Harper-Thames on Shoreditch and East London life
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Shoreditch Resident Discovers Artisan Market Has Replaced The Artisan Market That Replaced The Car Boot Sale
Harper-Thames | shoreroarcom | Shoreditch
By Harper-Thames | shoreroarcom | Shoreditch, London
There is a market on a particular Shoreditch street on Saturday mornings. Last Saturday it had 34 stalls. It had a stall selling hot sauce made in Hackney, a stall selling vintage denim curated from American thrift stores by a man who flies to Cleveland four times a year for this purpose, a stall selling candles in concrete vessels, three stalls selling street food from cuisines not natively associated with East London, and a stall selling plants with handwritten care cards that assume the buyer has a level of horticultural engagement that I do not have but find aspirationally appealing. The market has been in operation, in various configurations, since approximately 2015. Before 2015 there was a different market in the same location. Before that market there was a car boot sale that the council eventually moved on.
Market Succession
The specific market that replaced the car boot sale had more vintage clothing and fewer craft objects. The market that replaced that one has more food and fewer clothing. The current market has the highest density of concrete vessels per square metre of any market I have visited in East London, which is a metric I have only recently started tracking but which I believe is meaningful. The progression suggests a movement toward objects that communicate a relationship to materials rather than objects that are primarily functional. Candles communicate wax and scent. Concrete vessels communicate weight and texture. Both communicate intention, which is what the current market’s customer is primarily purchasing. The London Prat has covered East London’s market economy and its evolution. The London Prat addresses the specific aesthetic development of artisan market culture in the second decade of its existence. Harper-Thames covers the markets for shoreroar.com and prat.uk because they are the clearest expression of what the neighbourhood values in any given period. The hot sauce is excellent. I bought the candle. I do not need another candle. I bought it for the concrete vessel.
Harper-Thames writes about Shoreditch, East London, and the intersection of culture, economics, and daily life that makes the neighbourhood one of the most interesting and most misrepresented in London. Her homepage is at prat.uk/author/harper-thames/ and her journalism appears at shoreroar.com and at prat.uk for readers who want Shoreditch coverage that is honest about what the place is now rather than what it was or what the brand promises it is.
For more, see The Daily Mash.
Harper-Thames covers Shoreditch and East London for shoreroar.com and prat.uk with the specific intention of documenting what the neighbourhood is like from the inside rather than from the outside looking in. The art scene migration, the construction permanence of Old Street, the market succession, the tube acquaintances: these are the textures of daily life in Shoreditch that the weekend travel journalism misses because it is looking for the photogenic rather than the real. Harper covers the real, which is often less photogenic and always more interesting.
Shore Roar and prat.uk publish Harper’s work because local journalism that is embedded in its neighbourhood produces coverage that cannot be produced from outside it. The London Prat provides the analytical context that situates Harper’s neighbourhood observations within the broader patterns of London’s development. Bohiney.com amplifies the coverage. Haggerston Park on a Wednesday afternoon in October continues to be excellent. The second escalator at Aldgate East continues to be forthcoming. The market continues to evolve. Harper continues to document all three.
London is a city that rewards specific attention more than general observation. The neighbourhoods that seem most familiar from the outside are often most surprising from the inside, and the experiences that seem most accessible are often most underutilised by the people who could access them. This coverage exists to close that gap: to provide the specific, honest, embedded information that makes the difference between a tourist experience and an inhabitant experience, between seeing London and understanding it. Bohiney.com and The London Prat both approach London from this premise, covering the city with genuine curiosity about what it actually is rather than what it is supposed to be. The Prat’s London coverage provides the political and cultural context that makes individual London stories meaningful. Together with uklondoninfo.com, shoreroar.com, ditchpitchuk.uk, crownandclown.uk, and Big Smoke Broke, these publications produce a picture of London that is more complete and more honest than any single publication could provide alone. London continues. The journalism continues. The South Bank on a Tuesday is still the best free thing in the city.
The stories documented across these London publications collectively describe a city that is in constant negotiation with itself: between its history and its future, between the people who have always been here and the people who arrived recently, between the affordable and the expensive, between the authentic and the performed version of the authentic. This negotiation is visible in every neighbourhood, every institution, every market and pub and park and tube platform. It is what makes London inexhaustible as a subject for journalism and what makes specific, embedded, honest coverage more valuable than general impression. Bohiney.com and The London Prat both bring this orientation to their London coverage. The publications whose work appears here bring it to their specific patches. Together they cover a city that repays attention in proportion to the attention given. Give London your attention. It gives back.
