Older = Better
In England bus shelters belong to the national fund of statutary comic objects ...along with British Railways sandwiches, effeminate hairdressers, schoolboys' trouser pockets, seaside landladies, school bicycle sheds and vindaloo curries. I think bus shelters feature on this inventory because, as places affording rudimentary privacy and protection from the elements, they are associated in the national psyche with early incompetent sexual experience. Another reason, of course, is their utilitarian ugliness.
But when you consider a modern bus shelter ...a framework of steel tubes and a few sheets of plate galass (mainly provided as a site for advertising), with a narrow ledge upon which the waiting traveller may lodge his weary hindquarters... the glazed and enclosed concrete shelter in this photograph looks almost stylish. It has the character of a small building, whereas a modern shelter is just a glorified wind-break. The authorities often provided a slightly better-appointed type of shelter at busy bus stops. I always associate them with that greenish dimpled opaque glass with wire mesh running through it (whatever happened to that stuff?) but this shelter retains a complete, intact, unvandalised set of windows with clear glazing. Neither is there any grafitti or "street art". Living in a rural area remote from metropolitan influences has advantages. I have even noticed ...and I hesitate to publicise the fact... that many churches are left unlocked hereabouts, as they were everywhere when I was young.
Older = Better
In England bus shelters belong to the national fund of statutary comic objects ...along with British Railways sandwiches, effeminate hairdressers, schoolboys' trouser pockets, seaside landladies, school bicycle sheds and vindaloo curries. I think bus shelters feature on this inventory because, as places affording rudimentary privacy and protection from the elements, they are associated in the national psyche with early incompetent sexual experience. Another reason, of course, is their utilitarian ugliness.
But when you consider a modern bus shelter ...a framework of steel tubes and a few sheets of plate galass (mainly provided as a site for advertising), with a narrow ledge upon which the waiting traveller may lodge his weary hindquarters... the glazed and enclosed concrete shelter in this photograph looks almost stylish. It has the character of a small building, whereas a modern shelter is just a glorified wind-break. The authorities often provided a slightly better-appointed type of shelter at busy bus stops. I always associate them with that greenish dimpled opaque glass with wire mesh running through it (whatever happened to that stuff?) but this shelter retains a complete, intact, unvandalised set of windows with clear glazing. Neither is there any grafitti or "street art". Living in a rural area remote from metropolitan influences has advantages. I have even noticed ...and I hesitate to publicise the fact... that many churches are left unlocked hereabouts, as they were everywhere when I was young.