At first glance, Central Street appears to be a nondescript street on which people rush during peak hours to catch their buses in Shivajinagar bus stand. It indeed used to be a nondescript street some years ago, but with the growth of Bangalore and by virtue of its location close to the central business district (CBD), it began to acquire a character of its own.
The road which begins at Kumble Circle, named after cricketer Anil Kumble when he took 10 wickets in a single match, cuts across many important roads like Cubbon Road, Infantry Road and Bowring Hospital Road before it joins the Shivajinagar bus stand.
At the beginning of the road, for a small stretch, there is the tree-lined Police Parade Ground on one side and Cariappa Memorial Park on the other side.
The park is among the recent ones in the City and was laid out in 1996 over an area of 22 acres, in honour of Field Marshall K M Cariappa. The park has a play area with spider webs, balance bars, zigzag tunnels, sand pits and Tarzan swing. An astonishing 3,000 species of flora can be found here. It was thrown open to the public on June 27, 1996 by the then Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda.
The park is maintained by various divisions of the Army. There is a 1.8-km long walkers’ track, that is filled with cobblestones and is popular with morning walkers. In an effort to be eco-friendly, no chemical fertilisers or pesticides are used for growth or maintenance of the plants. In the late evenings, obvious nefarious activities are sometimes observed on the fringes of the park.
There is a cluster of at least 30 furniture shops along both sides of the road after the Cubbon Road junction, besides photo frame shops. These homegrown furniture shops thrive amidst foreign brands of furniture. These shops are quick to adapt to changing trends and styles and have come out with Euro style furniture, computer furniture, steel furniture to meet the changing trends. The Central Square, is a commercial plaza which has come up on this street in recent times.

Theatres
Sangeet and Sandeep are twin theatres on this road. Old Hindi movies and Malayalam movies are screened here and this is perhaps one of the few options for people to watch Malayalam movies. On the streets outside the theatres, the vendors ply their trade.
It has a Darshini restaurant, a working class restaurant and a fine dining restaurant besides a trendy branded open air cafe (Nescafe). Empire Hotel used to be a restaurant of the ‘proletariat’ before it was revamped and became a place for the ‘bourgeois’ and a lodging section was added to it. There are a couple of old dilapidated buildings, perhaps waiting to be replaced by some shining commercial paradise.