That’s it: this town centre is dead. Nothing here but cheap shops and a couple of really bad supermarkets. What do you have to do to get a good coffee around here? I’ll tell you: you don’t. You go to the supermarket, where you sit in the corner of the café they have, on their corporate chairs, and you sip your lattes from a machine. It makes it right in front of you and everything. That’s how low this place is.
And yet…there’s the flower shop. It sits in between the nail bar and the $2 shop, and it’s just really, REALLY nice. You know how some flower shops just feel like places that are set up for the big occasions- Mother’s Day, all that- and they just don’t feel friendly? Well, this one is. I went in looking for some tulip bulbs, because my sister makes weird birthday lists, but Gia greeted me at the door and helped me find exactly what I was looking for. And then at the end she gave me a free tulip so my sister could see exactly what the bulbs would look like. She has the shop laid out perfectly, all flower coordinated and looking just perfect, like she stayed up for nights just plotting how she wants her place to look. There’s nothing cheap about it, except the prices are pretty low because of what area of town we’re in. But Gia’s is pretty popular, probably because she’s got no competition and people just like to hang out in there.
Still, I’ve asked her why she chose to set up in a place like this. She just said it needed a burst of colour that only bunches of hyacinths and daffodils could bring. That, and the lack of other flower places in the area, and the rent was cheap…but still, her place sticks out. That’s what happens when you line your windows with bright yellow and white daffodils in a tessellated pattern, I guess. Maybe Gia is a mathematician. If you’d seen the layout, you might agree.
-Harrison