An Accidental Downtown Olympia

I often find myself wandering around flickr.com. In this particular instance I was looking for tags of: Downtown Olympia. Pretty much the usual pictures came up, the lovers statue, Procession of the Species pictures. And I stumbled upon this picture. It was a dream. It was not downtown Olympia Washington, it was downtown Olympia Greece. But it is my vision of downtown Olympia.

People living right downtown, life on the streets of all kinds. The smallest pushcart operator to the largest retailer. Sidewalk cafes, benches and improvised seating. The balconies above the stores are great. You can see that this is a downtown that works. Sure it is a little moth eaten around the edges, but even in the picture you see it has life. There is no disconnect between the street and the life.

This is what this town needs. It was not supposed to be part of my research, but it showed up anyway. What really amazed me about the picture was that I thought I was actually looking a a picture of Olympia Washington at first. I didn't quite recognize the area or the era, but then it occurred to me that it was not our town, still something about it seemed so right.

A larger version of the picture, way bigger can be found at: http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=88669854&size=l