A night on the Kensingtown

I walked through K-mart on the way home
Thought about how unusual it is compared to the rest of downtown

 

Other commercial areas are typically focused linearly along a major street, but Kensington is structured like a residential area. There are short stretches of shops that go around corners as if they were houses (some of the stores are just converted houses), and the roads are small and without paint. 

Everything closes here around 7 pm, and then there's no people or traffic going through. The stores are dark, and aren't lit up like typical commercial areas. The neighbourhood is strangely empty.

This kind of emptiness is normal for a residential area, where no life can be seen on the street because it's all within the houses, but here you don't see homes, you see storefronts. 

Residential areas are quiet but still living. You see porch lights, lit windows, and flickering TVs behind curtains. These stores are totally dead when nobody's working. Music lingers in the air from some bar out of sight, and the whole place feels like an empty set.

This neighbourhood has made it's way into the common consciousness as a hipster area. 

What a cliche that I picked these up off the sidewalk on the way through.