Bucharest, Romania

Neighborhood street, Bucuresti
















The corner stores, Bucuresti

















The corner stores, Bucuresti

One of the things that makes places "livable" is the corner store.
All cities have such places, from London to the village, from New York to Boston to nowheresville. Selling everything from clothes to cookie cutters to candy to cakes, glass angels, cosmetics, cakes, and coffee. Things for weddings, kitchen gadgets, plates, soaps, and healthfood.










Cities that are easy to live in tend to be made up of neighborhoods with the corner store, the corner pub, the corner bookshop, the corner pharmacy, the corner grocery, the corner newstand....... everybody has their favorite neighborhood and their favorite corner store. The place is alittle higher priced than the big suburban hypermarkets, but it's in walking distance, they generally have what's needed, and on the way are a few other corner stores with the ice cream, cakes, coffee, and beer.

In neighborhoods with a significant elderly population, corner stores are essential lifelines for social gathering, catching up, getting out of the house, and getting the essentials for life without spending an entire day traveling to and from the Hypermarket. In many cases for the elderly, a trip to the Hypermarket would be unthinkable, whereas the corner store provides not only the basic necessities but essential social interaction and activity, and a connection with the goings-on and changes in the neighborhood.













View of Bucuresti, 1868 - streetlife

Bucuresti is a city filled with such neighborhoods, and with an abundance of corner stores of all varieties, usually tucked into the lower floor of an old building, simple or grand...... usually whatever is going on down below unrelated to the ornament or lack thereof going on above. Sometimes, the bank/pharmacy/corner grocery might be tucked into a 19th century gem in the waiting, or may be tucked into a corner of a huge communist-style bloc-of-flats. Most of the passers-by dont notice the harmony or disharmony in the architecture...... they're too busy looking for the ice cream or beer, or looking at the hats in the window, or wondering where they can find the notary public, or just taking their dogs for a walk...... who by the way always tend to know where is the corner pet store.