Crazy Daze

Hullut Päivät is the bi-annual sale at Stockmann's Department Store in Helsinki which comes just before Easter in the Spring and and at the end of October in the Autumn. The sale lasts three days and most sane people avoid going near the store until after the madness has subsided. I had the Leica and so I thought I'd try to capture a little bit of the insanity on film by walking around while trying not to be noticed.

Everywhere you look there are yellow banners and menacing looking ghosts. I am guessing that the ghosts are the motif for the sale since the "Huu" sound a ghosts makes rhymes with the first syllable of "Hullut"...but I could be wrong. In the US, parents would probably be suing the store for such scary ghosts being displayed when it's not even Halloween. The mannequins get draped in yellow cloth with eyes taped on to look like a flock of really tall trick-or-treaters. Mylar balloon ghosts, employees in costume, people pawing over tables piled with stuff and announcers saying something into a microphone which sounds like you're at the drive-thru window make the whole scene pretty chaotic. I had fun lurking around with the camera and trying to take photos of the better costumes until one rather irate cashier started yelling at me in English and then switched to Finnish because I must have looked so startled she probably thought I didn't understand English. :)

Lots of people claim that there really aren't any deals or good sales during the 3 days of mayhem but I don't think that's really the purpose of the whole show. Shoppers flock to Stockmann's as a good excuse to head into the city, look at some of the random new items the store buys just for the sale and then go to a movie or the theatre. Some shoppers take the event really seriously though, so when you see yellow ghost Stockmann bags downtown, walk away from the store unless you enjoy watching a piranha feeding frenzy. :)

12 Apr 2004 at 18:15, Helsinki