Went to Brick Lane today and checked out the market for a bit before tracking back to Mare Street to investigate a 'happening' at Las Vegas Tattoo's. There was various art exhibitions and interesting characters providing fake tatoos (I had one). You could, of course, have a real tattoo if you so wanted to...I'd love to think it would make me look hard, but I'd probably just end up looking like a Shoreditch twat.

Anyway, there's no getting away from it - is Brick Lane going to become the new Notting Hill? I can't really say I'm too happy about the new Monica Ali film shot on location, but not because it'll make the area touristy - as if it's not already anyway. Nor am I one of those stuck up twats - most of them originally from the posh part of the Home Counties* - bemoaning camera-weilding tourists from Germany, France or Brazil or wherever, as if these twats have some precious right to Brick Lane that's being eroded by those inconsiderate types abroad (a typical example was some posh bint working on one of the stores, who stuck her nose up to everyone).

No, I'm just annoyed because it means that prices will go up and up after the film and anyone on a relatively low income, or anyone with an 'artistic' lifestyle who isn't bringing tons of money, will be priced out of the area. It'll become like vast swathes of West London, in other words, but just as with there you will still have the council estates with the dire poverty. So the polirisation between the rich and the poor will become exacerbated, just as with Rotting Hill...although I live in Bethnal Green near the end where it meets Cambridge Heath Road rather than Brick Lane, or further to Shoreditch High Street, I can imagine this trend spreading....

* highly unscientific random guess