I am from Hoxton, not that trendy Hoxton from the Timeout and the Guardian but the real Hoxton. When I was a kid you told someone you was going to Hoxton square after dark, you was met with a steely gaze and the local mental hospital was informed.
For Hoxton back then could have been described as a bit “Tasty”. Muggings and murders dominated the local press. There was no Byron burgers or clubs with guest lists. Instead it was knives and brasses turning tricks. The hair cut , wasn’t a floppy “ironic” do , it is now. No it was a number 1 crew cut. And glasses had glass in them, not just a pair of frames. If you was wearing pink skinny trousers and a plaid shirt back then ;chances are you was a probability you was of to the London Apprentice.
Back then the most important building in Hoxton was the DHSS, followed by the Job centre and then the Pie and mash shop. A proper style one it was too, saw dust on the floor and populated with thieves and con men. Oddly enough it is next to the undertakers. The Pie shop still stands a symbol of the old east London. Amongst it’s celebrity chef restaurants and a gastro pubs. Pubs back then was a spit and saw dust affair. You went to Hoxton 20 years ago and that’s what it was, old time east London. Yes it was sometimes daunting; after all a lot of the working class types can be right cunts at times. But it’s old London.
It’s changed now, Hipsters in their early twenties to their late should know betters and get a real job. Have sort of turned it in to a ghetto of middle-class artist. The working class, not the underclass as that is something completely different are getting priced out of their homes. Listed canal side buildings are being torn down and turned in to studios. At the price of history after all the Hipster movement will die and it will be an embarrassing blight on society. One day the shit hair cuts, stupid clothes, bad tattoo, the faux intellectual will be gone. But it will also take a couple of hundred years of history with it too. Down the drain, for fashion.
The canal warehouses, the stables , the factories and the history are just as culturally important to London and England as the Pyramids are for Egypt. When did people who couldn’t fight there way out of a paper bag, get to ruin it for the rest of us? And what happened to the working class?
markdini 