We used to come to Brick Lane years ago. Our friend's dad was a famous architect and long before it was a fashionable area, he had a big old Georgian house there. The parents never seemed to be home and we used to rampage around the place all night, making the occasional early hours trip to the 24 hour Brick Lane bagel bakery. The house had this magic bookcase, which swung open & let you through into... a whole other house next door! We loved it and spent time exploring this whole other house until we realised that actually, someone was renting it out and maybe wouldn't be happy to see us rifling through the place.
Happy times. In those days Brick Lane was home to a lot of Indian (Bangladeshi) restaurants, the Modern Saree Centre, the Whitechapel Art Gallery around the corner, but not a whole lot else. Artists were just beginning to use it for cheap studio space (Gilbert and George had always been there) but these days it's changed out of all recognition. The artists are taking over, and the City - it is being G.E.N.T.R.I.F.I.E.D and this is not always a good thing.
The beautiful Whitechapel Library, where refugees and poor folk could get themselves an education, has criminally been closed down to make way for the big glass Ideas Factory on Whitechapel High Street (lots of computers, not many books.) Shoreditch tube has closed. Worst of all, the synagogue on Princelet Street (where my dad used to go as a boy) now known as the Museum of Immigration for the generations of immigrant communities it has provided for, from the Huguenots onwards, is being threatened with closure because of the proposed Crossrail link. (I'd recommend the incredible book Rodinsky's Room by Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair, which shows why this would be such a crime). Now I know that change is what makes this city great, but we're talking about a wholesale destruction of this area's history.And it's the artists and the entrepreneurs that I take issue with - Spitalfields was an amazing atmospheric old market until the developers got their hands on it and made it into a big bland shopping mall complete with chain restaurants. When I first moved here the area was an interesting mixture, with cool bars opening up and trendy fashion types starting to move in - but it still had a gritty, multicultural feel.
Now the balance has swung too far the other way - every time I go down there there's a new highly expensive boutique or art gallery opened up, opened by some fool with more money than taste - they surely must be pricing the locals out of their businesses. (Infuriatingly, they seem to be in it for a hobby, it appears to be beneath them to actually earning a living - would like to name and shame the arty bookshop/coffeeshop on the corner of Cheshire Street, where they seem surprised and almost insulted if you try to a) buy a book or b) buy a coffee.)
They are fairly culturally insensitive too - bearing in mind that it's a mainly Muslim area, & most of the local women you see wear shalwar kameez down to their ankles and cover their hair, a slow handclap for the idiots who display "art" books featuring ladies with their baps out in their shop windows.
Down with this kind of thing.Brick Lane Spitalfields Gentrification
18 comments:
Annie, what a brilliant post. Excellent stuff. I don't know the area at all, but it sounds like it's become a victim of its own success - people want to move somewhere that's multicultural and vibrant, but as soon as they do, all the big shops and chain restaurants etc. start moving in with them. It's very sad when that effectively wipes out its own history.
Folks, for unreconstructed, ungentrified London, come to sunny Askew Road in W12. It's got genuine (not artistic) street filth, a manky Co-op, a library, a thousand little cafés and restaurants catering to all possible cultures, a couple of grim BNP-style pubs and a broken cash machine. One day, all this will be galleries.
I was in Brick Lane, and at Spitalfields on Friday, and I was shocked, shocked I say, at how bland Spitalfields had become. A crying shame.
Bought a couple of nice tee-shirts, though.
Patroclus, thank you! Sounds like my kind of place. W12 - is that Shepherds Bush? I like the areas with a bit of an edge to them, and the little local cafes. Once the greasy spoons start disappearing, it's time to move on I feel.
Wyndham - noooooo! Style and fashion, is this all that matters to you? Tsk, it's north London tourists like you who are ruining the area, casually buying your t-shirts without a thought for the impact on the local infrastructure. You'll only encourage them.
That's an excellent post there, Annie.
Patroclus' description of the Askew Road is spot on - you do have the option however, of retreating to the slightly more upmarket pubs on either end of the road, drinking a pint of Japanese lager and admiring the Australians.
Not forgetting Café Louche, Billy - an oasis of latte-fuelled middle-classness for the local Guardianistas.
I've never been in the Askew, but I do go in the Seven Stars a lot. Their food's very salty, though.
I've been in Cafe Louche a couple of times, I quite like it. But I'm generally to be found in an Uxbridge Road cafe, as they're nearer.
Last time I went to the Askew someone was smoking a reefer in the bogs. So maybe not so upmarket after all...
I had a mahoosive curry in Brick Lane once. Shortly after we ordered our food, a waiter manhandled this huge carcass through the restaurant and into the kitchen.
The two events were unrelated but caused a few moments of consternation to the vegetarians.
1999 - 2001 I was living on Redchurch street just down from The Owl & The Pussycat and opposite the small mosque. I loved living there. I could take the tube from Spitalfields to easily get to work at Canary Wharf.I used to buy bengali sweets from a small family run café and often spent Saturday afternoon's eating lunch in there. Sunday morning was salt beef bagel with extra mustard. It's no coincidence that I packed on the pounds during those couple of years!
And I'm now wondering where my copy of Rodinsky's Room went. I seem to remember it to be a sad tale.
Thank you for taking me back a couple of years. Time never stands still but I've been surprised at the radical change that's happened in a few short years.
Billy and Patroclus - I worked in Ravenscourt Park for a while, can I join your gang, or doesn't it count? There were many Poles about. I also got v fond of a shop on the High Street I believe is called Traid?
Greavsie, round Gordon Ramsay's that would just be showing off the fresh ingredients but in Brick Lane it's because they don't have a clue. Or possibly a back door.
Ah, you're welcome l'Oiseau. Sounds great, where you lived. If you saw it now, you wouldn't believe it, they're turning all the warehouses etc into v posh bars. (still, Champagne in exchange for a salt beef bagel is not such a bad swap.)
Damian - uncanny, how did you know?
(I'd be wary of telling folks about about your antlers by the way - traditional sign of the cuckold, you know...)
Ravenscourt Park is definately part of the Bush mileu. Do you Traid, the 2nd hand clothes place on the Green? Yeah that's a good.
I live a mere stone's throw from Ravenscourt Park, but I still manage to get lost in it sometimes. There are still lots of Poles. I don't know Traid, though -is it in King Street?
Careful now. Interesting perspective. I live in Finsbury Park, and it's still in that interesting halfway stage. But for how much longer I wonder?
Patroclus, there is a Traid on King Street but there's also one on the green (on the Uxbridge Road bit). Ooh and there's one on Westbourne Park as well.
Meaning no disrespect Del, because I like it there a lot, I think Finsbury Park is like Hackney, resistant to gentrification.
Billy, I think you should organise a shopping trip for Patroclus. Patroclus, it's a fine shop, & you could re-live your silver lurex hotpants days...
And when we folks here travel, we want to see the 'gentrified' places and the Tower-of-Londony type of things.
We don't want to see where immigrants live / hangout etc. We even bad-mouth how some immigrants make it look as if we're all dirty, criminal minded and so on.
Didn't someone write a book called Brick Lane?
When I say 'we' I mean Guyanese, generally speaking.
Gosh, this is the Londoniest post and comments thread ever!
The thing is, GG, this city is all about the immigrants, it's what makes it special. Everyone here is an immigrant from somewhere. Monica Ali wrote Brick Lane from the point of view of a Bangladeshi woman. It's not bad. But I'm looking foward to reading Salaam Brick Lane by Tarquin Hall, which sounds more diverse...
You're right Patroclus, we've discussed north, west and east, next we need to hear from a South Londoner.
Now, who's for a rousing chorus of "Knees Up Mother Brown" round the old joanna?
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