24 Comments

Blind windows! Although, for this specific example, the term may be a little generous. They look a little more like empty art frames to me.

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Oct 13, 2021Liked by Rob Walker

I always like the term "remuddling" when a person attempts to improve the look of their building while breaking all design and architecture conventions. Bonus: the terra cotta ridge vent gives it a great Mediterranean look!

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Oct 12, 2021Liked by Rob Walker

I'll suggest "fauxnêtre" a French mash-up of faux (fake) and fenêtre (window).

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Oct 12, 2021Liked by Rob Walker

As cousins to those windows, I like the terms "Fauxpola" for fake cupolas and "Fauxmer" for the fake dormers you see tacked onto buildings, especially McMansions.

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Oct 12, 2021Liked by Rob Walker

On those phony window frames. I remember seeing that back in France and England and one other place they instituted a window tax. Windows were considered a higher form of luxury in the 18th and 19th centuries. The more windows you had, the more Mulah you paid. People filled them up with bricks to avoid the tax. Do you know if I this liquor store is owned by people from France or England and are approx. 200 years old?

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Oct 12, 2021Liked by Rob Walker

Reading the WaPo article prompted me to remember an icebreaker question I’ve heard/read in various forms:

“What’s something (or someplace) you wish that tourists or visitors to your hometown should take in, but often is overlooked or ignored?”

For me, originally from Tampa, FL, everyone expects good Cuban food. But out-of-towners are always directed by Google and other algorithms toward the same restaurants. I always steer people to my favorite place—a little cafe that’s been run by the same family for several generations. Any given day you’ll find diners from the C-suite crowd to day-laborers, and a broad spectrum of ethnicities, eating the same food from the same cafeteria-style plastic beige plates and trays. And I can’t help but force myself to try and order in Spanish, no matter how awful my vocabulary is.

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Re: Noticing...I think one of the bonuses of being a journalist/writer is you get into the habit of noticing things because you are desperate for story ideas—and then you can't turn it off!

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Windows 4.9

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In German, these false windows are called “Blende”. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Faced_facades

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Oct 12, 2021Liked by Rob Walker

I got a kick out of the picture of the liquor store with the cheesy fake windows. I could imagine a cartoon version of that in The New yorker cartoon caption contest, and someone submitting an entry of: The Cool Kids are inside, and all the Squares are outside.

I defer to Adam for describing the windows. The best that I could come up with is:

FauxPane

or

Phantom Pane.

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