Petticoat Lane has mainly black and Asian customers (though many of the stall-holders are white Eastenders) and the odd baffled Spanish tourist who's wandered into the wrong market, and who wasn't expecting this. Spitalfields has mainly white customers and many tourists.
Typical things to be found on a Petticoat Lane stall:
- London tourist tat featuring black cabs and guards in bearskins
- England shirts
- Highly flammable 'sexy' black and red underwear that makes Ann Summers look like La Perla
- African fabric of such bold and colourful design you need shades just to look at it
- Highly flammable clothes that look like they'd fall apart if you just look at them
- Bling bling costume jewellery
- Socks and batteries
- Fake Louis Vuitton scarves, handbags and sunglasses
In Spitalfields you will find
- Retro furniture
- Vintage clothing
- Moroccan leather poufs and lanterns
- Jazz, blues and salsa vinyl
- Farmer's market charging mental prices for a loaf of bread
- 70s children's annuals
- Very expensive clothes boutiques
My grandad grew up in Petticoat Lane. There's still traces of the Jewish barrio it once was (in the voices of the stall-holders, in one cafe still serving salt beef or smoked salmon beigels) but mainly now it's an Asian neighbourhood, and they don't shop in Spitalfields, bang in their midst.
The east end has always been home to new waves of immigrants, and as I'm wandering through the market I think about why people are so anxious about new people moving into the country, when it's been a pattern for years and the country just absorbs them and carries on as usual. I'm very aware that my family were once the outsiders, feared and avoided and herded into a ghetto. You wouldn't have been able to walk through Spitalfields without hearing Yiddish and Hebrew, German and Polish once upon a time. But gradually people started to talk in English and left their own languages behind them. I know the same will happen with this generation eventually.
And now we're assimilated (it's easier when you're white to assimilate) and a different culture is now feeling the heat... On the radio the other day someone was talking about why people don't seem to care about the 42 days and the curtailment of our civil liberties, that there seems so little reaction against it. It's because of our history, he said, we were never taken over by a dictator like Germany or Italy - historically, we don't fear our own government, instead we fear outsiders . But surely if we give in to this fear, and let it dictate our laws, the terrorists have won already.
8 comments:
Hot, heavy Sunday morning in Austin and I read in The Guardian about a whole community of Italian Roma, most of them Italian citizens, just herded off their patch of twenty years by police in Rome. My first reaction: "thank God this lot weren't fire-bombed".
As depression was about to descend with the humidity for the day, I'm transported instead to Hackney and the salt beef bagels I used to get after clubbing, from a shop by the night bus stop. With butter and mustard and popped into a brown bag - I'd leg it home and eat in bed! Never found anything as good, even in NYC.
While we can think up heavenly ways to eat, there's still hope for us a species.....or summat?
Lovely post, and I fully support your conclusion.
I also like the contrast between Ridley Road Market in Dalston, and Broadway Market in London Fields. Two very different slices of Hackney life.
I care about the terror act, and it makes me sick to think of all the legislation that has been sneaked upon us over the past ten years to curtail our civil liberties. I agree with the radio presenter that we are complacent because we seem to believe that, although Mr. Brown has all the tools for establishing a dictatorship, he will never be bold enough to use them.
Hitler and Mussolini came to power precisely through exploiting the fear of the outsider - curfews and greater power to the military and police are justified by the fear of communists, jews or terrorists. Thanks to these 'anti-terror' laws, the likes of Osama can now point at Britain and claim with utter truthfulness that western governments are hypocrites and liars.
God, I've no idea where that came from. I'm never usually so bitter. Turns out I'm some kind of anarchist. Curious times...
My sisters used to get their clothes in Petticoat Lane market when they worked near Liverpool Street. I used to pop in to a wonderful place that sold latkas.
You're making me want to re-read Rodinsky's Room again.
You're spot on. People seem to forget that there has always been immigration. Humans move around a lot, and it can do them the power of good.
sorry- what's a children's annual?
Tara - annuals were published in time for Christmas and were usually hardback versions of the favourite comics for boys and girls: Dandy, Beano, Bunty etc, and of popular newspaper cartoons such as Rupert Bear - only jam-packed with more stuff.
Parents gave them to keep us occupied while they were drinking and smoking in the front room.
Arabella, oh good. I introduced a carnivore friend to a salt beef bagel, she was skeptical at first but the look on her face when she bit into it...
Thanks, Ben. I must go to Ridley Road, I've only passed it on the bus.
Hi Fathorse, I agree with everything you say. I think there's a complacency that we're a civilized nation but when you step back and look at how things are changing it's a scary picture.
Llewtrah, latkas are now sold as an exotic delicacy in Broadway Market, £3.50 each.
B, I loved Rodinsky's Room, and wrote a little bit about it here. My dad went to that synagogue as a boy, I saw inside it on the London Open House weekend, it was very moving.
Tara, look for 'children's annuals' on Google images and you'll see some.
Thanks, Arabella!
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