You walk down a street. Something has changed, but you're not sure what. A few months later something else has changed. You ask yourself what used to be over there, but can't recall.

Then the time comes when you might change routines and not visit for a year or two, then come back to find that everything is unfamiliar and you ask yourself "What just happened there"?

I've sometimes said that the time will come when it's the seemingly mundane PAD shots that are the ones that will matter. Right now the ones that grab the attention are the ones that show a fine level of artistry... as they should. But 15, 20, 30, 50 years from now the ones that will probably be of greater interest will be the ones that showed snippets of everyday life in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, small towns in Ireland, rust belt towns in New York, townships in Ohio or western Canada, and other places too, big and small.

So to feed the voracious appetite of my PAD (and reduce the number of beach sunrise shots) I'm going to see whether I can do something that I've already done on occasion, but more systematically; and that is to document shops, factories, offices, entire streetscapes. Not in every PAD obviously, more as a recurring theme, or series of themes.

In this case I'm kicking off the series "Little Shops", documenting some of the more interesting small businesses that I see around the place. This one is Lovedoll Superstar, a little store in Thirroul in the Illawarra. No, the name is misleading, I don't think they're in that line of business at all. (Oh come on, you thought it too.) Their website isn't up but a local directory entry describes them thusly:
"We are a superstore of urban apparel & accessories for girls, guys, kids, with a rock n roll edge. Also packed with loads of other goodies, books, knick knacks, to satisfy your appetite for the world of pop culture."
Although there is clothing in the window I was indeed bemused by the range of curiosities that they had for sale on the counters that you can't see in this shot.

One confession; this was not in fact the initial target for the first of these shots. I took the proverbial "wrong turn at Albuquerque" (with apologies to B. Bunny Esq.), turned into this street to make a U turn, saw the combination of the leaning tree, the spotlighting on the building in the pre-dawn light, the spring colours in the window and the subtle lighting from within, and thought "Hey, actually...", and turned this into my PAD.

Postscript, July 2022: I remembered starting this series, but thought that it was more recently than almost 6 years ago. It looks like I did a few shots on this theme in 2015, then... I'm sure I thought of it as something that I would come back to and never did (until this morning).

You can guess that THIS "Little Shop" is long gone; it was by 2018, replaced by a pet groomer place called Happy Go Puppy. Their Instagram account shows that they had opened a branch there (along with their main one in Como, which still remains) by May 2018, but I can't see any information about when and why it closed. (But in that area? I smell rent as an issue.) For a time from 2019 it was home to a mortgage broker, but they have also vacated the scene. At the time of writing, it may well be empty.