Camden?

I bet they cleaned away the bloke with the zither like they cleaned away all the good (i.e. affordable) market stalls.

(delete the good mixer. Never went there)

Man, they freaked me out the first time I was there because they were actually even more aggressive than the Lower East Side "CRACK OR SMACK CRACK OR SMACK" brigade.

x-post. Awww, the Good Mixer. We used to go there to gawk at pop stars. I stopped going there the day that we were the most famous people in there. Sigh.

Notting Hill Carnival one time:

Bloke with a tray full of little bags: "PEANUTS! PEANUTS! hash PEANUTS!"

good magic mushrooms, though. and i like the dude who sells fresh squeezed OJ for £1 (sometimes 2 bottles for £1 if you catch him on a good day!)

that 'cyberdog' place freaks me out, but the place across from it has some good electronic/trance/chill CDs (you can preview any CD), and a cafe upstairs, if you're into that sort of thing (it's a bit too much of the patchouli and big bead necklace crowd for me)

Didn't see him for a while, but definitely playing there about six weeks ago.

(Sorry, it's Charlie's fault.)

xpost

Where do you live Stevem? I only moved to London like a fortnight ago.

a)chased
b)threatened at knifepoint
c)mugged

several times there and yet IT'S ALL GOOD between us.

camden = I live in Berkeley, so I don't need to go there. I always do for some reason though.

Berkeley also=less BITTER crazies

x-post: Adam, don't get me wrong, The Good Mixer was brilliant for years and years, for me, from the Menswear days till about 2000 I'd say.

I actually found myself sat in the Good Mixer a long time ago talking to Chris (pre Menswear) and he was telling me about his band and I was thinking "not another of THESE conversations".

And then they went on to change the world as we know it.

On the contrary he definitely IS there, on Sundays anyway, not far from the entrance near the railway bridge

When I lived in Mornington Terrace (it's in the bit south of Parkway and west of the High Street with lots of Georgian/Regency brick housing stock) there were FANTASTIC hidden things: the Portugese corner shop with pasteis de nata, ham and good bread; the leafiness, the Alan Bennett sightings, not to mention every Britpop cliché being true, right down to Stephen Duffy (lovely man, honest) and Menswear queuing to get their music papers from the station kiosk every Tuesday just like their press officers.

My good Camden bits: the Stables (although the days of the £3 ski sweater are LONG GONE); Primrose Hill when starspotting there meant Kingsley Amis and NOT Jude Law, the secret Greek shops on Pratt Street and suchlike, every gig I ever saw at the Falcon, the goods yard between the railway bridges where the tek-tek-tekno parties always were, my friend Laurence who lived on Bayham Street, the Vietnamese egg roll stand on Sunday markets, the Monarch when the Riot Grrrls made it their local, the first year of Blow Up, Mario's Cafe, the 168 and the C2, walking the canal from bridge to Primrose Hill. And awwwww the old indie cinema where Anjali from the Voodoo Queens worked.

Bad Camden bits: those fucking styrofoam tableaux of large boots bolted on to shitty shoe stores on Chalk Farm Road, the crackheads, getting busses on Camden Road.

a. are the luckiest person ever
b. only went twice

the few times little provincial me went to the falcon i quite enjoyed it, but most of the bands were rub ;)

I really don't think I went there much after about 1995.

The thing about the bolted on things is the whole place looks bolted on, bolted on to old industrial buildings.

I think part of me would like the JAZZ CAFE.

What's the canal like the other way, towards the Thames? It frightens me, but perhaps it shouldn't.

I suppose the zoo bit is vaguely interesting, although it would be better if there were crocodiles and hippos in the canal itself. As it is, you just get a sense of misery behind the bushes.

From Vicky Park to Limehouse, OK, there are some grim bits, but I have walked it, simply as a matter of honour. Except there was a stupid posh housing development preventing me from actually getting all the way through to the Thames.

there are also parts where the local toughs throw things at you. i once had a shopping trolley aimed at me, but fortunately it missed by some distance. it's like being in a western. there are no crocodiles, but i once tried to steal a gnu.

(That said, one day I will buy a canal boat.)

I just don't want to go through the tunnel cause it's so skinny and scary and I think my legs would get tired "walking" it through.

crossing london on a narrowboat is something i can't recommend highly enough. if you get the timing right (tidally), you can go on the thames from limehouse to brentford. this is also amazing.

I mean, sure, dozens of them used to die each year doing it, but if I'm going canal boating, I'm doing it authentically!

I really don't think I went there much after about 1995.

Suzy, there is no doubt that I was at some of these as well! This is my early 90s to a tee!

Pete - I had my London leaving party at MONKEY CHEWS! I DJ'ed an all hip hop set which all my friends clearly found boring but the "local toughs" in the bar above LOVED!

Still my favourite place on earth, of course.

ooh, good sainsburys.

one of the few places that still feels victorian

I also have friends who live right by Mornington Crescent.

(PJ Miller was right about the Spread Eagle - even though it is now a completely different pub, it's still likeable)

In a way I can see the 43-year-old men with 'The Exploited' painted on their leather jackets as Dickensian. They are like modern day characters from 'Mayhew's London'. In 'Mayhew's London' it would be an old one-legged Waterloo veteran selling something on the street. His reference points would have been of no interest to most of the bright young things of the 1850s. Same with the washed-up Exploited guys.

BUT.. you say it has become MORE Dickensian in recent years. What do you mean by that exactly?

as for the second, i think i mean its become more dickensian in the last couple of years than...in the 90s say, so only more so, in context, if you see what i mean (perhaps ebcause camden was fashionable in the 90s, but has lost that to shoreditch over the last 7-8 years

(or, its stuttering and uneven gentrification isn't really taking place)

I don't know much about Hampstead/Highgate and Chelsea.. how they became what they are, ie almost exclusively rich areas.

i agree that camden has always been raffish, but, one of the complaints about gentrification is its removal of such. i mean, hoxton or hackneys fashionability isnt genteel either

i think whats interesting about camden is, the usual gentrifiers (housebuyers) dont seem to act in camden, the buying up of houses in stoke newington, in hackney, in islington, of flats in hoxton, spitalfields, whitechapel, just doesn't seem to happen in camden. who buys in camden town??? so camdens population ends up being a weird maelstrom of fringe characters

of course, only a stones throw to primrose hill, and its a different story.

I would say, firstly, that the houses are too expensive (lots of very large early-to-mid 19th century houses around in Primrose Hill and off Camden Road and so on) for the younger buyers. Plus, as we've been saying, Camden as a district just doesn't have that desirable quality that those buyers are looking for. I suppose it would seem essentially passé to them.

tangentially related, why does brixton retain the same amount of fashionability? it seems to have found a mean, it doesnt get more or less fashionable. in its own way, it just is. whereas camden has seen its trendyness seep away down the northern line to old st over the last decade (when did camden become usurped by hoxton? 1996?)

Another thing with Camden is that it was very closely linked with Britpop and when that fizzled out so perhaps did a lot of Camden's appeal.

Go back in the streets behind Parkway or near the ex-Falcon and you're in a different part of the world, though - I loved it so much I didn't mind the inevitable garden-flat burglary.

There's also maybe a bit of conflation between fashionability and gentrification going on here - are the two really that linked? What made people suddenly start buying up in Clapham and opening Thai restaurants and stuff? I think it's less an attachment to a scene (Shoreditch is a bit of an anomaly in that matter) and more the fact that there was some great housing stock going cheap because of the area's reputation. Brixton (which is definitely gentrifying) has both. So the next place to go down that route could well be Peckham or Camberwell.

Another area to throw into the mix here is New Cross, which has been full of art students for decades longer than Shoreditch and seems to stubbornly resist all attempts at gentrification, even now.

As I said earlier, Camden had some middle class hippy/alternative things going on from the early 1970s. Perhaps this originally stemmed from the availability in the late 1960s of properties suitable for squatting.

--

What made people suddenly start buying up in Clapham and opening Thai restaurants and stuff?

They didn't 'suddenly' start doing it. Gentrification of Clapham has been going on steadily since the 1970s. As to why it began then - there was a move south out of Chelsea and Kensington. First Battersea, then 'nextdoor' - Clapham. Yes, the spur was partly cheaper housing but also proximity to **more fashionable** areas that were beyond the financial reach of those concerned.

I have also witnessed:

full on broken bottles in faces bar fight (in that kebab place in Chalk Farm)
teenage youths filling evian bottles full of petrol at Texaco station
Dodgy guy carrying a giant saw in a sports bag
Dismembered body being fished out of the Lock by police (this was in the papers)
I have also had two friends accidentally sit on discarded needles during drug deals in Camden!

Getting old.

its why you came in the first place. you might move on, you might be an inveterate lag, but camden will always be camden

as a hypochondriac this is like my worst nightmare

http://www.camdenlock.connectfree.co.uk/ballroomhistory.htm

Camden Town as an artists' colony ('The Camden Town Group'); also see the other pages there for a chronology of such artists' colonies in London:

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/MOLsite/exhibits/creative/artistloc/1920.html

Also interesting:

http://www.johnbarber.com/camden.html

looks alright to me

http://static.flickr.com/24/57538660_e7f894f99b_o.jpg

I saw him yesterday. He was singing Ticket To Ride. I was shopping for a batik wall hanging thing for my mum for Christmas.

full on broken bottles in faces bar fight (in that kebab place in Chalk Farm)

I think this is probably the same place where I saw someone run in and pepper spray one of the guys behind the counter, only to be chased out by two others, one of whom was waving those giant knives they use to cut the kebab meat.

her 'sensible' friend was ever weirder

im kind of baffled, shes a great kisser though

camden is, still, the weirdest place ever

nevertheless, perhaps i would be happier, if i didn't go to camden

i was thinking about albany st, and how understated it is, zipping up between gt portland, and parkway, it feels a bit like 1961. its a long street, and it never quite feels like camden, it doesn't really feel like anywhere. i suppose it is 'regents park', though the park is hidden from view for most of its length.

one of the few areas of london in which there still seems to be a smog of the 30s, and earlier, but i'm not really sure why

it is of course, the a4201, which, in its more southerly half, becomes regents st

at the top half of albany st, there is a sign to camden town and holloway, and it seems strange to see a sign to holloway, on this side of camden, even though it is eminently sensible, as this is the start of the a503

it's odd having the barracks there, the police with uzis. the bottom end is pretty workaday, but all those lanes at the top, a weird glitch in geography.

the map says albany street. but i still have a strong feeling that it might not be so.

but now i have realized my mistake.

albany -- never 'the' albany -- is a super-exlusive apartment block nr picadilly, and this film director must have lived there.

i am very glad that this thread has given me this knowledge, if only via elimination!!

but there is a place called albany, and it'd be bloody handy to live there.

no. no. the american camden is the worst place in america (though east st louis comes close).

camden, maine, looks delightful

lets have it again, its summer!

the american camden, worst place in america

Click on "Enter Camden, NJ Database." There's your real Camden.

woah, thats a pretty real lighthouse, thats probably saved a few lives over the years, that could be a pretty dangerous stretch of coast!

its almost a pity that there arent threads for these other camdens! i think it'd be pretty great if there was a thread for this camden, nj, that is very real

something like... this, for instance

yes, but what about Camden?

woah, weird!

h8 camden

otm

Awful place.

Can't walk along the street without Jonathan Miller trying to sell you hash or Alan Bennett begging for change

First time I visited London and someone took me there I thought it was great but when I actually lived in London I grew to h8 it. a lot.

shit place, great borough

I get kind of defensive when people hate on Camden, it's my manor. It is objectively a bit shit though. Kentish Town is better.

Camden Market's great - but best reached by walking across Regents Park and along the canal. The tube station and the high street can be too much of an ordeal.

Absolutely. Parking is not that bad there, and it's a nice stroll along.

I used to park fairly regularly in Camden itself, before the traffic wardens went nazi.

One place was in one residential street, that had spaces outside all the houses, there was always the same place that had no car parked, so I used that one.

Years later, found out it was Noel Gallagher's.

I sort of love Camden forever - I burnt out on it for a while (after spending my entire teenagerhood there, every weekend), but it's actually a total dream of a place, this one fraction of London where it has always been and will always be the nineties.

Friend of mine used to work in Camden (in the Market actually), never used to refer to it as Camden though, he always just called it "The Hellhole"

it's changed since the 90s (which were awesome) tho. less grebby. super-expensive. i mean that kinda neutrally.

i like that it's easy to get to (depending on where you're coming from).

I'm hard pressed to think of a decent pub in Camden that isn't the Crown and Goose. The Edinburgh Castle's alright for summer drinking.

I made the mistake of trying to walk from Chalk Farm to Mornington Crescent the other month. On a Saturday afteroon. Fucking shithole.

The Crown & Goose is the only good pub in Camden. It's lovely though, good for pre-gig food and booze.

The Enterprise is OK... 'cept that's prob'ly Chalk Farm

Yeah, I quite like The Enterprise. Less so after the rumour that it was owned by Suggs turned out not to be true.

Have I been in the Crown & Goose, I wonder? No doubt!

Also I have a soft spot for Quinns, although it can be a bit depressing.

Been in it once I think, didn't like it

Hawley Arms was pretty OK last time I went?

I used to think that Camden had changed since the nineties but I decided that that wasn't the point - a lot of the changes that had been made (eg the rebuilding of the bit between the east yard and stables) actually made it more nineties, not less. It is steadily circling around the perfection of itself.

Hawley Arms was pretty OK last time I went?

woah yikes. now i see where ur coming from.

unless "last time" was like 1993 i guess

it was like 2002, admittedly.

ah. honestly do think the area's changed, post-winehouse era.

but you might be right that change is only an intensification

2 90s 4 u

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/amy-winehouse-and-the-hawley-arms-mob-the-home-of-the-camden-caners-462187.html

does the met bar really still exist?

Occasionally drank in the Hawley Arms, never liked it much, I remember seeing Amy W. in the Lock Tavern a lot - before she was famous

I still loves ya Camden.

I don't go there much though tbh. If I do it's usually just for a gig at the Underworld.

But I don't even hate the World's End which may indicate I am too easily pleased wrt drinking establishments.

Actually it can't have been 2002, 2002-4 were my 'never going to camden again' years. Maybe 2005? Whatever, it was a dark quiet pub with friendly enough bar staff and decent beer, that I hadn't drunk in as an underage, which is about all I ever want in a Camden pub.

Anyway. I am curious about the effect the 'winehouse era' has had on camden that the 'britpop era' did not have?

i think the media environment is kinda more relentless now. plus the britpop stars weren't (iirc) as "accessible" / openly effed up as la winehouse

but the whole rhetoric around camden in 95 was "you cannot go anywhere without bumping into a member of menswear"? (i remember this because it was not, in my experience, actually true. perhaps because i was 12.)

yeah, im not saying it's *totally* different, but yer meanswears were never on the front pages of the tabloids etc, not being internationally famous and successful like winehouse.

i guess damon albarn probably had photogs following him a *bit* back then, but even then not on a doherty/winehouse level.

The whole rhetoric around Camden in 2010 is "you cannot go anywhere without bumping into a member of menswear asking you is you have any spare change"

how would anyone know what menswear look like??

The only indie guy I saw in Camden in the 90s was Brian Molko. My friend bummed a cigarette off him and he seemed extremely pleasant.