Current mood: CONTRO-THOUGHTFUL...
Category: CONTRO-THOUGHTFUL... Music
Located central north central London, the Borough of Camden is a veritable feast of bright young things, scuzzy fashion and more wannabe BIG bands per square inch than The NME will ever know..
Yes boss, on Sundays the streets of the 'den are thronged with hopeless young folk who think they're radical and OUT THERE!!!! and in the week it's a lot quieter..
Now, I really don't mind the place at night when the bands are playing rather than lounging around salubrious haunts like The Good Mixer or The Hawley Arms, trying to look good, but on Tuesday I happenned to be in the Stable Market area of Camden in the day time and I found myself thinking uncharitable thoughts..
Yes boss, though in the days of the ace bookshop Compendium and vivid road parties, I used to visit Camden reasonably frequently, I now generally only go there under duress, or to see excellent bands of an evening and during my visit on Tuesday, I fully understood why...
Basically, Camden is all about hustle, about following trends and making alt.money and all this combined, makes it a most unsettling place to stand around casually and watch folk go about and by their daily business..
I kid you not. As, I was standing around waiting for Mrs G (who was as she characteristly does) keeping a ten pace backward browsing gap, I was trying to amuse myself with scenes of London life, but was completely unable to find any kind of aloof sanctuary from which to observe the world and it's folk....
No boss, in Camden there was nowhere I stood where I didn't soon suffer one of the following inconveniences to concentration..
1) Hustle from a food stall owner
2) Hustle from a trendy market stall holder
3) Hustle from a fake/low quality drug dealer
4) Eye hustle from Police who thought I was a fake/low quality drug dealer
It was a complete bind. I mean Oxford Street is much, much busier and Brixton (outside the tube) far scarrier, but there's nowhere with a greater relentless hustle of alt.business than Camden...
It's for this reason and others that I find myself unable to support the Save Camden Stables Market! campiagn..
Yes boss, apparently plans are afoot to knock down large portions of the market and turn it into yuppie flats etc.
Now I know yuppie flats have a bad press and are a pain in the arse to everyone who doesn't live in them, but I do live in one and I know for a fact that they're really quite nice.
I mean, sure the neighbours are mostly cunts, the rent is too high, they cost a fortune to heat and light, the service charges are excessive, you have to walk a mile to get your friggin mail from the regimented pigeon slots, you feel constant guilt when you see the 24 hour security guard, the porter and the corridor cleaner etc etc - but everywhere has it's minuses..
I mean Jesus, do all those bands that hang around Camden trying to get famous do so, so they can live in squats and eat cats for a living?? No they don't! They all want to be fantastically rich, live in palaces and be adored by all and why the hell not??
If anything, I feel that Camden becoming yuppified isn't so much a problem as a question of destiny. I swear to god there's not a more enterprising area in London - there's business every which way you look and everyone's on the hustle - so what better place to build yuppie flats...???
So I say bury Camden and GET THOSE FLATS BUILT NOW!!
 | Currently listening :
Music Has The Right To Children
By Boards of Canada
Release date: By 23 March, 2004 |
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