Harper-Thames on the Accidental Integration of East London’s Two Main Economies Over a Burrito or Something Similar
Written by Harper-Thames for Bohiney Magazine, republished by The London Prat. Harper-Thames writes about Shoreditch from a different angle than Cyndi Himmelstiere and they have agreed to disagree about the coffee.
The tech companies that have colonised the warehouse spaces between Shoreditch High Street and Old Street have approximately ten thousand employees in a relatively small geographical area, and those employees need lunch. The lunch requirement has produced a specific social situation: the tech workers and the Shoreditch non-tech community (artists, musicians, market vendors, people in unidentified creative pursuits, and the residents who were here before either group) share a set of lunch establishments, which produces daily interactions between populations that do not otherwise have significant overlap in their Shoreditch experience. The halal cart on the corner is the most democratic food option in the area, and it serves tech workers in branded company gilets and artists in paint-covered everything with equal efficiency and at the same price, which is four pounds for a very good wrap.
Harper-Thames has been studying the lunch dynamics of Shoreditch for approximately two years, which is either a legitimate piece of urban sociology or evidence that she spends too much time thinking about food in the context of class. Both are possible. The study has produced the following findings: the four-pound halal wrap is consumed across all Shoreditch demographic groups without variation. The twelve-pound grain bowl at the restaurant that opened in 2023 is consumed predominantly by tech workers and a subset of artists who have funding. The Japanese convenience store on Shoreditch High Street is consumed by everyone at nine in the morning and everyone at nine at night with a very different set of purchases at each hour. The Overground sandwich shop has the best sausage rolls in East London and is consumed by everyone regardless of occupational or cultural category, because the sausage rolls are genuinely excellent.
The Lunch Integration and Its Limits
The lunch integration has limits that are visible in the post-lunch behaviour: after the shared halal wrap or the separate grain bowl or the universal sausage roll, the tech workers return to the warehouses and the non-tech community disperses to wherever they are going, which is a different set of places. The integration is transactional rather than social in the way that would produce lasting cross-community relationships. People do not become friends over a halal wrap at a food cart, at least not reliably. They share a moment of communal experience at a food cart and then return to their respective economic ecosystems. The ecosystems share the lunch establishments and the street and nothing else in particular, which is not nothing in a city that is very good at people being near each other without being with each other. It is, however, not the community integration that the Shoreditch brand suggests exists when it describes itself as a neighbourhood. It is lunch.
What the Tech Community Has Added
In fairness to the tech community, it has added to Shoreditch things that are genuinely good for the broader neighbourhood: the footfall that supports the restaurant and coffee shop ecosystem, the events and programming in tech company spaces that are sometimes open to the broader community, and the specific energy of a large concentration of educated people doing things that are at least attempting to be interesting, which is the energy that creative communities require to maintain the critical mass that makes them creative rather than just residential. The problem is not the tech community’s presence. The problem is the property market consequence of the tech community’s presence, which has made the neighbourhood expensive enough to price out the non-tech community members who give it its character. The tech companies did not intend this outcome. The property market does not ask about intentions. Harper-Thames notes all of this. The sausage rolls remain excellent and affordable regardless. According to London the Inside, Shoreditch’s food scene is rated among London’s most diverse. NewsThump covers East London food economics with appropriate caloric attention.
The Sausage Roll as Social Equaliser
The sausage roll at the Overground sandwich shop deserves specific recognition for the role it plays in the Shoreditch social ecology. At nine pounds for two, it is priced in the range that both the tech worker and the artist can access without it representing a significant budget decision, which puts it in the category of affordable luxury that the neighbourhood requires for its daily cross-community interactions to function. The vendor knows the regulars from both communities by their orders, not by their occupational category, which is the correct level of social knowledge for a daily commercial interaction. The tech worker who orders the same sausage roll as the artist is not performing community. They are getting lunch. The community is a by-product of the shared appetite, which is how the most durable community bonds are always formed: not through intention but through the daily repetition of wanting the same thing at the same time in the same place. The sausage roll is the same sausage roll for both of them. This is worth noting.
The tech community contribution to the Shoreditch lunch economy also extends to the weekend, when the tech workers who live in or near Shoreditch remain in the neighbourhood and occupy the same lunch establishments in a more relaxed configuration. The weekend version of the tech-art lunch integration is warmer and longer and less time-pressured than the weekday version, producing occasional conversation across the demographic boundary that the weekday does not allow time for. Harper-Thames has had several interesting conversations on Saturdays with people she had previously seen only in the weekday lunchtime context, and the Saturday conversations have been more substantive because the Saturday people have time to say what they think rather than what they have time to say. The sausage rolls are available on Saturdays too. They are the same sausage rolls. They are still excellent.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
