tend to shop for groceries to last a whole week... some two weeks. Which we can do because we drive everywhere. I've always been fascinated by people who live in NYC and shop everyday. Sure would beat hauling a trunkload of food every week!
The weekly shopping is ordered online and delivered. I only stop at shops if it can't get got online. I'd shop in Glasgow City Centre because I work there, in Greenock because it is nearby and has a Mall full of shops and various retail parks, but usually I stop and run into the mini-markets in Gourock where I live. Glasgow has an huge range of shops of every type like any cosmopolitan city. I see this building every day though: Greenock Oak Mall is quite a strange place. It was the main street with buildings a few hundred years old. It rains a lot, so they just put a roof over the main road and called it a mall and it's an amalgam of old and new. Inside it looks new, but we know better. If I had a GBP for every time I've passed the Town Hall...: This isn't a good pic of it, but it's my favourite view because when I see this view every day, I'm less than 2 minutes from home. Gourock is a small place and they are always fighting about how to renovate it. It's residential, not industrial like Greenock. People want the character of the old buildings retained, so they drag their feet about change. However, it is going to be done over the next couple of years. On Friday, I left the car and walked through the Gourock shops at the far end of this pic, toward the camera and met Himself for dinner in our Local, which is across the road here:
Sadly to say, here's the local shopping center -- Here's the local hardware store -- The local sporting goods store -- And lastly, the local restaurant -- The homogenization of America... God how I hate it!
Well don't complain to much because all of those things and places you have shown, here in Jackson we have none of those places that you have shown. All we have here is one little Kmart and our little town square with a few shops.
It's going on everywhere. Most of the shops seem to be chain stores of some kind these days. This is one of several large Tesco stores in Swansea: But they are also now spreading small 'Tesco express' supermarkets into the suburban shopping areas - Tesco really are attempting a global takeover. There's also Asda, of course, which is owned by Walmart: (that last one is some publicity shot for something, but the only one I could find of the inside - people don't normally go shopping dressed like that around here!)
Here's a 'suburban' shopping area, close to where I grew up (it's the area where poet Dylan Thomas grew up, as it happens). It's not the greatest looking place on earth (Dylan Thomas famously referred to Swansea as the 'ugly, lovely town')! Note the creeping globalisation of a Subway! This photo is a couple of years old - the small supermarket immediately behind the traffic light (with the red stripe, which was a 'Spar', which is a chain of such local supermarkets) I believe is now yet another Tesco: One of my least favorite views of Swansea city centre, I hope for fairly obvious reasons (the local council and their planning department seems to have had no comprehension of the word 'sensitivity' when it comes to development - some locals have speculated that they might well have had more understanding of the term 'brown envelope stuffed with cash', but that's obviously not for me to suggest!): Part of the city's Quadrant Centre, an undercover 'mall' built in the centre of the city originally in the 1970s (it's been refurbished a few times, but it's still kind of small and outdated compared with more modern developments):
Yes, it's a lot better now though. No more bikies. Still the odd bogan, but overall not too bad. I can often be seen sitting under those umbrellas out front
Cenydd, the overall impression seems that, regardless where we are in at least the western world, we are more alike than we are different. We could plug in these photos everywhere, and be none the wiser. Sure, sitting on a bench listening to people walking about, you hear different tongues, but concerns, joys, hopes and dreams are more similar than not.
A bikie is a member of a motorcycle club (gang). A bogan is essentially what we call "trailer park trash", but is somehow different than a "derro". Uncle Meat can explain the difference, unless he's drunk on VB...
This is the downtown, up town, and entire town portion of the town I live in. So I guess this is the shopping district, as we only have one store. There are two bars though.
We have the popular Palmdale Marketplace: And the infamous Antelope Valley mall: Do not be jealous if your city does not have its own rap song... [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw0s5zO4v2Q"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw0s5zO4v2Q[/ame]
I won't be jealous, even our baseball team has rap songs dedicated to it. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1H4Y_O_PFI"]Go Cards! (Rally Song) by Vega LIVE - YouTube[/ame] Afroman? That's all you got Palmdale? Puhlease...we've got Nelly
Rap songs, Pah! Swansea's got it's own sea shanty - beat that! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KCHxVq6cGs"]Swansea town[/ame] and a modern folk song, too: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8igH8KytQo"]Swansea Town - Max Boyce[/ame] There's an older traditional folk song 'Lass of Swansea Town' or 'Swansea Barracks', but I can't find a recording of it on youtube. Here's the lyrics, though:
I like to slam down bourbons at this hole-in-the-wall. I happened to have a photo already on flickr, a little arty-farty though, I really need to take more everyday local shots though. The problem with photographing shops and the like is that storeowners get really uptight... A friend from England came over not too long ago...he was appalled at this policy which, I take it, isn't so bad in the UK. My local town has a Kroger and a couple of fast-food chains, but it's a really small area. Here's the local farmer's market where we get most of our produce. The local retail hell which is aout 10 minutes away where I shop when absolutely forced: I love the smaller shops in the downtown area where I work, but there are very few, it's a real problem for developers too as folks have to commute a good way to get groceries that aren't overpriced as grocers can't afford the rental space. Uhm, that's about it. Am I doing this right?
Can't say I've ever heard of any store owner being concerned about it at all over here. I guess if you were taking lots of photos, especailly close-ups in the window, they might wonder why, but I can't see why they would be upset at someone taking a photo of their shop.
I love farm shops and farmers markets and so on, but they've got pretty swamped by the domination of the supermarkets. There seems to be a big resurgence in interest in local produce and so on at the moment, which is great. There's a couple of TV series on highlighting more traditional foods from the UK that have become less popular and out of fashion, largely since imported goods became so easy and cheap to get hold of. It's all got a bit silly - alot of what we eat we import, and alot of what we produce we export (there was something on the other night about shellfish, and mussels in particular - we produce lots of excellent quality mussels in Wales that are exported all over Europe, but outside of a few local pockets (cockles are still quite popular in Swansea, for example, although the man with the basket that used to come around the pubs in the evening selling them when I was younger no longer happens), almost nobody in the UK eats them at all any more). Hopefully all that will translate into more people buying their produce at places other than supermarkets, and thinking about going back to some of the foods that used to be eaten much more than they are now (apparently, people don't each so much rhubarb anymore - that's a great pity - it's one of my favorites!).
This is the only section of interest to me. I live near a small town, I'm actually working in town today, I'll get a couple of pics. You'll get a kick out of the post office, it is the size of a postage stamp.
