Uploading a few shots from an aimless tread around Upper Lascar row, or`Cat Street Bazaar' a few days ago.
In the true style of flea markets, although mostly situated astride a single street, this one is dishevelled, aging and full of odd things.
I start somewhere at the end of Hollywood road. Walk past old antique shops, cafes, and swanky new service apartments. A little near Man Mo temple, a narrow alley beckons me, I walk in, contemplating the graffiti on a crumbling plaster wall. Behind a row of glitzy stores and cafes, the alley is cool and deserted. A blast of hot dog smoke blasts from the back of a charred makeshift chimney. The smell lingers only moments before the rancid smoke bearing it raises to the heavens. At the far end of the street disembodied Buddhas sit chained to rusted iron stands. A plastic sheeted Vishnu waits patiently for a buyer.
A nose-less ear-less wooden horse, keeps the Gods quite company beside a reeking yet ever flowing drain.
Endless, unfathomable fascination with graves, foot binding shoes, spittoons and Chairman Mao draws folk down to Cat Street. Queer looking utensils, wine holders and chamber pots sit beside each other with new found dignity on dusty shelves. Their vendor swats mosquitoes with practiced flair, incinerating fidgety creatures with a battery run, racket like contraption.
An old lady, strings of coral and turquoise in hands haggles with shoppers.
Cat street is awash with objects, things old and new. Piled in mounds at every corner, pillaged from graves, dead people's homes, garbage dumps, flea markets, and dingy Chinese factories that churn out souvenirs in bulk by the hour.
