Here's some events coming up at Arbeit, an art gallery and performance space (it also rents out artist studios) that I've been involved with, located just off Old Street. Sorry for the short notice with the Spontaneous Combustion event!

The gallery can be located at:

4 Helmet Row

(Opposite LSO St. Luke's Church)

EC1V 3QJ

Some more details directions, including a map, here.

More info on Spontaneous Combustion: here
 

More info on De-Construct / Re-Construct / We-Construct: here

Great areas of London slightly under the radar: Part 1

Every time you think you know London, you discover new areas which hitherto you had little inkling about. I'll be commanding a regular section on these places (don't expect Brick Lane or Portobello Road). So it is with Lower Marsh (there's no Road or Street in the title), a market strip in Waterloo right near the Southbank Centre where I've been volunteering. Far from the hype of East London's decidedly well-known nooks and crannies, Lower Marsh seems to live in its own detached, hermetically-sealed reality. Where else would you get this slightly sinister-looking secondhand bookshop that looks like it's stepped straight out of 1972? 

There's also a nice vegan cafe and shop called Coopers Natural, which seems to be brimming with endless flyers on yoga classes and tantric sex (well OK, I made the last bit up). They also do a mean vegan soup. But the street's real jewel in the crown is the double-whammy - if I can call it that - of What The Butler Wore and What The Butler Saw, presumably owned by the same people.

The latter, on the right, is a spooky 60s-style boutique clothes shop, similar to Pop Boutique in Covent Garden. The left shop, though, is really quite something: hardly conspicuous to the street outside (it doesn't even have a name on the shop front), a step into this cafe reveals an extraordinary garden of delights (well, there is a tiny garden at the back, but I mean metaphorically, obviously).

You feel transplanted back to Paris in the 20s or Soho in the 60s (or Berlin in the last ten years), with an extraordinary attention to detail in the adornments, junk (junk in a good way, mind) and nostalgic accouterments hanging from the wall. Well worth checking out.

Finally, there's also the 'graffiti tunnel', a long railway arch tunnel which connects the street to the back of the Southbank Centre, and where - as far as I can tell - graffiti is legal, and thus a magnet for young street artists. You can glimpse tantilisingly into The Young Vic theatre while you're there too, as it has a (usually open) back door half-way down the tunnel leading into the venue. The open door reveals winding passages with walls full of painted winding black lines, snaking into the belly of The Young Vic.

(Mosaic image above from Lyn Atelier's site; image of Undercroft below by T.Frewin; all other photos by me)

For the last few months, I’ve been involved in a project at the Southbank Centre called Festival Village, initiated by architectural and design practice Lyn Atelier in association with the SC and Studio Tilt. For those who’ve walked on that stretch of the Southbank promenade in-between the BFI and the RFH, you’ll recall a darkly-lit industrial-looking zone nicknamed The Undercroft, where teenagers ply their skateboard and BMX tricks on concrete slopes while onlookers watch against a backdrop of urban graffiti (pictured). Behind those walls, and under the Queen Elizabeth Hall (which is on the level above) a hollow space previously used for storage has been transformed into a bar, café and exhibition space in conjunction with the SC’s Festival of the World taking place at the moment. This has included housing bands - the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra from Venezuela among them -  from all over the world playing in the main venues of the SC, as part of the FOTW. Over five months, I’ve been one of the volunteers helping out from the start, from initially discussing the plans for graphics and wayfaring to helping get involved with the physical work of demolishing walls; installing a bar; making, painting and varnishing furniture; creating walls; and who knows what else, all of which has been a fun and involving experience. One of the most rewarding experiences was seeing the end result at the opening party, after five months of development. The pictures below document the changes that have taken place in the site as it’s been developed over five months leading up to June 2012. Here's what the site looked during construction...

...and here's what the finished product looks like...it's even featured in an issue of The Late Show recently. All that sanding, lifting wood, and other physical exertion was worth it in the end!

As May has been smothered in a gloomy shroud (both literally and economically), I’ve seen The Shard grow and grow from my vantage point here in East London. As it’s grown to resemble more and more Barad-dûr (nicely illustrated by the anonymous Photoshop job above which someone posted on the Internet), and surrounding London Mordor, the Occupy London protestors in St Paul’s and Finsbury Square have, conversely, slowly been forced to disappear from view, as if they’re a blemish which visitors to the Olympics must not be allowed to see. Yet there’s a kind of seductive beauty to The Shard too. I feel torn between dislike of its encapsulation of capitalism and wealth on the one hand, and a bizarre feeling of pride that London finally has its own Blade Runner-esque tower to rival those in New York, Chicago, or Tokyo. I wonder if I'm the only one.

The new issue of Dazed & Confused has two interesting articles that, in my own mind at least, are connected with the elections for a new mayor which took place today. The first is the cover article, "Is East London Dead? The Future of Creativity in the Capital". Leaving aside the issue that other parts of the capital actually have creativity going on too, the article is succinct in highlighting how the gentrification and sprucing up of East London in time for the Olympics is slowly eroding the individuality and creative potential of the area. As the article acknowledges, the closing of the Foundry on Old Street – formerly the street’s most interesting and unique venues – along with The George Tavern on Commercial Road (for those who haven't been, an ancient (since 1692) East London pub with an extraordinary back-room that contained a strangely compelling lit-up dancefloor) - have turned out to be just one of many victims of the creeping corporatisation of the area. In contrast, the shopping complex Boxpark Shoreditch – styled as a ‘pop-up’, even though it's set to remain for a long time - with its motley assortment of big brands, feels like an attempt to capture the spirit of the area which rings slightly hollow and corporate (though some leeway has been given for individual businesses, such as booksellers Phaidon). Tragically, the Foundry still remains closed years later, with bureaucracy stopping the planned 'art hotel' from happening (not that the 'art hotel' would have been preferable to the Foundry, but it would have been better than nothing). Speaking of 'pop-ups', formerly secure independent shops such as the Duke of Uke have been forced out of their permanent premises and forced to operate elsewhere as a 'pop-up', thus living in a kind of limbo. I’ve wrote about this before, of course.



The second article that caught my eye was Jon Savage’s 'Interzone', which captures snaps of what West London was like 35 years ago. The photos are currently on display at Maggs booksellers (hence the YouTube clip above). It’s astonishing, looking at some of the pictures, to think that areas adjacent to Notting Hill were essentially urban wasteland back then, with ample opportunities to squat and live an alternative existence in communes on the dole (which is precisely what the likes of Hawkwind, Crass, The Raincoats et al did). The contrast to today is striking: as rent prices go through the roof, many of the youth graduating today are going to find that, as Savage admits himself in the article, they will only be able to live anywhere near the centre of London if they have a fair whack of money behind them (so leaving the poor exposed). Living in the area around 'Silicon Roundabout', as it’s being dubbed, I know this only too well. Their situation is going to be further exacerbated by the lack of jobs as the UK enters a double-dip recession, coupled with the current Government's dismantling of the welfare system. It was the existence of the latter, of course, which allowed previous generations to experiment, leading to the kind of 'bohemian' (a word I’ve always hated, but it does apply here) lifestyle espoused by the artists mentioned above. The previous recessions may have been bad, but at least squatting opportunities abounded, as well as a thriving dole culture, particularly in Hackney (where I grew up) and in the Notting Hill area during the time that Savage took those pictures. Those ‘alternative zones’ will become less and less now. And if that’s not bad enough, the young will find that property prices are through the roof where once it was possible to buy a house in a London on a modest wage (in only certain other parts of the country are house prices still affordable). Of course, if you walk around areas such as Hackney Wick, it’s easy to think there are still cheap, artist-friendly areas, with its profusion of galleries. But, being so close to the Olympics, areas like Hackney Wick will change too, as has clearly happened with Dalston, where I went school, and which was once a decidedly untrendy area. These areas will not go down in price once the Olympics end.

Something has to be done about the fact that London’s housing market has turned into a giant bubble, with unscrupulous landlords allowed free reign to drastically increase rents at their whim. It’s the reason why I voted for the Green Party’s Jenny Jones today, together with the fact that she has clearly grasped that the Cycle Hire Scheme needs to be extended North and South, rather than presently only serving suits in the Square Mile and at Canary Wharf. She almost certainly won't get the job, of course; nonetheless, from the people working at the cafe this morning to the sentiment among most people in the cycle cafes, I get the feeling that plenty of people did the same as me, rather than opting to vote for either Johnson or Livingstone.

Thanks to Dummy Mag.com, which is where I discovered the YouTube clip above

Another quick gig-related post: Divisionists playing tomorrow (Tuesday 17th April) at Nambucca, Holloway Road, on at 7:45pm. Tickets are £7. We are supporting Swiss noise-rockers Roy & The Devil's Motorcycle.

Can you guess which cities match each Underground system outline image?






(Images courtesy of lineposters.com and Core77)
Yes, that's right: the first is New York City, the second is London, and the third is Paris.
It's interesting how iconic and almost aesthetically "stylish" the Underground systems of these cities have become, given that their purpose has always been a utilitarian one: to get masses of people from A to B in a vast urban area while not contributing yet more traffic to the streets above. They were hardly built with style in mind.
The London Underground map, in particular, has taken on a life of its own, with countless piss-takes and imitations. This list on Londonist of alternative tube maps is as authoritative as it gets, and there really is some mind-bendingly weird and amusing takes of the map on there, designed by enthusiasts, from it in 3D to all the stations translated into German. I particularly like this one by Mark Noad that shows the map as how it would actually look if the stops were depicted in a geographically accurate manner (given that Harry Beck's ubiquitous schematic map ignored this in favour of topological straight lines and, by and large, disregard for actual spatial distance between stations):


The one that made me laugh the most from that Londonist list has to be this representation of the map by The Poke in terms of the 'moral underground' pushed by right-wing tabloid The Daily Wail (sorry, The Daily Mail):

Rest assured that house prices and the Euro currency are in there somewhere.

As for this one by Francisco Dans, frankly I haven't got a clue what it's all about, but it looks incredible:

Finally, I leave you with the version below (not sure who it's by), which has a certain kind of beauty. It shows an aerial view of Greater London with the Tube map superimposed. If there's one thing that image brings to mind, it's just how vast the distances between stations can be - and just how vast London as a city is.



(NB If anyone from London Underground/TfL is reading this, I'm aware that the map is copyright, and that you're not supposed to reproduce any versions of it without permission, but I'm not making any money from this blog, and if you're nice to me I'll say from now on that the London Underground is always great, even when lines aren't running due to signal failures...)