Friday, August 5

I have come to the centre to collect a lamp from BoConcept in Mannerheimintie. I realise that a lot has changed since I last came here. The McDonalds inside the metro station has closed, and the exit I use has sprouted some new shops in a new architectural arrangement.

I stop at the beginning of Aleksi and photograph the three smiths, still hard at work after all these years. The whole area seems full to the brim with tourists, although I manage to take a photograph that shows approximately none of them.

Behind me stands an outdoor beer terrace that The Hard Rock Café now runs. Tourists swirl past it but it has no customers at all. I look at the menu. The cheapest burger costs 22.95€ and wine costs an eye-watering amount. I wonder if they ever have any customers.

Paying that amount might just work in the restaurant itself, with the theatre of the waiters and the scenery involving gloves once worn by Jeff Beck and Gene Simmons’ old jacket, and so forth, but who would pay that amount to sit on a pavement breathing in gasoline fumes and looking and listening to the trams stopping a couple of metres away?

I have known to misjudge these things, so perhaps I will find people queuing for a seat if I come back later. I almost certainly won’t though.