Wednesday, October 10, 2012

My Neighbourhood part 2

 A few posts back, I started a photo tour of the area in which I live and work.Today I took some photos of the views form my parking building.
I love the higgledy piggledyness and urban grungy quirkiness of these views. Because they are of the back of buildings, not the street frontage. 

 This view fascinates me. It looks like little sheds all stacked up on top of one another. The one on the right with the large windows is some kind of classroom we think, as there are often groups in there. I haven't ever bothered to go around the street side with the intention of matching the buildings to the street signs, perhaps I'll find out what it is we're looking at!
A lower close up, the palm tree is glimpsed in the bottom right of the previous photo. Showing an almost hidden garden, with bunting, trees and ivy on the fence. On my side of the fence is a carpark. The secret lives of others!

I love this view of fire escapes, doors all painted faded bright colours. The sunlight has bleached out all the tagging. The slight shadowing round the edge is not me playing in Fotoflexer, but the grid on the building where I am standing.
Looking out onto the Marion St side of the building, I had to get a close up of this building. I have a friend called Cathie Bills and it reminds me of her!
I do hope that the current understandable paranoia about building safety doesn't result in the clearing of these wonderful old buildings in favour of new, bland, nasty ones. Too much of that has happened in our area already. At the top end of Cuba St, dozens of little houses and buildings were swept away to build the ugliest buildings on the planet, and having to walk past them I almost hold my breath until I come out the other side!
More on my 'hood in a few weeks...

7 comments:

  1. Great photos MrsC I really enjoyed them especially the higgeldy piggeldy one

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Mrs. C.,
    Isn't it funny how we will look and wonder at the same backyard scene year after year, but rarely step out front of that place to solve whatever mystery it is that has piqued us? Perhaps it's just the joy of having a little safe mystery, aside from pure laziness :}

    Very best,

    Natalie

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh it's definitely because I prefer the mystery to what is probably a banal reality! hehehe.

      Delete
  3. Oh, I love your backyard view. I don't think I've ever looked out my back window or climbed on the fire escape to see the back view, but I do really love the side view (as seen from my shower). Urban environments have such a lovely, if not strange, beauty about them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. SO true! I loved living in the country, and I enjoyed some of my sojourns in the suburbs, as they all have their charms, but I adore cities, although I find big cities a bit more wearying than our boutique capital :) I am endlessly fascinated by built environments and I love the way that you are instantly part of a village in the city - you don't have to have lived there for 6 generations to be accepted!

      Delete
  4. I loved Cuba Street and Cuba Mall. In the early 70's there was a shop that sold cheap fabrics and curious bits and pieces!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yeah, I love these incongruaous backyards myself. Brno is like that. Liepaja is like that (A LOT, and on the front, too).

    ReplyDelete