The primary vertical circulation is made up of a series of inclined moving walkways, which are a very common sight in Italy, and pretty much the whole world other than the US (even Canada uses these pretty frequently). I really have no idea why these aren't a thing in the US -- they do exist, so they mustn't be completely banned by our building codes, and they seem a lot simpler than using escalators paired up with cart escalators as multi-level stores around here like to do, especially with how temperamental cart escalators seem to be. Speaking of carts, I mentioned the baskets on wheels that Italian grocery stores tend to have -- here are a few of them, and I was using one too since they don't require a Euro coin to unlock like the full-size carts do.
While I've seen carts like that before, they still seem quite strange to me. They look like laundry baskets especially in that color! I guess those are meant to be pulled along rather than pushed. I wonder if anyone would get strange looks if they pushed one of those...or pulled an American-style cart behind them!
ReplyDeleteThis seems like the kind of store that would have a concrete floor in the US, but I see the Italians seem to refuse to go for that given that tile is a major export of theirs. I'm not complaining about the floors here, lol, though any kind of flooring with grout lines can become annoying with carts in terms of noise and vibration for the cart user from having to drag them across the grout lines. I never did like that semi-circular earthtone tile pattern Kroger used in front of the meat cases at Greenhouse Krogers just because it was annoying taking a cart over them compared to the regular vinyl flooring around it, lol.
Ha! I have wheeled laundry baskets (left over from my previous apartment where I had to take my laundry across the street), and there's definitely a resemblance!
DeleteYeah, tiled floors are ubiquitous across Italy. I'm not a particular fan of real tile at grocery stores for exactly the reason you mentioned (the tile QFC used in a few fancier stores in the Fresh Fare era is particularly annoying), but the stuff Eataly has wasn't too annoying. Both Fiumicino and Istanbul had tile throughout the airport terminals, which is pretty annoying with basically everyone having wheeled luggage with them! (Though especially in Istanbul, the really annoying noise comes from the moving walkways, both with people dragging suitcases along them and from the constant announcements playing at the ends.) Terrazzo is definitely the best choice for airport flooring, and it's particularly disappointing that Italy (the place where terrazzo originally came from!) prefers to use tile.
I think Bed Bath & Beyond had carts like this towards the end, if I'm not mistaken (or was that Pier 1? They were right next to each other in the shopping center I'd go to...)
ReplyDeleteI've definitely seen similar wheeled baskets somewhere in the US, though I remember them being ones with fold-away handles more like normal baskets. I'm not sure where that was, though.
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