Walking around Central London at the moment is beginning to
feel far too similar to walking around the city at the end of the 1978 remake
of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (admittedly, with less Donald Sutherland). You’re
seeing all the areas you used to know stripped of all connection and all
meaning.
I’m seeing a lot of this at the moment. Walking around
London and seeing voids and building sites where entire blocks were before.
Progress clearly has to happen, but it’s feeling like a feeding frenzy at the
moment. And a feeding frenzy that’s indiscriminately damaging the city itself.
My point, before I go on, is not specifically about any
individual cases. It’s about the overall effect and the scale and speed with
which it’s happening. I’m just picking out a couple of specific shops I’m aware
of. You will likely be aware of others.
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| Image source |
Just last week, the Cinema Store in Leicester Square closed
down after 22 years. As the name suggests, it was a shop that sold film
memorabilia and books with a downstairs section with more obscure movies (which
sounds far dodgier than it actually was, especially considering the downstairs
sections in other nearby shops – it was more likely to sell Jimmy Cagney’s
Yankee Doodle Dandy or Italian Giallo horror movies than [insert your own joke porn title here]).
The first time I came to London on my own would have been
within its first years. I remember finding it fairly quickly and found it
immediately both appealing and comforting. London was still the big, scary city
for me and a shop that seemed made for cinema fans like myself was the first
thing that made clear that London can be a city for anyone. Whatever you’re
into, there’ll be other people who are into it and who share your love of it.
The owner’s statement on Facebook said that “it has become
increasingly difficult for a small business like ours to maintain a physical
store in Central London due to the increasingly corporate nature of today's
retail environment.”
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| Food for Thought (original image at The Guardian) |
Within the last few months, we’ve also lost Food For
Thought, one of London’s oldest (and most loved) vegetarian restaurants after
44 years. One of the staff members said “In the last few years, the landlords
have put the rent up so much we couldn’t cope. It’s one of the few places in
the area that is still independent, low-profile but very busy. Now the whole
area is changing. All the older shops are closing.”
As a vegetarian cinephile, these are two that speak closely
to me. But the slow death of Denmark Street is one that’s likely to hit home
for a lot more – the spiritual home of a lot of the London music scene,
generally know as Tin Pan Alley. It’s being redeveloped into a large,
multimedia building complex with shops, cafes and a new performance space to
allow people to “interact with the brands we love in exciting new ways,” in the
name of “meaningful brand engagement”.
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| Denmark Street in days gone by (original source louderthanwar) |
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| Denmark Street plans (original source bdonline) |
Meanwhile, gay venues across London are also closing - Manbar
and Madame JoJos have both closed recently due to surprisingly mild-sounding
legal issues surrounding noise and violence.
Both areas are being redeveloped at the moment in what I can only assume
is coincidental timing.
The Yard in Soho, one of the few left, is currently fighting
development. They say that “the Yard, not only of architectural and historic
significance, has played a key role in the LGBT community. It is one of Soho's
oldest surviving LGBT bars providing a safe haven during the dark years of
persecution, while offering privacy and a unique Soho atmosphere. The Yard is
not safe and the battle continues.”
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| The Yard and staff - (Original source WestEndExtra) |
A street away, where a number of small independent shops
have been closed for redevelopment, there are large advertising boards instead
of shops and windows, stating that the work will bring more colour to Soho.
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| More colour to Soho, apparently (image mine) |
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| Chinatown Market a few weeks ago (image mine) |
A street away, the Kowloon bakery (the
original Cantonese bakery in Chinatown) is feeling the heat of rising rents. As
the owner, Danny Yeung, said in this week’s Time Out article on Chinatown, “‘I
don’t know how much longer we can go on, though. The rents have got higher and
higher until they’re almost killing our profits. We used to deal with
individual landlords. Now it’s a consortium: they’re all owned by a hedge fund
– a PLC. They don’t care about us. They just say: “It’s market forces. If you
don’t pay it, somebody else will.” We’re having to pay £600 a square foot for
rent and business rates. Even for a small place, that’s about £36,000 a month.
You know how many buns you have to sell before you break even? That’s a lot of
dough!”
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| Kowloon Bakery, Chinatown (original source HomespunLondon) |
Over in Shoreditch, the Norton Folgate saga, which has been
continuing for decades, nears a close. Norton Folgate is a tiny block
surrounded by glass corporate monoliths by Liverpool Street. It’s a beautiful Victorian
area, with plenty of local history which has been bought up by “British Land”,
a non-private-sounding private business. They’ve allowed parts of it to become
neglected in order to bring around the planning permission to destroy it.
Despite a successful local campaign to prevent this, the
history-loving Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has the ability to potentially
overrule local council decisions on this. He has done this twelve times so far,
and each time sided with the developers. He did it again with Norton Folgate, allowing
a 14 story office building to replace it, despite an alternative plan being
offered that would keep more of the heritage and provide a space for local
artists and businesses. The Spitalfields Trust is taking legal action to, if
not prevent it, at least see if there will be a ruling and some consequences over
what they say is clear misconduct (due to him calling in the plans within an
hour of receiving them – nowhere near enough time to begin to absorb the level
of information in there). You can read more about this in the wonderful Spitalfields Life blog by The Gentle Author.
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| Spitalfield residents join hands against development (original SpitalfieldsLife) |
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| British Land plans for Norton Folgate (original Spitalfields Life) |
Again and again within a short space of time, we’re seeing
small businesses in danger. Not because they aren’t profitable, but because
they’re being forced to compete in an artificially raised market. A Nandos, a Starbucks,
a Sainsburys or an Apple Store will always be able to offer more money to the
people who own the land than small businesses. A small Cantonese cake store
will never be able to compete with yet another Jamie Oliver restaurant.
It’s not the fault of the businesses, and it’s not even
always the fault of the landlords – with the amount of money they’re being
offered, it’s difficult to turn that down. Of course it is. And I don’t know
what the answer is, outside of some kind of rent cap for businesses.
The London that I fell in love with was the London that
offered something for everyone, no matter what they were into. It’s being
replaced with brands aimed at everyone instead.
To quote Warren Ellis talking about the rise of the
monoculture, “If we didn’t want to live like this, we could have changed it at
any time by not fucking paying for it. So let’s celebrate by all eating the
same burger.”
If you want to help preserve some of these, these are the campaigns you can join. If you're aware of others, I'll happily link more.
Save Britain's Heritage - Twitter @Savebrit
The Spitalfields Trust - Twitter @SpitalfieldsT
Save Tin Pan Alley - Twitter @SaveTinPanAlley
Save The Yard Bar - Twitter @Yard_Soho
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