nostalgia for the backrooms
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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allowing people to smoke indoors and cultivating a culture of chain-smoking will do that after a few years to just about any indoor space.
imagine that smell casinos have, but without 30' high ceilings, state of the art industrial capacity HVAC systems and constantly replaced MERV rated filters.
those places smelled very different when they were actively occupied with bodies churning up and adding to the particulates, but lacking the charm of nostalgia and abandonment.
I love old libraries, but I worked for about a decade (2014-2024) in a 1960s constructed building that had never been gutted, only periodic resurfacing of floors and walls. indoor smoking wasn't banned until the 90s and continued to be a "problem" for another 20 years in some areas. the drop ceilings in low level employee offices were a kaleidoscope of greys, browns and yellows and above them was a nightmare of tar stains and signs of unidentified, incomplete combustion events that would scare anyone not on a self-contained air system from poking.
pretty sure everybody who worked there is gonna get the same wack respiratory thing in our 70s.
my anti-smoking mind expanded when somebody told me about the multi-storey Japanese shops (particularly those over gambling establishments) that were not ventilated properly and so every successive floor was more and more nicotine stained, and even decades after the smoking ban, still carry tar smell 🤮
do you think that some of these aesthetics and elements evoke something more wholesome or soulful because we associate those scenes and those eras with real people, and stories we are fond of?
so that essentially, in 30 years we will be nostalgic for the look of an aged 2020s office because we will then have associations of people that worked in those types of spaces and associations with personal stories or media, and it will stop feeling soulless?
to answer your question i don't think i have the same reaction as you but it makes enough sense that someone might react that way
From the boring point of view of an office worker, who worked in a yellow office with furniture that was older than me....
The renovation of my office was a truly appreciated. Ergonomic tables and chairs, new carpet, actual white walls and getting rid of 80% of the old file cabinets make life so much nicer. I put up a union poster, a painting, two plants and i do not miss the yellow plastic stains one bit.
That i can understand but on the other hand I'm really really weird. The older offices I've worked in usually would have weird little sections isolated from everything else and I'd just wander around and pick some random dark corner to work in. This was pre covid when it was full time in the office and it was the only source of joy i could get from my work environment. Naturally workers should not be subject to such awful accomodation its very much a me thing.
The office i refer to in this post had an entire floor cordoned off with tape, spray paint over the windows from years of graffiti casting a strange light across the room and i just picked some random dark corner to work from and i just felt happy for some reason.
Another office i worked in had a mice problem, leaked all the time and was generally falling apart but had sections seemingly unvisited by people that I'd find and just exist there. It also had a floor completely abandoned, I never saw anyone working on it and would sit somewhere accompanied only by the buzz of the lights.
The key theme is emptiness. A crappy building filled with people is just a crappy building but when i find the empty places or its nearing shutting down so mostly abandoned thats when the feeling kicks in. I guess it doesn't even need to be an old building just an empty one.
But yeah this is very much just some weird part of my brain that vibrates in these environments i don't actually expect anyone to work in this condition just wondering if anyone is as odd as i am
I get this for old administrative buildings, the ones with weirdly narrow hallways, brown-painted cinderblock walls, and shop lights hanging from the ceiling. I have absolutely no idea why because I've never worked in one.
Same for me I've never actually worked in this style of office yet it feels like i know it well. Maybe because my school had a similar building style maybe, without the cigarette damage ofc.
Or maybe i just like the vibe of tired old nearly abandoned buildings.
if I had to actually work in it every day? nah
but in general yeah. Its kind of a liminal space thing
You do know about the backrooms right? And liminal spaces in general?
It is definitely not just you that gets certain... feelings about such places. A strange familiarity. The realization that most of us do was even a bit of an internet phenomenon for a while.
Here's another kind of interesting video essay: Liminal Spaces: A Theory Concerning Our Existence
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I also have a thing for mundane, bleak aesthetics. there's something about an old office from the 90s, or a drab hotel conference room that I'm inextricably drawn to. those old square acoustic ceiling tiles, harsh white florescent lighting, beige wall-to-wall carpeting that's been thoroughly flattened from years of activity - a space so utterly devoid of life or joy that it becomes almost strangely beautiful, in a tragic sort of way
I probably wouldn't feel the same if I had to work in such a place every day, however
I get a ton of nostalgia for PWA Moderne and WPA Rustic style architecture.
They just look nice!