Whitechapel

[poliphilo]

Whitechapel is a grim part of town, but full of energy- some of it good. We drank coffee at a pavement table. A really nice guy gave up his seat so all four of us could sit together- then strolled off without paying. A guy who was drunk or stoned or just psychotic wandered about in the general vicinity, sometimes strumming a cheap guitar and sometimes waving it about like a club.

There was an exhibition on at the Whitechapel Gallery called Faces in the Crowd. Picasso, Manet, Sickert, Munch, Magritte- and that’s just for starters. . Most of the art was about city life and the alienation of the individual. I found it oppressive. We came out and guitar guy had moved on and his patch had been taken over by a younger man who was leaning against the wall shouting things like, “I’m homeless, Give me some money for food, you bastard!”

Comments

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

Wow...There's a guy kind of like that homeless one in one of the cities near me. I think he sings Hebrew songs and then he occasionally yells at someone crossing the street. Weird :-O

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Oh, my: the Dark Side of London!

:)

I'm glad you escaped!

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I like Whitechapel. It is anything but insipid! Gritty, raw... Still not as bourgeois as most parts of London (including Camden by now). Not always pleasant, but always there, so to speak.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

These guys seemed harmless. and the life of the street just carried on around them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Whitechapel is Jack the Ripper's old stomping ground. My sister's partner is writing a novel about Victorian London and wanted to do a bit of research- so we peered at old pubs and ventured into darksome alleys. Actually the Whitechapel Jack knew has largely disappeared- the buildings are mostly 20thcentury- but it's still a fairly grim and dismal area.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was thinking I could happily live there. But property prices- in spite of the grittiness- are absurdly high.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they're quite low for London... -Which sort of is the same as saying that they are absurdly high!

I remember going flat-searching with my boyfriend at the time in London 4 years ago, and I simply had to tell him I couldn't go with him! As he was the one forking out the dough, he was ultimately going to be the one deciding, and I was being less than constructive, finding all flats within the budget to be absolutely horrid places!

In the end we did find a nice place, or at least it became a nice place when we had put in a new kitchen, new flooring throughout and painted all walls... It took months and months (and then some more months) to get there, DIY'ing it most of the way!