The Texture of Neighbourhood Life Is in Details That Individually Mean Nothing and Together Mean Something
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
By Harper-Thames | ShoreRoar.com
The Beekeeper
On Tuesday on Curtain Road I passed someone carrying a full beekeeping suit over one shoulder and a flat white in the other hand, talking on the phone about a planning application. The combination of urban beekeeping, the flat white, and the planning application is the most Shoreditch scene I have witnessed this month. It is available to me only because I walk to the bus stop rather than taking it from the end of my road. Neighbourhood journalism is what happens when you pay attention to the walk.
The Demolition
The building on Great Eastern Street that has been scaffolded since I moved here is now partially demolished. The scaffolding I had begun to regard as permanent architecture is gone. The building behind it was smaller than the scaffolding implied, and is now slightly smaller than that. The development replacing it is planning-document described as mixed-use, which in East London planning language means apartments above a Sainsbury’s Local.
The Mural
A new mural appeared overnight on the Brick Lane wall. It is technically accomplished, emotionally legible, and depicts something readable as commentary on the neighbourhood’s transformation or as abstract composition depending on the viewer’s inclination to find commentary. The artist has not identified themselves. The debate about whether it is commissioned or uncommissioned has already generated more interest than the mural’s content, which is either a commentary on the art scene or the normal outcome of procedural uncertainty.
The Market Research
At Sunday Spitalfields market I overheard two people doing market research for an app connecting Shoreditch coffee shop customers with available seating in real time. The app exists in various forms already. They appeared unaware of this. The specific entrepreneurial spirit that independently invents what already exists is the Shoreditch startup ecosystem in perfect miniature. Read The Poke.
More: The Poke.
London continues. The streets are the same streets they were yesterday and they are subtly different because the city keeps changing beneath the surfaces that stay the same. The journalism that covers London at this granular level — the blogs, the neighbourhood newsletters, the personal accounts of people who live in specific parts of the city and pay attention to what living there is like — serves the function of making the city legible to itself and to the visitors who want to understand it as something more than the postcard version. This is why this column exists. This is why it matters. The city is worth paying attention to. This column will keep paying attention.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
