The South end

Brixton - a world journey on the Victoria line

Crowdy, noisy, multi-cultural and vibrant. This is Brixton and I love it. I would never have moved here from Surrey if it hadn’t been for friends who settled here and during my frequent visits I fell in love with the place. I fell in love with the resturants, and the clubs, and the corner sofas for sale in the market, but I also fell in love with the people who are in love with the place - it’s a truism that people who live in Brixton truly love Brixton. There’s a real community feel, a defensiveness and pride.
It’s also a happening place. As I write, there’s a County Show in the awesomely spacious Brockwell Park (with it’s pools and hidden gardens, and the best lido in the country) an art show at the end of the road. Paintings of every size and sort, hung onto railings and gates and trees, the annual Josephine Avenue art fair, rivaling anything you’d find in Paris. For weeks before the event, the council deliver huge skips so residents can trim the lush greenery that marks the leafy street as one of London’s finest. The gorgeous architecture harks back to a more genteel era, and is vibrantly overlaid with sounds of reggae and steel drums and samba emanating from the now many flats. You can almost always hear music in Brixton. It’s communal and celebrated and loud.
Add to the sounds the delicious smells. Incense pouring from the stand that is always by the station. Smoke pouring from the jerk chicken shacks, the waft of Caribbean food, the market brimming with fruit and fish. OK, in hot weather the fish isn’t always the best smell. But it’s alive. The bustle, the buses, the market stalls, the calling, the bursts of music, the laughter, the costumes and the fancy clothes, the gospel (always someone preaching the gospel) and high fives and chatter. Brixton, for me is a place for the senses.
Something strange has happened since I got here. I used to yearn to travel - epic and expensive journeys to places with sounds and smells and noise and action, diversity and differences. But oddly, I no longer yearn to escape. Because not only is Brixton home, for me is the world journey with the smallest carbon footprint. Every sensual experience I’ll ever need, neatly the end of the Victoria line.

Brixton Academy

Beginning life as a cinema and theatre in 1929, Brixton Academy has become the leading venue in South London to see a live act. I say live act rather than band, because the place does not cater exclusively for bands.

That said, if you do want to see a band, I would say that the Academy is the place to see your favourite act. I’m not too sure why it is...is it that the bar is always rammed? Is it that the place retains many of its original features? Is it because the acoustics seem very good? Or is it because, at capacity, it only holds just short of 5,000 people which gives the Academy an air of intimacy so often lost in larger venues? Big names play here and it’s a much better place to see bands rather than Wembley for instance. Even at the back of the Academy you can still see the stage. Yes, you might have to do a bit of bobbing and weaving around that 6 and a half foot bloke who’s just decided to come and stand right in front of you, (Why does that always happen?) but for the most part you will still be able to see, at least some of the time.

Afterwards, there’s the obligatory scramble for the door, past the street vendors with shabby looking exhibition stands (a blanket laid out on the street) selling dodgy t-shirts and posters (actually, not always that dodgy) and as you and the rest of the happy throng wend your way to Brixton tube talking about how good your favourite band were, you feel like you’re a part of something important, and I like to think that the Academy itself is partly responsible for that warm, fuzzy feeling you’ve got as you go and get yourself a seat on the tube.

The evolution of East London

With the collapse of London’s docks in the latter part of the twentieth century, it seemed that the East End of the city had finally bitten the dust.  After weathering floods, poverty and the blitz, time it seemed, had been called on East London.  in the 1980’s vast swathes of riverside were derelict, and were nothing more than a memory of a bygone age.

But no one has seemed to tell the inhabitants of this area.  Along with plenty of no-nonsense government freewheeling, today the focus of the capital seems to be very much heading out towards the east.  New projects are being completed all the time, the most evident of which, the Canary Wharf complex, stands as a testament to the virility of London’s east.  More new businesses start up in this part of the city than anywhere else in the UK.  East London has become a cultural hub with artists joining capitalists in the regeneration of the area.  The East End is also the focus of London’s 2012 Olympics, which will centre around the River Lea that runs through East London.  It seems that it has never been this god for the East End (Exspecaily if you are looking to sell your house).

In fact, East London is merely following what has always been a continuing feature of its development.  Overspill.  From Medieval times, East London has served as the area where London has expanded industrially.  Dirty industries moved beyond the city walls as is evidenced today by the existence (still) of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, suppliers of the famed Big Ben in the Houses of Parliament and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.  It was the same for London’s docks.  As the original Pool of London downstream of London Bridge became too crowded, the ships moved to newly open docks on the marshes to the east of the city.  Today, it is the overspill of the financial industry.  Housing is also now part of the overspill with key areas such as Stratford, the Royal Docks and Dagenham acting as nodes of new residences.  The artist themselves are an overspill from the crowded West End.  Forced out by high prices they have found new homes and reinvigorated themselves within the cultural mix of the city.

The East of London is booming and is intricately tied to the city’s development as a whole.  It has always served as the area in which the Capital has been able to grow and eventually position itself as a part of the World Economy.  What will the future hold?  Well, after a wander round the East End, some may say that the future has already arrived.