As I walked down main street this evening; catching curious glances from people as I stopped here and there to take notes and pictures of this and that, I saw a basically two kinds of establishments. There were those that were very old establishments such as the various churches and the university itself, or those that were considerably younger and not built to last as long as the churches and university, made to be within walking distance as to capitalize on the student population. I feel as though the University and the churches have been the only constants. The other places, the bars, the pizza places, the gas stations, the book stores, youth centers, and so on, have been built and rebuilt through the years with various business' coming and going to cash in on the students money.
I wonder when the electrical wires were moved underground. I wonder if it was sometime in the past 5 years since there are very young trees lining both sides of the street. Or maybe this is just because they redid the cobblestones or maybe there were no cobble stones and the city just added them for aesthetic effect. One of the most interesting relics I found during my walk was an old fire alarm station rising out of the ground in front of one of the churches. I looks like completely out dated. But the paint just is almost perfect and appears to have been kept up by someone as there was no grafitti as there was on almost everything else. The fire alarm looks rather charming, it was definately made during a time when cost effectiveness wasn't the end goal. A peppermint monilith of safety with a little red house on the top with a fire alarm lever for a door.
