The window shade was the first privacy setting. You pulled it down and the street could not see you. You let it up and you could see the street. The window shade was a binary. Open or closed. Public or private. The shade did not have a gradient. There was no partial shade. You were visible or you were not.

The shade was on a spring roller. You pulled it down and it stayed. You pulled it again and it rolled up and the spring made a sound and the sound was the sound of choosing to be seen. Every window shade in the building told you something about the person behind it. Shade down at noon meant somebody worked nights. Shade up at midnight meant somebody was looking at the sky. The building was a grid of decisions about visibility.

The window shade was cream colored. Always cream colored. Nobody chose the color. The color was decided by a factory somewhere and the factory made every shade the same color and every building in the city had the same cream colored shades and the uniformity was the style. The style was that there was no style. The window shade was the most democratic piece of interior design in America. Rich apartment. Poor apartment. Same shade. Same cream. Same spring.

I never had curtains on East Seventh Street. I had a shade. The shade cost a dollar forty-nine at the hardware store and I installed it myself with two nails and a bracket. The shade worked for eleven years. It darkened the room and it lightened the room and it never needed an update and it never needed a password and it never collected data about when I opened it. The shade did one thing. The smart blind does forty things. The shade did the one thing that mattered.

See also: Tenement Window, Rooftop Antenna