Change happens (I guess), but I don't like it (most of it anyway)

[Sherlock77]

What has me even thinking this? Not sure if it's related to Autism or not

A walk today to visit a local art gallery/art studio building, one that is scheduled to demolished all because they are planning a new commuter train line I haven't been there for awhile and wanted one last visit... In the past the door was open on a Saturday, with full access to the gallery area and the studios upstairs, if the artists were around... Instead, a sign saying that access to the current exhibit was by appointment only *sigh*, no I didn't bother...

It got me thinking about some other buildings in the same area that have been gentrified in a big way, one is a century old warehouse, when I first discovered it and took photos, back in about 2007, it was a vibrant building with lots of local art groups as tenants, and a parking lot full of funky vintage cars and trucks (being a car geek), within about three years it was renovated and it looks great but it's very sterile now and there is simply no sense of life, it's not fun any more...

And recently I've been reviewing my oldest photos for an archival project, and it seems like the world is just getting more boring, everything is too "shiny", and I love things that are less "shiny", I really do, and there is much less of that in my world these days...

What this area used to look like, full of character, now it's just boring and empty, three photos from 13 years ago... Or maybe some of you think of this as being ugly... I love it, but it's getting so much harder to find scenes like this, to my disappointment... It just feels like a far more boring world now...

 

[Misery]

It does depend on the area, I think.

There's a LOT of places like that around my region, and none of them seem interested in changing much. I think you'd probably quite like some of the towns that I've been into frequently. And cars like those are found very frequently around here.

That being said, it can be a very good thing when buildings are altered or something. Sometimes, things just dont go well, and there's no other choice.

My favorite example is... was... a place simply called The Purple Hotel. That place had a lot of "character" to it and a lot of history to it (such as some gangster getting murdered in the parking lot). It was memorable, unique, interesting, when most hotels are really formulaic. I think that it would have been a place you might have liked to explore, perhaps.

Well... if it wasnt so dangerous. I've mentioned seeing an elevator crash before, and that was where it happened. During the middle of a convention, no less. It's also the place where the doorknob to our room fell off. I'll never forget that. Among other problems. The AREA wasnt dangerous, it's a perfectly normal region, but that hotel... yeah.

Eventually the place was finally razed. It took way too long to happen, considering the sheer number of health violations and dangerous parts. Not that you would have been able to tell by just looking at the place, when it was up. Nothing about it LOOKED run down. But it definitely was. I've stayed in so very, very many hotels of all sorts, and that was the worst of them all.

A lot of character, but unfortunately it was just a rotting remnant of what it had originally been. Even if the rot was hidden. I really wish I could find some photos of what it had looked like when I was there. That's... memories lost, really. Still, it needed to be gone.


That being said, yeah, sometimes change in stuff of this sort is... irritating or unpleasant.

Just today I decided to go for a walk... I often do this at any of the local stores, during winter. I figured, hey, let's go to the old Walmart that I used to go to all the time before we moved. Hadnt been there in a few months, and it was always the best of the major stores around here, so... yeah, that'll be nice.

I get there and... it's missing? The building still stands. But nothing remains of the store. The only evidence that it had ever been there was a "store closed" sign hanging in the front.

Gotta say, I wasnt particularly pleased about this. Yeah, I know... it's not the sort of place anyone might think of as special... just a Walmart, right? But it was so familiar and comforting to me, that one. And I have plenty of memories associated with it... I used to go there when getting food and supplies to prepare for a convention trip. And now... poof! Gone, and I dont know why. Just... ugh. Yeah, dont like that change.

 

[Sherlock77]

@Misery

Even when a favourite store closes I feel like it effects me... One chain of stores closed the location closest to me, one I went to lots! I still don't like having to go far out of my way, unfortunately it's a store I have to go to sometimes for stuff only they have...

 

[Outdated]

Coincidental timing, I was just going through my local news site and spotted this. I thought it might interest you .

'We don't flick on the TV and order Uber Eats when the crew goes home': Carol Ferrone on living in the past 24/7

Carol Ferrone and takes us behind the scenes of what happens filming Back In Time For The Corner shop and art director Jason Schara explains the lengths producers go to for historical accuracy.

www.abc.net.au

 

[SusanLR]

Change sometimes needs to happen just because nothing lasts forever, but when it
does change, I think most of the time it is cheaper in appearance with less life in things modern also. Cheaper built, more expensive to buy.

Technology is going crazy in growth and people seem to like it.
People look like they were all born with a rectangular thing in their hand that they
stare at constantly.
I just don't see the addiction myself.
The AI craze is taking over also.

 

[MNAus]

Perhaps you're looking for the same old different? There's a paradox as we get older: we still like the idea of fresh and edgy but on our own terms. When we're young we live in an uncomfortable world because we're uncomfortable people, so we're comfortable with the unknown. There's still a lot of different out there, it's just not the kind of different that feels familiar. But isn't that the point? Get out there and seek the unusual.

 

[Misery]

Perhaps you're looking for the same old different? There's a paradox as we get older: we still like the idea of fresh and edgy but on our own terms. When we're young we live in an uncomfortable world because we're uncomfortable people, so we're comfortable with the unknown. There's still a lot of different out there, it's just not the kind of different that feels familiar. But isn't that the point? Get out there and seek the unusual.

Yeah, that last bit is a really good point.

That's something I've always tried to do with tech stuff. When new stuff becomes a thing, I tend to just rush towards it and crash into it to get an idea of it, rather than just watch from a distance. Like with the AI stuff that @SusanLR mentioned, I ran straight towards that well over a year before any of the hype got going. So that really helps me to not be affected by all that hype. Instead, I can simply experiment and remain interested in the thing in question. And sometimes you find unexpectedly amazing things that way. I wasnt expecting VR to be what it is, for instance. Trying that out was a bit scary the first time, but boy did it end up being worth it. There's benefits I never expected with that.

It's good to try new things. But at the same time, I absolutely understand why many... whether they be on the spectrum or not... have a hard time with it.

Change sometimes needs to happen just because nothing lasts forever, but when it
does change, I think most of the time it is cheaper in appearance with less life in things modern also. Cheaper built, more expensive to buy.

Technology is going crazy in growth and people seem to like it.
People look like they were all born with a rectangular thing in their hand that they
stare at constantly.
I just don't see the addiction myself.
The AI craze is taking over also.

Oh yeah, those bloody phones.

One of the rare examples of tech for me where I did in fact give them a real chance, as I usually do... and oh boy I cant stand the stupid things. Though, to be fair, I didnt like *normal* phones either, so that may have something to do with it. It's hard to like something when it goes against you on a fundamental level. Kid me wouldnt have liked the thing either.

Even my parents are glued to the idiotic things.

The most irritating part is that nobody in the family can quite grasp the fact that, no, I dont really use mine. "I sent you a text! Why did you take a whole day to respond to it?" usually then receives a "I already told you a million times I dont even use the thing". Whoever it is will then look at me as if an entire bear just crawled out of my ear. My father has to remind me to grab it any time I go to leave the house (because it acts as a safety device, which is the only reason I have one) as it usually wont occur to me to grab it at all otherwise. I'm betting that needing to be reminded to take a phone with you is likely pretty darned rare now.

@Misery

Even when a favourite store closes I feel like it effects me... One chain of stores closed the location closest to me, one I went to lots! I still don't like having to go far out of my way, unfortunately it's a store I have to go to sometimes for stuff only they have...

Yeah, I hate when that happens.

There's one store I remember, a gaming-related store, which was very different from anything like a Gamestop or whatnot. Well, different from stores of most types, really. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the place, but going there was a unique experience. That store, it was the norm to interact with the people that worked there. Like *really* interact, not just "do a transaction". Talk about different releases, play multiplayer games with them... they had all these console setups all over the store for stuff like that, or the tournaments of all sorts they held there... there was one time when I brought my Nintendo DS with me there to show the guy this game I'd imported for it, since I'd talked about it on a previous visit. How many times do you interact with someone behind the counter like that at most stores? But that's how that place was. It was just amazing. Reminds me of the board gaming stores I now know of around here, which have a similar approach/feel.

Of course, this place just didnt last, not against Gamestop's empire. Which really freaking sucked, particularly since Gamestop is an utterly atrocious store (all of them, not just one location). Even with gaming as my main hobby, I just refuse to go there, it's that nasty.

Just... ugh. Having a great place shut down is unpleasant enough. Having it be immediately replaced by a really horrible variant of the concept, with all the good bits sucked out, is that much worse.

 

[Sherlock77]

I guess I find that most of the modern world now (even 12 years later) is rather bland in most cases...

And it's not just a "photography" thing, it's also related to personal enjoyment of my life as well...

Confession time - Secretly in a weird sense, sometimes I wish I was doing photography in New York back in the bad old 1970's, despite the danger factor simply because it would be really interesting... Just dreaming...

 

[Princess Viola]

The Denny's I used to go with my dad a lot shut down back in mid-2008 and was torn down and a Whole Foods is where it used to be.

I know it was just a Denny's and there's tons of them around but I only found out that they closed when we drove past it on the way to the cemetery to bury my dad.

So it was the one-two punch of both having lost my dad and having lost a restaurant, even if it was a chain, that we'd go to every couple of weeks at around the same time.

 

[Forest Cat]

I was thinking about some of those things a while ago. I was at the new Munch museum. They built a brand new building for the Munch museum. A modern building. Behold:

I stood outside that thing, looked at it and said "My God that's ugly". Looks like a prison. The old museum looked much better. And they spent 250 million dollars on building this. I know it's supposed to look modern and cool but that bend on top of it just looks like someone measured something wrong when they built it. And the entire area is just dull and uninteresting. Because it has been 'modernized'. It's a shame, we have so much good older architecture but they make these new soulless ugly boxes. Munch would be offended if he saw this.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

It's interesting to get a sense of how some other people see and interpret their world. That said, in many ways, I am just the opposite.

I have such a strong sense of "form follows function", an engineering mindset, that whenever someone says they like those old buildings and architecture, that old car, that old whatever, I have no appreciation for it. Now, if someone took the time to update an old building with modern, high-efficiency mechanicals and materials, I can appreciate it. Same thing with old cars. I am a fan of the "rest-mod" types of vehicles, the custom vintage vehicles with all the latest performance engine, suspension, braking systems, etc.

I can forgive something that "looks ugly" or "has no style" if it has superior performance.

 

[Sherlock77]

It's interesting to get a sense of how some other people see and interpret their world. That said, in many ways, I am just the opposite.

I have such a strong sense of "form follows function", an engineering mindset, that whenever someone says they like those old buildings and architecture, that old car, that old whatever, I have no appreciation for it. Now, if someone took the time to update an old building with modern, high-efficiency mechanicals and materials, I can appreciate it. Same thing with old cars. I am a fan of the "rest-mod" types of vehicles, the custom vintage vehicles with all the latest performance engine, suspension, braking systems, etc.

I can forgive something that "looks ugly" or "has no style" if it has superior performance.

I suppose I'm more visual than you are... I also try to look where the energy is, which I find is sometimes lacking these days...

 

[SusanLR]

They built a brand new building for the Munch museum. A modern building.

It looks like some monster-bot munched on it for lunch.

 

[Progster]

Change is ok. Actually, it's good, necessary even. These old traditions that still linger on from the middle ages often seem anachronous and totally irrelevant in today's society, and when you ask people why they do them, they don't know an answer except that people have always done it. Things like wearing ties, or ceremonies, rituals, that kind of thing.
I can adjust to change which happens over a period of time. It's sudden change that gets me, when a law changes for example, and suddenly things have to be done differently.