A Little Goth on Sunday

Some shots of Camden Town fashion. I was informed by some younger friends that not all of what's sold or worn here is Goth; some of it is Emo and some heavy metal, death metal, and punk — and they're all different, plus there are subcultures of each. I looked up the terms on the web and, well, even the Goths don't agree on what makes a Goth. Maybe you know and can tell me!

There were shops selling nothing but corsets and bustiers, leather shops, jewelry shops from "tribal" to "celtic" to "biker." Along Camden High Street, many of the stores have elaborateupper-storey facades like the two shown here, but there was so much going on on the street level that I didnt' even notice them until we'd been there for several days.

Whatever the fashion terminology, I had a great time looking at what people were wearing and what the shops were selling.

Do have a look at the link Andrea posted on my "Regents Canal" post a few days back; it's a photographic look at London street fashion. I'll have a few more of my own shots of the London street in a day or two.

 

Pubs

The Camden Eye.

The Spread Eagle, Camden Town.

The World's End, Camden Town

The Boston.

The Mortimer Arms, Tottenham Court Road.

The Nutshell, billed as "the world's smallest pub," in Bury St. Edmunds

The Rising Sun.

British pubs being the fixture that they are, I could have photographed hundreds. We had a pub lunch and some very good local beer in The Vine, in Kentish Town, which, like many now, has become a "gastro-pub" serving fancy – and even healthy – food instead of the steak-and-kidney pies and Cornish pasties of yore. The pubs labeled "Free House" are "free" because they aren't tied to any particular brewery; so that's where you can often get excellent local beers and ales. I know next-to-nothing about British beers, so I won't say any more about that; just that I very much liked every beer I drank there!

Hors d'oeuvres and Guiness, at The Vine

Two pubs were across from each other close to where we stayed. There's an enforced closing time of 11:00 pm, but it was still extremely noisy and crowded every single evening, and the shouting and arguing often went on well into the night. The drinking scene in London is pretty stunning. Because smoking is banned from pub interiors now, the spilling over of the crowds into the streets is even more extreme than I remember from before. Public drunkenness and rowdy behavior are common, including vomiting and pissing in the streets,  especially among (but not limited to) the young, and don't seem to faze anyone except the naive visitor.

We were staying in a lovely B&B in a real neighborhood of North London, rather than the more sanitized tourist areas of posh, central London we had been in previously. That was partly out of choice, and partly because hotel prices were astronomical. And so we got a real view into everyday (and every night) life. There were huge crowds of young people around the tube station every night, but especially on weekends, and a strong police presence. Apparently this has been a favorite site for drug dealing, and the police were cracking down. I wasn't nervous about my own safety, but I was surprised by the roughness of both sides — the kids, and the police — and the chaotic atmosphere which, by Montreal standards, seemed to verge on being out of control. I wondered about the relationship of alcohol to the overall social culture, and how this has affected the youth, but the crowds at the pubs were always mixed in age as well as sex, and the people we'd hear and see outside our windows at night were often older.

Camden Town Station at night (click for larger view)

I'm fond of the pubs myself, and was glad they were still in place. London has changed quite a lot since we were there last, about eleven years ago. We found it less quintessentially British, and more global; noisier and more aggressively competitive in the mold of the largest American cities; full of international franchises but studded with exciting new architecture. The food was an international mix, and uniformly terrific; the transit system is huge and works with amazing efficiency. London has always been crowded and seemed even more so. We sensed a vibrant energy everywhere we went, although everyone spoke about the economic problems and great difficulty for young people to find work.

Some Views of the Park

Sunny afternoon, Park Lafontaine 7/25/11

The past few days, I've been experimenting with different drawing techniques for foliage, searching out a shorthand that captures the rhythm, busyness, and emotional tone of trees and shrubs at different times of the day. I've been thinking about this problem for years, and keep coming back to it, but now I have a bit more time to explore possibilities. These are just some initial sketches done with my Lamy fountain pen, quickly. I'll move on to washes and broader areas of ink and contrast, but I'm curious how far one can go with just a pen.

Early evening, 7/26/11

 

Night, 7/27/11

More than Survival

The sun has swung northward again; we notice it by the light filtering into the bedroom earlier in the mornings, and the faint warmth when we’re out in the early afternoons, telling us its fire is not quite so distant. Otherwise, we are settled in for the long northern haul between Epiphany – the end of the holidays – and spring. Somehow the presence of so much snow since early December has made me more cheerful this winter — at least it looks and feels like a real winter. I stand at the edge of the park and watch three layers of movement: the cars speedily passing in both directions, close to me; the colors and random motions of people and dogs and children entering and leaving the park; and, finally, miniature hockey players gliding up and down on a rink in the distance. Today I was outside for a long walk, enjoying the particular sensation of both biting cold and sunshine that is perhaps reserved for those of us who live pretty far north.

In the metro I passed a young man asleep on a bench, and later, on the street, another cradling his dog inside the same blanket that wrapped his own body. Further down Mount-Royal, a young nun in a blue dress and black headscarf stood talking to one of the street people, asking him questions about how he was doing; he sat on the sidewalk, his head tipped up toward her, speaking sincerely and calmly. And in the metro again, beautiful flute music greeted me as I rode down the escalator: two South American musicians playing what seemed like music from the Andes on a guitar and set of wooden pan-pipes. I slowed and smiled at them; the hollow, reedy, mountain sound has accompanied me all the rest of the day.