Please log in or register. Registered visitors get fewer ads.
Forum index | Previous Thread | Next thread
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... 09:39 - May 25 with 2886 views18StoneOfHoop

... being pulled down.'
Very good April 8th 2015 New Statesman article by Nicholas Lezard.



A trip back to Shepherds Bush, where the children and their mother still have their home. Let us leave aside for the moment all considerations of poignancy and regret at not being with them every day for the past seven and a half years. Let’s just consider the area itself.

For those of you outside London: Shepherds (there are variant spellings with an apostrophe) Bush is where you go when you roll down the hill westwards from swanky Notting Hill and Holland Park. Historically, Notting Hill was an area with a high African and Caribbean (mainly Caribbean) population, also attractive to arty people. This hasn’t been the case for 20, 30 years, although Ladbroke Grove, which cuts through it north-south, still retains some interesting mixes. Holland Park, though, is and always has been swanky.

But at the Shepherds Bush roundabout, everything changes. You move from Zone 1 to Zone 2 of the Tube; from 020 7 phone numbers to 020 8. And socially and psychically, you are in another world. Here, basically, is where ordinary people live. Or used to. It has two major arteries, running east-west: the Uxbridge Road and the Goldhawk Road. These are honestly shabby streets: that is, they’re not going to be appearing on any chocolate boxes, but they have resisted the invasion of the chain shops that make every other town, or part of a city, look identical. It’s as if all the scouts took one look and thought, “Screw this: let’s try somewhere else.”

I have always been pleased at the way gentrification has failed to change the character of the neighbourhood: and, thanks to the nature of ribbon development, as I believe it’s called, it always would fail. (The residential streets between the two roads tell another story, though. But the thought of wealthy occupants holding their noses or averting their eyes as they pass the kebab shops and pound stores on their way to and from work is a consoling one.)

Only now, the rules, I see, have been changed. It’s as if the invisible hand of the most rapacious capitalism has decided that if it can’t change the area organically, it’ll just knock it down and put up another one in its stead.

So far the Uxbridge Road remains pretty much the same. But the Goldhawk Road — where, incidentally, I was born — is simply being wiped out. It is having its blood supply cut off. Long stretches of it have been knocked down, and in the gaps are cranes building (you guessed it) luxury flats. This means also that any businesses on either side of these gaps have gone, along with their customers. You run a newsagent that survives on a slim margin selling sweets and papers and fags; or you run a garage that also serves as a corner shop for those who don’t, can’t or won’t go to the big Tesco a mile and a half away; your customers go, and then so does your margin. Boom, you’re out of business and no one even needs to make a compulsory purchase order.

So now the air is thick with cement dust; and it is barren, lifeless. So, too, will it remain when the apartments are built: for even if they are lived in, which is a long shot, because these places are mainly bought as investments, the people in them will hardly be nipping out to the fag shop for a bag of Monster Munch and a pack of green Rizlas at any point in their lives.

Also due to be knocked down is the market, which runs between the two main roads at their eastern end. A little chaotic, but also picturesque; at the Goldhawk end there was a small sign proclaiming that the yard behind it belonged to Albert Steptoe, scrap merchant. Next to that is one of London’s last two eel, pie and mash restaurants. By the station is a watch repairer whose frontage suggests occupancy of at least a century.






All these are to be knocked down. It was, of course, all sold off by a Tory council. And I wonder: why do they call themselves “Conservatives”? They conserve nothing, except perhaps an attitude: a very simple, reductive attitude that says the only important thing is money, and the only important people are those who have or crave it. Apart from that they are like locusts. Objections to what they do are laughed off as sentimental or scorned as “anti-business”. Still, where the pro-business spirit resides in killing off small businesses, some of which have been around for generations, escapes me. And the thought that there may well be five more years of this virus, in only notionally human form, makes me want to cry.




[Post edited 25 May 2015 9:59]

'I'm 18 with a bullet.Got my finger on the trigger,I'm gonna pull it.." Love,Peace and Fook Chelski! More like 20StoneOfHoop now. Let's face it I'm not getting any thinner. Pass the cake and pies please.

2
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 10:42 - May 25 with 2796 viewsTheBlob

But that's how London has always been.You dig down a little way and you find evidence of other settlements dating back to pre Roman times.I'm afraid you can't stand still and I'm sure the likes of Pepys and Evelyn would be shedding a tear over the march of Victorian modernity.
Mr.Hilter did his best to level the place.Tempus don't arf fugit.

Poll: So how was the season for you?

0
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 11:59 - May 25 with 2708 views18StoneOfHoop

'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 10:42 - May 25 by TheBlob

But that's how London has always been.You dig down a little way and you find evidence of other settlements dating back to pre Roman times.I'm afraid you can't stand still and I'm sure the likes of Pepys and Evelyn would be shedding a tear over the march of Victorian modernity.
Mr.Hilter did his best to level the place.Tempus don't arf fugit.


Yes of course Blob everything is constantly changing and we're in a constant state of flux and we humans have to adapt and survive and I'm no ultra mad across-the-board unrealistic Luddite BUT please forgive some bitter sentimentality at the current Tory aided extraordinary pace of property development.Look at how right now 4 blinding markets are being fooked over. The end of Berwick Street Soho market, in the Tory flagship council of Westminster,currently in process of being turned into a sterile Hotel. Several long-standing Brixton market railway arch businesses about to go. SB market - as said above - gonna be smartened and sterilised.
Portobello to be cleansed,pedestrianised and all character and history ripped out and a modish 10 a penny chrome and glass shoe box restaurant monstrous carbuncle erected, replacing the canopy You're killing off what packs the place out with tourists anyway some down-at-heel shabby charm not everything antiseptic,shining and bright and new - FFS killing the USP golden goose egg that brings the international punters in.

What do you prefer,canopy or shoebox?




I know you got poetry in your soul Blob, Notting Hill boy GK Chesterton would surely not be happy at these cursed developments and would be wielding his quill and artistry protesting in verse and don't forget that the old school conservative poet laureat John Betjeman actually successfully campaigned for some important London architectural jewel landmarks being retained not wantonly desecrated or torn down in the name of progress and moolah. Of course we canna stand still BUT.... <howl!>

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x276px6_david-cameron-eminem-rap-cameron-s-conf
[Post edited 25 May 2015 18:40]

'I'm 18 with a bullet.Got my finger on the trigger,I'm gonna pull it.." Love,Peace and Fook Chelski! More like 20StoneOfHoop now. Let's face it I'm not getting any thinner. Pass the cake and pies please.

0
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 12:47 - May 25 with 2643 viewsNov77

Stupid to suggest this is only happening because it's a Tory council, I live in a labour borough and it's exactly the same, nothing but cranes and high rises going up. 'Luxury lifestyle apartments' they call them, they used to be referred to as flats.

Went past the old Guinness site recently, where I used to go and watch kevin gallen playing in the youth team, all gone, nothing but apartment blocks there now.

Poll: December goal of the month - vote for your favourite R's goal during December

0
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 12:58 - May 25 with 2617 viewskensalriser

Nice piece by Lezard but he should get his facts right - zone 1 ends at NHG, Holland Park is already in zone 2.

The Lane is already a wretched shadow of its former glories. I still shop there most weekends as I have done since the 80s, but the market is dying a slow and agonising death.

I wonder why so many tourists still flock there. What is there to see?

Poll: QPR to finish 7th or Brentford to drop out of the top 6?

0
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 13:36 - May 25 with 2570 viewsHollowayRanger

not only is the hospital I was born in gone
but so is my first house as a baby
in fact the whole street no longer exists


Listen to the band play!
Poll: How much will you pay for adult season ticket next season if in championship

0
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 13:42 - May 25 with 2565 viewsbatmanhoop

it seems to be happening everywhere. The population grows, more housing is required, can't blame that solely on the tories
0
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 13:42 - May 25 with 2565 viewsjohncharles

Around West Ealing people are already pointing out the terraced houses WITHOUT loft extensions.

Strong and stable my arse.

0
'A lament for the place where I was born: it can't be gentrified so it's ... on 14:05 - May 25 with 2517 viewsHoop_Du_Jour

If Labour hadn't left the border open for 13 c0ckin' years we wouldn't need all this new bleedin' housing would we!
-1
About Us Contact Us Terms & Conditions Privacy Cookies Advertising
© FansNetwork 2024