london adventure day 5 (sat. 06.04.2002)
Originally written 06.04.2002.
so the original plan was to skate playstation, but as erin so eloquently put it when i talked with her on the phone, “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” indubitably, she meant it in some kind of lwed connotation, but her query is as pertinent to skate spots as it is to frivilous sexual encounters. in a city that has so many good street spots and public skate parks, why drop valuable bank to skate? as i got off at the westbourne park station on the hammersmith and city line, i was distracted by the flying forms that could only be skaters. I had somehow stumbled upon meanwhile gardens, which is, thus far in my short stay, my favorite place to skate in london. this park is beutifully seated in this community garden and its quite neat to skate under the blossoming branches of nearby trees. the park consists of 3 bowls of smoothly poured concrete with some of nicest coping you’ll ever skate. the bowls increase in size and depth from a u-shaped mini-ramp bowl to a deep circular one with a hump in the middle. the locals are this awesome mix of older thrashers and little kids. there is definitely a big brother feel to the place (in the good fraternal way, not the orwellian or reality tv way), with the older skaters hooking up the younger ones with their used decks and not minding the inevitable near-collision in the crowded bowls. there were even 2 female skaters. in a day and age when you see 10 year old girls stressing over makeup, boys and even diets, it was cool to see a young girl chomping on crisps and egg mayonaise and ripping the bowls like she owned them. right on! the older girl had this awesome all-pink setup. she had even cut hearts into the grip tape and painted “tampons are for girls” on the grip tape. awesome. the park is a joy to skate, and though its intimidating to see the locals dominate the place with their huge airs over the hips or long tailslides along the coping of the bowl. the bowls are covered in sweet graffiti to boot. this place is what al concrete parks should be, heck, what all parks in general should be. if you skate one spot in london, skate meanwhile.
i originally pictured this silly little anectdotal project as a punk rock getaway guide to london. however, i’ve had just enough cash to avoid sleeping outdoors and the utter lack of suburbia and the masses of people who look like they need the gifts of the dumpster gods far more than i have kept me out of dumpsters in favor of cheap thai food. also, personal objections to shoplifting (despite the cctv cameras, it looks like most of the uk is easy picking) means that this trip wasn’t going to be evasion uk. in fact, there’s very little that is punk rock about going to museums and doing touristy stuff other than that said activities provide a certain sense of adventure and fun.
today, i did get to check out a few aspects of the local punk scene. i went to rota*, which is this weekly free event that happens every saturday from 4-8 pm at the notting hill arts club*. the arts club seems like a holdover from the notting hill neighborhood’s, which is now really gentrified (see julia roberts movie of the same name for evidence), hipper days. the club is like a bar, an art space, and a d.i.y. show space rolled into one. by the time the doors opened, the queue was all the way down the block, and the space only holds 200, so i was glad i arrived early.
this week’s rota lineup featured a screening of some old dc punk scene footage (e.g. minor threat, teen idols, bad brains, chalk circle, bikini kill, rights of spring, etc.) by mark andersen and mark jenkins who wrote the recent book dance of days about the dc punk scene. the screening was followed by mark and mark doing a q&a about the film and punk culture in general. andersen had a bit of that arrogance that seems common among activists who gain some notoriety, but that seems reasonable since activism is so often thankless. despite his often rambling, circuitous, comments, you did get an idea of how important punk was for this guy. the big “lesson” that he got through in the end is that punk is unique in that it blurs the line between audience and artist and makes kids think, “i could do that”, not only in terms of music, but in terms of other aspects of life as well. though punk culture isn’t a panacea,i agree with mark that it is incredibly empowering to youth and provides a certain spark which serves as a catalyst for lifelong creativity and the struggle for a better world.
the event also featured performance by london locals econoline who were token, but good, emo and dead inside who played brutal hardcore. it was rocking and a definite good time.
on the subject of punk rock, do you know what’s punk rock? playing two shows two hours apart is punk rock. throwing caution to the wind, i followed dead inside across town to see them rock with locals soon the darkness (whose vocalist apparently takes his cues from that of national acrobat), german art-core unit metrophob and of the same ilk, the usa’s song of zarathustra. the last in particular was awesomely brutal. just layers and layers of noise mixing together to create a single sonic hammer.
the crowd was a mix of scenesters that i recognized from the earlier notting hill gig, and older punks who seemed to be their only because their neighborhood dive was having a free show. there was this one guy with an amazing mullet and a maiden t-shirt who kept yelling “louder, louder”. the crowd seemed older in general, than the crowd at most us hxc shows, and i wonder if the uk has the same sort of teenage diy influence. my impression is that the scene in the uk is more heavily dependent on club-type venues rather than basement shows or diy spaces, which may exclude some of the u18s.
the show let out at 1:30 which meant the subways had stopped running and that it woud be a bit of an adventure getting back to my hostel. passing certain skyline landmarks on the way to the show, i had an idea of how far away i was, and this dashed any hopes i had that i would be able to walk back in a worst case scenario. waiting at the lonely bus stop, i prepared myself for the worst, given erin’s epic lost in london tale*.
if riding the tube makes you feel clever, negotiating the city’s night busses will make you feel downright local. unlike the tube, you have to figure out the right direction, flag the bus down, and signal the driver when you want to stop. since it was a saturday night, there were still a lot of people out, even in the part of town where i was, so i fealt pretty safe. also, the night busses are pretty consistent so i didn’t have much worry about getting stranded. still, i was glad that i had the bus map and a rudimentary knowledge of the city’s layout as i ventured back to the hostel. busses take a long time. first you have to wait for them and then there’s the numerous stops and traffic patterns to contend with, even late at night. it’s quite amazing to see how many people are out and about. there was even a huge queue outside westminster hall to see the queen mother lying in state at 2:30 am!
the night busses are certainly more colorful than the subways. as an example, i was looking out the window (the long routes provide a cool, albeit unguided, tour of london) when i heard a splashing sound. i thought, initially, that someone had spilled their drink. not so. the foreign kid had chundered everywhere. i avoided the spary, but the kid was directly behind the bus driver, who, if he didn’t have to clean it up, at least had to smell the shit for the rest of the night. have some consideration! if you’re going to spew, do it before you get on the bus, or at least bring a bag to contain the vomit. sheesh. reason 1 million and upteen to be sxe: making life easier on bus drivers who have a hard enough job as it is.
* www.roughtrade.com, rota@roughtrade.com
* 21 notting hill gate, london w11 3jq (one block from notting hill gate tube)
* getting groped up on the last subway home, she jumped off and hiked around london alone in the middle of the night before getting in an unmarked cab and luckily making it back to her hotel unscathed.