It is difficult to define from what the people around here live. There are certainly the professionals and bankers and entrepreneurs, with big or small jobs, we see them taking the metro early in the morning, running by the boulevards in their cars for work on weekdays, using the latest mobile phone in the cafés during the weekends. They live here, but they don't make their money here.

When these people are not around, during the week, the environment is different. It is as if the neighborhood would be different, and actually they were two juxtaposed worlds. Actually, more than two, as each local shop has some sort of allegiance: there are the textile shops run by the Chinese community, the restaurants and bakeries run by the Jewish community, the mobile shops that attract the teenagers, the massage and wellness establishments.

The deepest group is that of the local artisans: they look as if they had their roots here for ages. There are plenty of small, unassuming shops, with a very old atmosphere. Usually they keep the signs from old, with letters in styles that come from the beginning of the century. The interiors are busy with all kinds of objects, usually made from wood, and filled their owners and their friends, old-looking people, discussing the news from half a century ago.

There are plenty of different variations around the theme: there are the ones that make textiles for furniture, there are those that restore old furniture, there are the luthiers, there are those that build equipment for local fairs. The links between these shops are more complicated than they seem, and they certainly buy from each other certain pieces or services.

The one that caught my eyes most is one that makes tools: by inspecting the window of the shop one can see that the tools sold are the tools used in the other shops, they are old-fashioned but certainly very precise stuff. Sometimes one can see people from the other shops stopping by, and if one would study it with attention, she would perhaps see that the web of this artisan local economy depends a lot of this little, discrete shop.

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