For five years, I walked past the same window almost every day.
It was a shoe shop for as long as anyone can remember. Before that, long before, it sold bread and milk. People stopped in on their way to work, and the shop was a small and important spot in the neighbourhood, back when the clock ran a little slower.
I never went in for shoes. But every time I passed, I slowed down and peeked in, and the room changed in my head. One day it was a bar, with cozy light spilling onto the pavement. Another day a yoga studio, or a shop full of odd little curiosities. It didn’t really matter what it became. I just wanted something in there that would bring a little life back to the street.
Then the shoe shop went under.
Almost overnight, it turned into a Filipino post office. It was the kind of place you pass and wonder: how does it work, who it’s for, why it exists at all. With no ill will towards the owners, surely it couldn’t last long, right?
It didn’t.
This summer I was in Italy, still deep in a work project, when my partner called. I could hear the excitement in her voice.
“They’re emptying it.”
A wave of joy hit me, and before it had time to settle, reality slapped me on the other cheek.
How was I supposed to pull this off?
For the past few years I’ve worked around the world in media and photography, the kind of jobs where you learn more than you earn. It’s fun and exciting, but I’m also one burnout down, and I’ve been looking for a way out: a way to stop building other people’s things and start building my own.
Because that’s the thing. I’ve always made stuff on the side. Photographs and posters. Graphic design. Furniture, trinkets, toys. Code. Events. A complete and illustrated, very much unreleased poetry collection. Long story short, I like to make things. But most of what I’ve made has lived in drawers and hard drives, waiting for somewhere to go. What I’ve never had is a place where I would allow myself to get out into the world, and meet other people doing the same.
A few days passed, and I already knew there was no other way. Powered by the fear of ending up back in the hamster wheel, I knew there would never be a better time. With no new job lined up and barely enough money for the month ahead, I pulled the trigger anyway.
A bright gallery in the front. A studio in the back. And a door that opens onto the street. A small space where something fresh comes out of the oven, sometimes mine, but mostly other people’s.
The name was the easy part. Bröd, Swedish for bread, after the shop where it all began.*
October is for building. Walls, light and floors, all fuelled by the tiny ember inside that grows a little every day. I’ll be documenting all of it here and on YouTube / Instagram, from the first measurements to opening night in November.
So if you walk past, wave. Or better yet, step in.
I’m probably inside, with a drill or a paintbrush in my hand.
– Johan
*For full transparency: I’m 95 % sure this was the bread and milk shop. Next door was a colonial goods store run by the same company, but “Colonial Goods Gallery” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it today.