PHOTOS
Miha Tamura captures the extraordinary side of this everyday ride.
Of all the transport modes in the city, escalators probably get the least amount of love. Elevators go much higher much faster. Trains go much farther (and are much prettier). Subways carry more people more places. If you think anything when they think about escalators, you probably wonder why they’re always broken.
The Tokyo-based blogger Miha Tamura is on a mission to rescue the escalator from urban transport obscurity. At her site, Tokyo Escalator, Tamura tries to capture the extraordinary side of this everyday ride. Despite its name, the site also features cool escalators from other Japanese cities, as well as a few from other parts of the world.
Many of Tamura’s images have been compiled into a book alongside a collection of short stories — each of which ends with a girl riding up an escalator. She says the source of her fascination comes from the fact that she saw very few escalators in her small hometown of Kanazawa before moving to Tokyo, where of course she sees them everywhere.
“The more I know about escalators, the more I get interested,” she tells Atlantic Cities.
Lidia K.C. Manzo 