‘drunks, drug addicts, resting and retired prostitutes, the mentally disturbed, homosexuals looking out for others, the daytime homeless, the anxious, people waiting for the pubs to open, the sleepy, local people wanting a bit of fresh air, casual thieves’. Just say journalists.
Want your mind taken off the downward spiral of your country by reading about old London landmarks, eh, Cynthia? For my part I distract myself from what Britain has become by reading 1970's spy novels. The present is always too cluttered. The past and life in stories, much less so.
Have you ever visited the French Protestant church on your trips to London?
It annoys me in general. People can move to a house next to a school that has been around for hundreds of years and then moan and complain about the noise of children during lunchtime and the congestion due to the school run.
Anyway, I read this earlier this morning: "the present race [are] unworthy descendants of [their ancestors]. They are degenerate, cruel, unjust, malicious, libidinous, unfilial, treacherous." Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Chapter 5 "The Five Ages of Man" seemingly from Hesiod (circa 670 to 650 BC).
The local Councillors are elected by about one thousand votes out of a residential population of about three thousand five hundred.
My conclusion is that two thousand five hundred people are happy to reside in Soho and accept it is a business area in the middle of a major city.
The Soho Society objected to over 86 planning applications last year and supported one.
Millionares Row AKA Meard street are objecting to a new application for a small gin distillery and shop at 13 Meard st. no doubt buoyant from preventing a restaurant to enter its premises from Meard Street last year and preventing a Jazz club in Broadwick street live music GFB....
I suppose I'm just old enough to remember the seediness of Soho, which was still evident in the mid 1990s. A bushy-eyed young American teen visiting family friends who were one of the early gentrifiers in Clerkenwell, I would be allowed to take long walks to the British Museum and Bloomsbury and the Soane Museum and would occasionally wander through Soho, seeking out the surviving ancient architecture (not that many, when you get down to it, it's not Lincoln's Inn). Did I want a peek of the vices? Perhaps, from a safe distance, although it was decidedly unattractive skipping over pools of vomit from the previous night's carousers. After a few incursions into Soho, I don't think I bothered returning to the area, other parts of London were more interesting. But now flash forward 30 years, all of London is so gentrified and globalized that one does miss having a little seedy neighborhood with vomit on the sidewalks.
Whoever decides such things should give out notice that those who object to noise in Soho, or any other inner city area where there is bound to be, or even should be, noise, have ten years to sell their property and move to somewhere quieter - like Norfolk.
I am glad to know about the hunting cry, which fits the ancient and venerable nature of London. New York is prone to artless, utilitarian contractions such as SoHo (South of Houston), TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street), NoLIta (North of Little Italy), DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), not to mention WeHo (West Hollywood) on the West Coast.
‘drunks, drug addicts, resting and retired prostitutes, the mentally disturbed, homosexuals looking out for others, the daytime homeless, the anxious, people waiting for the pubs to open, the sleepy, local people wanting a bit of fresh air, casual thieves’. Just say journalists.
hahaha
Very interesting. One reason I'm a subscriber is that there are pieces like this that have nothing to do with the United States.
The French Protestant church building is pretty.
Want your mind taken off the downward spiral of your country by reading about old London landmarks, eh, Cynthia? For my part I distract myself from what Britain has become by reading 1970's spy novels. The present is always too cluttered. The past and life in stories, much less so.
Have you ever visited the French Protestant church on your trips to London?
No, never. I was in London only the one time, in 1983.
I have enough nonsense in my immediate, everyday life to distract me from any larger issues.
It annoys me in general. People can move to a house next to a school that has been around for hundreds of years and then moan and complain about the noise of children during lunchtime and the congestion due to the school run.
We've turned into a nation of self-absorbed, self-righteous nimbies.
Surely Mr West's point was: it was ever thus.
Anyway, I read this earlier this morning: "the present race [are] unworthy descendants of [their ancestors]. They are degenerate, cruel, unjust, malicious, libidinous, unfilial, treacherous." Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Chapter 5 "The Five Ages of Man" seemingly from Hesiod (circa 670 to 650 BC).
It was ever thus.
My point is a specific one. Nimbyism is inversely related to enterprise, so it's no surprise we're an economic basket case.
Still, degeneracy went well for the Greeks, eh?
The local Councillors are elected by about one thousand votes out of a residential population of about three thousand five hundred.
My conclusion is that two thousand five hundred people are happy to reside in Soho and accept it is a business area in the middle of a major city.
The Soho Society objected to over 86 planning applications last year and supported one.
Millionares Row AKA Meard street are objecting to a new application for a small gin distillery and shop at 13 Meard st. no doubt buoyant from preventing a restaurant to enter its premises from Meard Street last year and preventing a Jazz club in Broadwick street live music GFB....
I suppose I'm just old enough to remember the seediness of Soho, which was still evident in the mid 1990s. A bushy-eyed young American teen visiting family friends who were one of the early gentrifiers in Clerkenwell, I would be allowed to take long walks to the British Museum and Bloomsbury and the Soane Museum and would occasionally wander through Soho, seeking out the surviving ancient architecture (not that many, when you get down to it, it's not Lincoln's Inn). Did I want a peek of the vices? Perhaps, from a safe distance, although it was decidedly unattractive skipping over pools of vomit from the previous night's carousers. After a few incursions into Soho, I don't think I bothered returning to the area, other parts of London were more interesting. But now flash forward 30 years, all of London is so gentrified and globalized that one does miss having a little seedy neighborhood with vomit on the sidewalks.
Whoever decides such things should give out notice that those who object to noise in Soho, or any other inner city area where there is bound to be, or even should be, noise, have ten years to sell their property and move to somewhere quieter - like Norfolk.
I am glad to know about the hunting cry, which fits the ancient and venerable nature of London. New York is prone to artless, utilitarian contractions such as SoHo (South of Houston), TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street), NoLIta (North of Little Italy), DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), not to mention WeHo (West Hollywood) on the West Coast.