Hoods 3 - Dongdaemun, etc.

Dongdaemun, the East Gate. A lot of this ancient archecture gets isolated in the middle of roundabouts. top bottom
An alley on the edge of Dongdaemun, heading toward the shoe zone. Dongdaemun is a ten-block area containing 30,000 vendors and 50,000 manufatureres. Primarily a clothes and accessories area. This is also the area where we found [ahem] evidence of the dylan gone worldwide... Come back to this picture after reading the blurb by the picture at the bottom of page. top bottom
Stadium across the street from one of Domgdaemun's 26 shopping malls. Seoul seems to have more stadiums that it knows what to do with. There's another stadium (baseball) to the right of this one (which seems to be used as a parking lot now). Sign at top front of stadium annouces a [rare] public works projects. Apparently, there used to be a river that ran through this part of town which is currently burried under the streets. So the city wants to dig it up and make it a regular, runing river again. It's been 30+ years since anyone's seen a trace of it. And what is the local reaction to an unprecidented city-beautifying project? Dongdaemun merchants are about 90% opposed to the plan. The river, they fear, will drive customers away. top bottom
Typical neighborhood building signage. The yellow one advertises an after school school (kindergarden level) that teaches "Super English". It is very common for kids to have a second private school they attend each day after they've been to regular school. This is good preperation for the 16 hour work days they will face as adults. top bottom
Branding is important. And they say cleanliness is next to godliness. The founders of this chain of carwashs seem to have had a vision. top bottom
Just takes a bit of getting used to, seeing swastikas denote buddhist temples. As with other things, you'll get a swastika at the entrance to an alley and then follow the swastikas to the site. This one's on the third floor there. I took this picture specifically because there's also a red cross on a blue sign about two-thirds up the alley (hard to see in the photo, but very prominent in real-life). This is in Gunpo, near Bosco's. The sidewalks along this stretch were odd. Covered in a soft mat-like squishy material. Two-toned: one lane of red and one of green to separate bikes and pedestrians. But the material was easily waterlogged when it rained and obviously had little resistance to the elements... top bottom
Ah yes, the infamous barber poles. I didn't ever get the exact same story twice about them, and the subsequent on-line information gathering has been equally as vague. But it seems pretty clear that barber shops and the sex trade are squarely linked. There are no doubt haircare-only barber shops, but in situations where there's a pole at the entrance to an alley that leads to a pole at the entrance of another alley to a group of poles at the entrance to a yogwan (an "inn", sort of like a motel) or turkish bath, then... Service options seems to range, too, from the "full release" massage parlor idiom to outright prostitution. Now scroll back up to the picture of Bosco and see if you can spot barber poles! top bottom

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