April 22, 2005
Letter from London
Dear friends,
I am very fortunate to travel as often as I do. Because I enjoy making written observations of the places I visit, I decided to try my hand at stringing together a few notes and sharing the result with you. I hope you are neither annoyed by my unsolicited message nor surprised that I consider you a friend. This is a letter from London.
On the overnight flight from New York, I sat next to Roberta, the ultra-petite principal dancer for a Brazilian ballet company, and laughed with her as she rifled through receipts—Miu Miu, Joseph, Prada, &c.—totalling seveal thousand dollars. "How could I spend so much money?" she asked, chuckling at herself. Given how little fabric it must take to make an outfit to fit her, I had to wonder as well. Her peals of laughter wore thin, however, as she enjoyed the genital-joke Ben Stiller vehicle Meet the Fokkers while I made a doomed attempt to get a few hours' sleep in my not terribly comfortable coach-class seat.
My early-morning arrival in London was by no means auspicious, but my sullen demeanor was immediately overcome by the joys of people-watching on the rush-hour tube ride into the city. After over a dozen subsequent rides criss-crossing this swollen megalopolis, my earliest observation remains true: Each subway car must, by law I presume, be populated by at least one of the following: An incredibly tall and thin brunette girl, in her early 20s, with an artificial tan, garishly colored eye shadow, and form-fitting black dress pants made of a stretchy material; a scruffy-faced and wild-haired man in his late 30s wearing a rumpled gray suit with chalk-white pinstripes and a white shirt with at least two buttons undone; and a chatty elderly woman who inevitably makes an obscene joke. On this first ride in to the city center—there is no "downtown" here—the Irvine Welsh character was staring at the shopgirl, and the elderly lady to whom I had given my seat, upon noticing my bags, offered to let me sit on her lap.
The humor of the situation helped dissipate the cloud of dread that was forming as I realized exactly why they call it a tube: The ceiling—already too short for oversized Americans like me—curves downward to meet the sides of each carriage car, and you cannot help but realize that you are riding in nothing more than a metal cylinder as it burrows through the earth like the gopher in the Caddyshack movies. Barring between-station stoppages, in New York, Boston, Chicago, or Washington, DC, you can more or less pretend that the boxy subway car is not actually below the ground; here, the crippling fear takes physical form as crippling neck pain. Like a good New Yorker, I used my iPod headphones as a means of escape. Londoners aren't as keen on music, and mostly stick their noses into Hello! and OK! and other publications whose covers (and contents) rather loudly proclaim nothing in particular.
* * *
I'm writing from Stamford Hill, which is up a gentle rise from Stoke Newington. You know you've arrived when you see the plethora of Orthodox Jews on bicycles. Finding it on Wednesday morning was a bit of a challenge, as the main road into the neighborhood inexplicably changes names every half mile; I'm beginning to suspect that London has only one High Street and that, if you followed it far enough, you would see every neighborhood in the city. The name changes may explain why there are over two hundred pages of street names, listed in a format and size reminiscent of telephone books, in the London A-Z city atlas. The book is a visitor's best friend, and, with place names like Sidcup, Teddington, Wapping, and Revelstoke (near Wimbledon, for those keeping score), it makes for surprisingly entertaining reading.
Stamford Hill is fairly far from the city center, and it seems that the London real estate market is somehow harsher on the city's young citizens than what we suffer in New York. I have yet to find a concentration of young hipsters like one finds in Williamsburg or Wicker Park (Chicago) or Mission Hill (Boston), indicating there are few cheap neighborhoods, instead spotting one or two here and there in every area I visit. A fortysomething London artist concurred last night at dinner, and also noted how rare it is to find centrally located "social spaces" for young people to gather. Those stuck in North London rarely make it further than the south bank and kids from the western part of the city are scarce at parties in Bethnal Green. Perhaps this is why this city's cultural flowerings, such as grime music, are such intensely local products; it's just too hard to schlep across town to participate in an MC battle.
* * *
I've been blessed with warm and sunny weather, which is good because I have been walking and walking and walking. The main purpose of my visit is to look at art, which unfortunately seems to be the only type of business not concentrated in one district. If you need an acoustic guitar or a trombone, there are more than a dozen musical instrument shops on Sutton Row, which straddles Charing Cross Road, itself home to a double-digit number of booskhops. This convenience would be fantastic if I were shopping. Unfortunately, American currency is currently only accepted as birdcage liner.
Thanks for reading. At yesterday's exchange rate of $1.91 to £1, this e-mail is still free, and I hope it was worth it. Please forward this to any friends who might enjoy it; if you are one of those friends and you'd like to receive the next missive—which, I suspect, will detail next month's journey to Norway—please send me an e-mail and ask to be added to the list. The process is the same, but sadder for me, if you wish to be removed.
Until next time,
Brian
A FEW RECOMMENDATIONS
Jim Lambie's exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ (until May 8) is small but
superb, as is the National Gallery's Caravaggio exhibition (until May
22); The Real Greek, in Hoxton Market, is a very good restaurant despite
the fact that its owners feel the need to proclaim its legitimacy so
prominently; and Foyle's bookstore, at the upper end of the
aforementioned Charing Cross Road, is one of the few places I've found
with free wireless internet access.