Friday was a day of riding errands, first up the hill to get lunch and then over to Hampden and then back home for a quick rest before heading back over to Waverly to meet R. for a little scheming. I lifted my bike into her living room and we headed back toward Greenmount Avenue on foot to take pictures of the sides of buildings. Would any of these make a good location for a short film projection? What we do about the windows? Would that be high enough? How do we get people to look this way as they travel by instead of that way? Mostly I’m not noticing the facades of most buildings as I bike around town, all of it so much brick or formstone, unless it’s one of the many that’s sprouting trees or being propped up by an elaborate set of a set up. This day, though, we were looking at the surfaces to see how they might become movie screens. I snapped a picture of this side-of-a-building at 32nd and Brentwood. I pass this corner all the time–whenever I go to Waverly or points east, but on this ride I really looked at the layers of the building, the short front building with the windows just begging for a diorama, the brick triangle of another building that isn’t quite flush with the perpendicular wall, and just beyond, the stone facade of a place open Saturdays, 10-2, all of it fronted by the plants growing out of the meet between the buildings and the sidewalk. I’m guessing nobody really planned it to look like this, and in some neighborhoods a Landmarks Commission of Historic Preservation Society probably would have kept it from happening like this, but I love the corner layer cake look myself. And then it was time to get back on the bike and ride home to a neighborhood known for its colorful housefronts, a different look altogether.