Words on Now · Monday October 23, 2006
Part 1) Addressing London in the Second Person.
Dear London: You are a gigantic, weird, amazing, crazy, packed, expensive, creative, smelly city. Traffic crawls around your clogged arteries at an average of 9mph. This is why most people make use of your underground “Tube” system, your millions of buses, your comprehensive overland train network, your “Docklands Light Railway.” Some people throw caution to the wind and ride bicycles on narrow, confusing roads with no bike lanes, huge double decker buses, and noxious emissions from the unending streams of automobiles. If a bicycle rider is lucky enough to reach their destination unscathed, they must contend with the fact that their vehicle will likely be stolen at some point, sooner rather than later. Your flea markets do a brisk business in “cheap bicycles.” I once tried to find a “cheap bicycle,” but I soon realized that A, “cheap” in London means £60 for a used bike, and B, I am terrified of bicycling in London.
Many people in their twenties buy expensive clothes and suits in order to work at your myriad estate agencies, financial firms, and marketing companies. They toil in order to afford the high cost of living within your venerable boundaries. This is very different from the Northwest, where nobody in their twenties owns a suit, or clothes, or even goes to work, for that matter. It is slightly distressing to me that young people in London start their “careers” in their early twenties, and they clearly expect to work 8-6 for the rest of their lives. This is why some (many) people take drugs and binge drink on the weekends.
However, your creative/non-corporate side is alive and thriving. Warehouse spaces, boats, documentarians, musicians, painters, photographers, squats, designers, dancers, actors, directors, students, and independent art spaces make London a multi-disciplinary adventure into grassroots cultural production. Good!
The rest of this piece will be written in the first person.
Part 2) Goldsmiths and Graduate School
For those who may not already know, I’m enrolled in the MA programme in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College in New Cross. While I knew that Goldsmiths has an excellent reputation in the UK for Media and Cultural Studies, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how engaging and challenging the programme is. Here, let me “introduce you” to my awesome and talented professors:
Nick Couldry
Sara Ahmed
Angela McRobbie
Julian Henriques
Part 3) House/Mates
I found a really nice room in a large Victorian row house about 8 minutes walk from Goldsmiths. 4 storys! 8 bedrooms! My housemates are 7 terrific dudes/dudettes from such diverse places as Germany, Ireland, France, America, and England. Multiculturalism represent! Here are some pictures of the house on Flickr. Speaking of Flickr, I am keeping up with a somewhat comprehensive photo journal of my time in London. Enjoy!
Part 4) Other Notes
The Good:
- There are foxes here!
- You can eat tasty Indian food on Brick Lane, but beware! You will get suckered in by promises of cool deals (free round of drinks, 25% off dinner, no service charge) and then they will try and RIP YOU OFF, like by bringing stuff out that you didn’t order, and charging you for it.
- Toast and tea.
- Other kinds of cool food to eat. SO MANY GOOD CRISP FLAVOURS! BETTER CHEESE!
The Bad:
- The music scene is generally quite crappy. Most of the English rock/pop bands I’ve seen or heard are boring, uninspired, and only show interest in getting a record deal and/or emulating other generic English groups such as the Arctic Monkeys or the Libertines.
- TRAFFIC!
- SEXISM!
- Harder than I thought to find good beer, especially on tap. The Northwest’s abundance of microbreweries totally spoiled me!
← Previous entry: 10/10/2006
→ Next entry: Call for Halloween Ideas
