Windows

"Living in the city gets under your skin. Where a leisurely stroll leads to hours lost in a local bookshop. A trip to the dairy turns into a discovery of a new art gallery. Where the local barista knows your name and their cafe becomes your boardroom. Where billposters are like pages of a diary."

I found this in a promotional booklet for the Hudson Brown apartments that have since been built on Auckland's waterfront.

It brings up some nice lifestyle friendly images about city communities. Unfortunately the city is rather impersonal and anonymous at the best of times.

You can go a whole day without a real conversation, especially on the streets where you can be invisible until someone wants a donation, money or to give you a flyer.

On dark, cold nights especially shop windows are attractive visual escapes. They sell a lifestyle or a scene well with varied materials.

I always find clothes stores more engaging than enlarged medicine boxes and fake grass.
Their mannequins take on a life of their own even when they are headless or bald and faceless.

Occupying a scene of twine tumbleweeds, streamers or disco balls they are positioned to out pose others or ignore each other. Splashy graphics just label the scene and refer to the instore music.

Its great fluffy filler for your journey and averts your eyes from sometimes gritty reality.