Why do we no longer go to Garosu-gil?
I walked through Garosu-gil again today for the first time in a while.
A little past the Apple Store, heading toward Sinsa Station, a new Daiso was preparing to open. There is nothing particularly strange about that. Daiso is a brand people want. Yet seeing it on what was once Seoul’s trendiest street felt strangely unfamiliar.
I walked a little farther and turned into Serosu-gil. Flagship stores that had once drawn crowds for fashion and beauty brands stood empty, and more than a few shops had closed altogether. Vacancies were still everywhere. The streets were quiet. It was hard to find a reason to stay.
Then a scene from Garosu-gil’s past came back to me.
Coffeesmith.
At a time when large cafés were still uncommon, the first Coffeesmith came to symbolize Garosu-gil at its peak. On weekends, the entire building filled with people. The second-floor seats facing the street, where the façade could be opened to look down over Garosu-gil, were especially difficult to get.
People inside the café watched the street, while those walking outside looked back in. You could pass the time simply watching what people wore and which shopping bags they carried. Coffeesmith felt like a grandstand built alongside the stage of Garosu-gil.
People did not go there only for coffee. They went to watch the street and to watch one another. Back then, some of the most compelling content on Garosu-gil was the people themselves.
(Photo © fmkorea)
But Garosu-gil’s real charm was never confined to the main street.
One block in, the side streets known as Serosu-gil were lined with cafés and select shops converted from low-rise apartment buildings and old homes. Some spaces could only be found by climbing a narrow staircase or opening a small door tucked between walls.
Most of these buildings had not originally been designed as commercial spaces. The people who opened shops there gradually folded their own tastes into someone else’s former home. Living rooms became showrooms. Small tables appeared in courtyards. Semi-basements became workshops, while second-floor apartments became intimate restaurants or appointment-only shops.
Each place had a different size, entrance, and layout. Unlike a glass-fronted flagship store, nothing revealed itself all at once. You had to step farther inside, climb the stairs, or open a small door.
Discovery required a little effort.
And that effort was part of the pleasure.
There was something about it that felt like walking through a Melbourne laneway or a residential street in Copenhagen. Even in the middle of the city, the pace felt slower. It was a commercial district, yet it carried the warmth of being invited into someone’s neighbourhood.
On Garosu-gil, we discovered people.
On Serosu-gil, we discovered their tastes.
We used to wander there without any particular purpose. It was fine not to have a restaurant reservation or anything specific to buy. We might watch people from Coffeesmith, then turn into an alley and come across clothes by a designer whose name we had never heard. We climbed the stairs of an old house to see a small exhibition, then drank coffee at a table set out in a courtyard.
On that street, unplanned time never felt wasted.
Many people remember Garosu-gil as a shopping street. But the original Garosu-gil was a street of discovery before it was a street of shopping. There were more brands that had yet to become famous than brands everyone already knew. There were more spaces someone had just started than places already proven.
People went there not because they had decided what to buy, but because they wanted to find out what was there.
Looking back, Garosu-gil was a kind of taste algorithm.
A good algorithm shows us not only what we already know, but what we might come to like. A good street works the same way. Rather than handing us a predetermined answer, it allows us to discover something new simply by walking.
There was a belief that whenever we went to Garosu-gil, we would see something new and compelling.
We did not go there simply to buy things.
We went to see Seoul’s next scene.
That was why Garosu-gil succeeded.
But as more people arrived, rents rose. The small shops that had first shaped the street could no longer afford to remain. Larger brands took their place.
The street became more polished and more famous. Yet, ironically, the more successful it became, the less there was left to discover.
(Photo © Namu Wiki)
The Apple Store did not bring Garosu-gil down. If anything, Apple chose a street people already loved. But its arrival was a symbolic moment.
On the old Garosu-gil, people discovered brands and spaces that were still unknown across the entire street. Even after the Apple Store opened, people continued to visit. But the stage of discovery had moved from the street as a whole into one enormous brand everyone already knew.
Garosu-gil was changing from a place where you encountered something for the first time into a place where you experienced and confirmed something already proven.
It was a moment when the cultural value of the street was translated, in the clearest possible way, into commercial value and real estate value.
More large brands and flagship stores moved in. The spaces grew bigger and the buildings more elaborate. But as only brands able to afford the rising rents could remain, the small places you might once have stumbled upon by chance gradually disappeared.
Culture attracted people.
People generated consumption.
Consumption raised rents.
And rising rents increased property values.
But even after the district lost its popularity, the higher rents and expectations of property value did not easily fall. Some landlords feared that lowering rents would also reduce a building’s profitability and appraised value. Rather than accept new tenants at a lower price, they chose to leave the spaces empty.
For the street to come back to life, it needed to welcome smaller and newer experiments. But the rents remained high even as the shops stood vacant, making it difficult for new independent businesses to move in.
Vacancy was both a result of the district’s decline and a reason the street could not begin again.
Small shops left.
Large brands arrived.
When the large brands left, vacancies remained.
Looking back, what disappeared from Garosu-gil was not its shops.
It was discovery.
We often think of cities as spaces of creation and consumption.
Someone makes something new, and someone else consumes it.
But between those two acts lies an essential process.
Discovery.
No matter how original something may be, it cannot become culture until someone discovers it. Consumption sustains creative activity, but discovery is what allows that consumption to begin.
A good neighbourhood creates opportunities for discovery before consumption.
Yet many cities manage only consumption. They measure success by how many people arrive, how much revenue is generated, and which major brands move in.
They rarely ask what those people came there to discover.
So must every neighbourhood that creates new culture eventually meet the same fate?
Shimokitazawa, which I revisited in Tokyo not long ago, felt especially striking for that reason.
The Shimokitazawa I first knew in the 2000s and the one that exists today are quite different. There are more tourists, and redevelopment has moved forward. The newer spaces are more orderly and more deliberately planned.
The old Shimokitazawa was a place where you found things no one had organized for you. Today, discovery itself feels more curated.
And yet the small live-music venues remain. So do the independent bookshops, vintage stores, and cafés run by individual owners. Older culture survives alongside newly developed spaces. Places for tourists and places for local residents continue to exist side by side.
It is not what it once was.
But the expectation that you might still discover something there remains.
That difference matters more than it may seem.
A good neighbourhood is not made through consumption alone. It is kept alive by small businesses willing to begin something new, and by the people who continue to discover what they create.
Garosu-gil did not succeed because it was the street where the most consumption happened in Seoul.
It succeeded because it was the street where the most discovery happened.
And what we discovered was never limited to objects. We discovered new spaces, new tastes, and new people.
Perhaps through them, we were seeing a version of Seoul’s future that had arrived there a little earlier than everywhere else.
One day, Seongsu may face the same question.
The signs are already familiar. Studios and workshops that once filled its alleys are giving way to flagship stores from names everyone already knows. Pop-up stores are shifting from places where something unknown might be discovered into places where an already established brand is experienced and confirmed.
Rents are rising, and the range of businesses able to afford them is narrowing toward larger and more famous names.
The sequence is not so different from the path Garosu-gil once followed.
Can we still discover something genuinely new on that street?
We should not wait until the street is empty before asking.
Coffeesmith is no longer on Garosu-gil.
And neither is the next scene of Seoul that we once went there to see.
