Clapham and its neighbours

It is often said that Clapham is one of those areas of London that you either love or loathe. Clapham has its fair share of haters and lovers and I suspect there are more of the former than the latter. The areas boundaries are not fully defined. There are reasons for that. This was the first area south of the river to undergo intensive gentrification and for a long time served as the gold standard for gentrification particularly for its neighbours. Moreover, North Londoners who dare to venture south of the river do not often go beyond Waterloo and Clapham South, as the rest of South London's tube-less terrain, to this day, remains an utter mystery to most people.

Twenty or thrity years ago places near Clapham were either branded as Clapham or the new Clapham or next Clapham. Such areas included the now smugly gentrified post codes of Battersea (SW11) and Balham (SW12). There was always a loathing admiration for Clapham and a certain inferiority complex in neighbouring areas which persists to this day regardless of the level of gentrification already achieved in those areas. For one, history has a key role to play but so does geography. Geographically Clapham Common and its immediate environs sits proudly at the top of a hill (Balham Hill) with a flat top sometimes referred to in old texts as 'The Clapham Plateau'.

In the old days people who lived in Clapham were considered to live up the hill by those living in the poorer surrounding neighbourhoods. Historically, Clapham was a very wealthy area, an out-of-town village resort for London's upper class. People from that class had migrated there at one point, to get away from the plague in inner London. Clapham's status was however, lost with the coming of the railways and the demolition of many of its fine historical villas and replacement with Victorian terraces and semis.

The area was also transformed into a commuter suburb by the coming of the London Underground, thus cementing it's status as a dormitory town for white collar City workers and civil servants thus giving rise to its most famous term 'Man on the Clapham Omnibus' or ordinary middle class man. Nevertheless the prestige of Clapham's faded historical grandeur still hangs over the area for most Londoners and Brits.

There are still many vestiges of history left in the area, including its forward looking left leaning activism drawn from its famous anti-slavery and anti poverty movement - the Clapham Sect led by William Wilberforce. In addition, the area, particulalry the Old Town still hosts some of the oldest surviving buildings in South London with a number of blue plaques.

It is often said today that Clapham divides opinions and that you either loathe or love the area. Claphamification is a term its once aspirational but now gentrified neighbours use to describe Clapham's encroachment on their identity. Once the by-word for youthful trendiness, coolness and hipness that cachet was first absorbed by Battersea, then Balham and laterly Brixton. The more like Clapham these areas have become the more they have sought to separate and define their identity from Claphamification.

First was Battersea which sought to disentangle itself from being Clapham's poorer industrial neighbour by becoming a Chelsea spillover or 'South Chelsea'. This cachet has stood the test of time as the once very poor Battersea area has been successfully transformed by Wandsworth Council in to a wealthy Class AB populated enclave, albeit at a price. Battersea's waterfront remains a prime victim of an over-ambitious Council's development, with its ghastly mix of prefab luxury high rise apartment blocks, that aesthetically may not stand the test of time but instead, will be seen as a testament to Wandsworth Council's over-development of it's Thames waterfront done in a bid to outdo it's wealthier neighbours. Battersea's strongest points are it's proximity to Chelsea and the very lovely Battersea Park. It's weakness - it's post industrial blight, ugly waterfront and its inhabitants forever looking across the river and wishing they could afford to live in Chelsea or Fulham.

Balham on the other hand has had a slow rise to fame, blessed with beautiful Edwardian gems and quiet streets radiating off Clapham, Tooting and Wandsworth Commons, this area which was once a thoroughly run down working class/Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood untill the late nineties, has slowly but successfully become the alternative to Clapham's raucous lifestyle. Today, Balham completes the Clapham-Wandsworth-Balham triumvirate of what is today known as Nappy-Valley. An area where young well educated white British couples from the provinces go to breed like penguins (i.e. after a spell of debauched-living in places like Clapham) before moving on to live somewhere nearer where they originally came from after selling their Clapham, Balham or Wandsworth homes for a handsome profit. Balham's strongest points are its Edwardian gems and its proximity to Clapham, for which it has benefitted as a gentrified alternative. Its weak points - being in Zone 3 and forever being refered to as cheaper than Clapham.

Brixton is an entirely different kettle of fish. Up till 2010 it was a crime and drug ridden no-go area for respectable middle class Londoners and incomers but was a solid and proud neighbourhood in it's own right with its own left-leaning community-active middle and working classes. Four years on, and every young upstart wants to live near Brixton's once infamous Market. The transformation of Brixton Village, one of its markets, into a street-foodie destination has led to the discovery of Brixton as a hip destination particularly for those priced out of Clapham's banker-ridden streets. The area is now being paraded as an alternative Shoreditch and it's once cheap terraces are now rivalling those of Clapham North in price. Brixton's strongest points include being at one end of the Victoria line, having Brixton Market and Brixton Academy and access to drugs, its weakest points are its reputation for drugs, being on a crime and social unrest faultline and being a strong candidate for a property bubble bust.

Stockwell, beautiful but council estate-blighted Stockwell remains caught inbetween the devil and the deep blue sea. The devil being Vauxhall and the deep blue sea being Clapham. Without a specific postcode of its own, Stockwell's identity remains entwined with that of its neighbours notably Clapham, Brixton and Vauxhall. People who live in its SW4 end can claim to live in either Clapham or Stockwell depending on proximity to Stockwell tube station, those who live nearer to the Brixton end of Stockwell road can now claim to live in cool Brixton, while most of north Stockwell's inhabitants will often hold on to the Vauxhall Zone 1 cachet and that cachet will become all the more important as the transformation of Nine Elms into a super hub for foreign embassies and overseas wealth comes into being. Stockwell's strongest points are the beautiful crescents and squares that lie beyond its central facade of Council estates and the Victoria and Northern line, its weakest points are its Council Estates and being caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Food and the City: Eating London

London is reputed to have the highest concentration of top notch restaurants in the world aside from New York. It also happens that the whole world lives in London or at least gravitates here at some point or the other. In any case the restaurant and eating scene has exploded a million fold over the last decade and a half, with all sorts of culinary houses springing up in the most unlikely of places including pop-up loos and in people's one-bed city flats. It helps that Gemini London, with it's mercurial penchant for constant re-invention, provides a fertile ground for a vibrant and somewhat quirky restaurant culture - a here today gone tomorrow foodie paradise of sorts. Thing is if you're not there today, it could be gone tomorrow.

There are 12 broad categories of London restaurants

Posh
Upmarket
Celebrity chef
Quality independents
Normal - ersatz
Ethnic-hip
Generic-ethnic
Gutter-hip
Gutter-trash
Roadside
Cafes
Dirt-bag outlets

Posh - Regardless of quality - I would lump all the key restaurants of Mayfair, Kensington, Knightsbridge, St James Park, Chelsea and Holland Park - in this category. We are talking about Le Gavroche, The Ivy, The Dorchester, the Wolsley, The Mandarin Oriental etc and other banal posh joints good or bad.

Frequenters - The super-wealthy and rich - notably Russian and Ukrainian Oligarchs and their mistresses, American Bankers, European and Arabian royalty, film stars, formula one drivers, premier league footballers and their partners, wealthy business moguls, senior members of the diplomatic corps, wealthy and established popstars rather than wannabe pop-ettes whose idea of eating posh is the Hackney Murder Mile, Brixton Village or under the Peckham Rye railway arches.

Upmarket - well watered and and good quality middle of the road British nosh, experimental cuisine a-la Heston Blumenthal or specialising in notable retakes of foreign cuisines.These restaurants can be found in historically or genuinely upmarket areas, notably Richmond, Hampstead, Barnes, St Johnswood, Marylebone, Islington/Barnsbury, Little Venice, Highgate, Wimbledon Village, Clapham, Wandsworth and Notting Hill

Frequenters - mainly wealthy Brits and Continentals (mostly bankers, glitteratis and politicals) who either can't afford the posh places or won't be caught dead in them

Celebrity - this includes good or bad restaurants owned by celebrity chefs - the Jamie Olivers, Tom Aikens and Gordon Ramseys of this world. They can be found anywhere but you will find them mostly in the Royal Borough, Chiswick and Fulham and in pretend-upmarket neighbourhoods in Wandsworth (namely Battersea, Balham and Wandsworth to be precise). A few can be found in the hip-trash enclaves of Hackney notably Dalston and Shoreditch.

Frequenters - the status-anxiety ridden South and West London yummy mummies of Wandsworth, Balham, Battersea, Fulham and Chiswick - these women and their spouses and sprogs often take to these celebrity joints in a desperate bid to flaunt their middle class credentials in the face of the local chavs whom they live amongst.

Quality independents - these are good sometimes reputable independent one-off restaurants, usually with a steady stream of professional or artistic clientele - found mainly in traditionally affluent or established gentrified areas - notably Richmond, Barnes, Putney, Clapham, Kew, Dulwich, Islington, Camden, Soho, Marylebone, Chiswick, Notting Hill, Hampstead, Muswell Hill, Highgate, Finchley, Stoke Newington, Blackheath, Greenwich and Crouch End

Frequenters - affluent professionals and local 'gentry'

Normal-ersatz - these are the usual bog-standard chains some good some bad, they are usually too chainy to be considered upmarket anywhere in central London otherwise they would qualify as upmarket if you happened to live between zones 3 and 6 or in the outer London deserts of Croydon and Bromley . Here we are talking about the Zizzis, Stradas, Prezzos, Cafe Rouges and Wagamamas of this world.

Frequenters - beer bellied men and their frumpy suburban wives and kids and ex-urban penguins and seals stuck in relatively affluent but mundane breeding grounds such as Twickenham, Teddington, Kingston, Bromley, Beckenham, Cockfosters, Purley, Wanstead, Southgate or Ealing. What else can you do in these areas except roost!

Ethnic-hip are broad and of varying quality - but they are mostly found in central and East Central London clustering around Soho, Fitzrovia and Covent Garden, Brick Lane, Bethnal Green and specialising in non-standard/rare ethnic fare, e.g. Scandinavian, French, Peruvian, Afghan, Indo-Iranian, Central Asian and Japanese cuisines.

Frequenters - experimental central Londoners notably media, professional and artistic types

General Ethnics - all Italian, Spanish, Lebanese, Greek, Turkish, African, Caribbean, Moroccan restaurants - many of which are similar to the normal ersatz category but are independents

Frequenters - anyone and everyone in a local neighbourhood

Gutter hip - restaurants serving micro-brewed beers in cardboard cups and tin cans in expensive trash-ridden East London hipster enclaves. There are very many and quite a number are pop-ups in Hackney and Peckham. They predominate in up heeled Hoxton, Shoreditch and Dalston, and in down heeled Hackney, Bethnal Green, and somewhat in yet to be fully categorised Brixton Village market and parts of Peckham and Newcross.

Frequenters - East London hipsters (twenty something year olds), student and young professional former Clapham-types who have chosen instead to live in Brixton and Peckham, artsy New Cross Crowd. Lately, Essex day trippers have been swarming to the Shoreditch-Hoxton-Dalston triangle for a legs up and when that happens, it is surely a bad sign.

Gutter-trash - all pretentious street food stands serving micro-burgers and pop-up restaurants found mainly in hipster enclaves of Hackney and Tower Hamlets but creeping steadily into wannabe hipster enclaves such as Brixton Village and Peckham

Frequenters - hungry students, Shoreditch and Spitalsfields' tourists, poor hipsters pretending to be hip

Roadside - any Indian, Chinese, Mexican or Thai restaurant everywhere.

Frequenters - anyone.

Cafes - greasy spoons up and down market and simple food joints everywhere

Frequenters - anyone

Dirt-bag outlets- the Macdonalds, KFC, Burger King, chicken and chips outlets, China town restaurants especially Wong Ke, eat as much as you like buffet dirt spots and Nandos .

Frequenters - people in transit between stations, suburban Londoners visiting central london, out of towners, bargain hunting tourists, council estate and chavy types.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Flight

When K-Baby fled inner city London for the suburbs in the mid-nineties, he was merely indulging in the end reach of a post world war II syndrom. He was amongst the last wave of native Londoners that had embarked on what is now referred to as 'white flight'.

London in the mid nineties was a different Landscape to the vibrant multicultural welt stadt that it is today. K-baby like those of his generation had been fleeing the decay and death of inner London Shoreditch for the safety of the outer suburbs, away from the hordes of inner city immigrants and run down schools to the safe haven of a clean little England suburban outpost with its good schools and 'people like me' atmosphere.

If K-baby had had more foresight at the time, he would have thought twice about leaving his council home in run-down Shoreditch and perhaps stayed put or moved a few blocks down the road to buy an equally run down but affordable cottage in what was to become the epitome of inner city 'organic' living - Stoke Newington. But at the time, no one could have imagined the hipster paradise Shoreditch and Hackney would eventually become.

However,  K-baby - newly armed with an MBA, waves of ambition and a somewhat vague intention of breeding and then colonising the high performing 'Waldegrave Girls' with the fruits of his loins - struck out for the semi woods. Not the Chilterns or the Cotswolds or anywhere in that vein, but to the anodyne and clean suburban Middlesex town of Twickenham.

Twickenham no doubt, has its charms and lies firmly within the clean-lined affluent English parkland of Richmond Upon Thames, but Richmond it ain't. K-Baby's settlement there and eventual fermentation into suburban life, meant that escape would become nigh impossible as the inner city heartbeat began to revive it's pulse.

Today the Kingsland road, Dalston, Hoxton and Stoke Newington areas are the heart beat of hip and trendy Europe. Property prices have more than quadrupled, wealthy bankers and the ultra hip have moved into K-baby's former stomping ground. The very people he had hoped to find refuge among, playing cricket on Twickenham Green or crossing the bridge to Richmond, are the ones who have traded places with him and now sip fair trade lattes and moccas from  hipster mugs  while munching on organic beef carpaccios in Stoke Newington and Notting Hill delis.

For K-baby and many other middle aged singletons now marooned in their suburban flats, the prospect of returning to cosmopolitan city living  has diminished with time and affordability.

It seems if you were not at the party before 2007, chances are you may never be invited except as a day tripper, this is because inner London's astronomically high property prices have firmly ensured that.

By way of an update, K-Baby did finally pluck the courage to flee the excruciating mundane of Twickers for life in the wild bushes of West Africa, where perennially  he will atone for his many sins.