This is a joke. The author is responsible for the opinions expressed in the text.
Fifty years ago I lived in the Atlas region of Vasastan. It is named after the huge Atlas factory that once built steam locomotives there in the valley between Sankt Eriksplan and Barnhusviken.
The factory was followed in the 1920s by a collection of very small apartments, which were primarily intended for working women as a link between parental home and marriage. The apartments appear to have been stacked on top of each other in a pot far below the surface of the earth.
You had to climb difficult stairs to get to Sankt Eriksplan.
In the three short little streets in the area Atlasgatan, Völundsgatan and Vulcanusgatan, there were two grocery stores, a tobacco shop and two bakeries, so beautifully located that you couldn’t escape the smell of freshly baked bread early in the morning.
There was plenty of parking but few cars, most of them better used.
The population was old, calm and had just enough time to go to the shops and buy groceries, potatoes, tobacco, tips, chips, rolls and cakes before it was time to go to bed again.
Imagine if there was an elevator, they said fifty years ago.
Forty years ago an elevator was installed next to the stairs. The aging population still went to their stores, but the one grocery store soon gave up and became an apartment, and the one bakery closed and became a pizzeria.
Thirty years ago the customer base reduced so much that the other grocery store has also become a residential building and the tobacco shop has become a warehouse. Now the cars were parked closely and not just any cars.
The area was gentrified.
Twenty years ago the second bakery closed. Drivers rented space in the new garage as part of the Sankt Eriksplan.
Ten years ago, the population that had arrived fifty years ago had become so old that they preferred the stairs to the elevator for health reasons.
This is now used by families with children, but probably also by real estate agents who sell the small apartments in the cozy Atlas district, which actually only lacks its most important feel-good factor: the smell of freshly baked bread in the early hours of the morning.
Read more of Säverman’s stories, like how to walk halfway across the city without knowing how many steps it will take.
