down town

These are some shots of my hometown's downtown. Its funny how big "downtown" seemed when I was a kid. When I was in kindergarten, they turned downtown into a pedestrian mall and named it "Loudon Street Mall". I'm not really sure why.

In high school, a typical indoor mall opened up on the edge of town and the department stores left downtown. They renamed downtown "Old Town Winchester" (with an awful logo, now replaced by an equally awful logo) as if that would make it more attractive. It didn't work, and downtown died.

Oddly, now the mall has died too as about eight big-box centers have been built near the mall, a new one added every year, it seems. Today the mall is half vacant except for odd trinket stores like the ones that first filled downtown when it died. Downtown has never fully found its way - a lot of stores are vacant (or torn down) but in between are nice craft stores and coffee houses. A few stores that were there when I was a kid even still remain. It is cute, and its nice to see them preserving the old buildings - well, some of em.