Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Celebrate Thatcher's death party, tonight, Windrush Square

RaverDrew said:
I'm hearing Foxtons got smashed ?
Click to expand...

Just passed by Foxtons earlier, which had a few cans of paint chucked at it last night. Three guys cleaning up. I said to one of them that I was sorry they had to do such crappy work at 7AM, but Foxton's do pretty much invite it.


Then some chap in a suit appeared (a Foxton's person) and started asking me why I thought it was deserved. He said he genuinely didn't understand why people had a problem and accused me of being a hypocrite because of my appearance (I am caucasian and have a collared shirt on this morning, therefore I'm JUDGED it seems).

I (tried to) explain that the pace of change is happening too rapidly for many people in Brixton, so there is bound to be some friction, and seeing as Foxtons embodies, endorses and represents the sharp end of this rapid exploitation of a community with a notable history of standing up for itself while being relentlessly attacked and scapegoated, then graffiti and paint are an unsurprising and rather mild response from those being so arrogantly driven out.

Some responses were thus:

"Why do people object to us cleaning up Brixton?"
I found this one quite disturbing, as it seems they are trained to believe that they are 21st Century missionaries and that Brixton is a place that needs 'cleaning' up. The 'cleansing' subtext of this position is too much to deal with really. Ayn Rand would love Foxtons.

"We provide jobs. We employ 21 year old girls straight out of college."
All employers 'provide jobs', as if that is some get-out-of-being-a-dick-free card. and.. why mention gender?

"This is London, it's the same everywhere."
- the age old 'that's how it is what can I do about it' trope of the grubby enabler.

"You don't know anyone that works here, you've never dealt with Foxtons, how can it be right?"
- None of this is true. I've been on the receiving end of several daily phone calls from the Streatham Branch who called me every day for a couple of months, sometimes at 8AM / 8PM. They only stopped once I ignored their (blocked) phone number for a few weeks. Sick really, as my local hospital, who I was also expecting calls from at the time, also comes up on my phone as 'blocked', so it's hard to not answer your own phone.
I do know someone who worked for Foxtons, was disgusted with it, and left. Anyway, trying to pull the discussion down to individual or personal isn't the point. The point is how Foxtons behaves and presents itself as company. It's very confrontational, in design and method, with piss poor PR, and they also seem to think they are on a moral crusade of sorts to turn 'living' into locking ourselves into privately owned open plan cubicles. The parallels with blinkered Tory policy are self-evident.

So, the debate on the street outside Foxtons at 7.30AM didn't go well. Foxton's Man is entrenched and blinkered and he thinks I am too. He's right, and so am I. We can't be friends. He ended our dialogue by taking my photo on his phone (a weirdly post-modern attempt at intimidation I guess) then scuttled back into his day-glow cave. Poor lad.

So there is no reconciliation. They wish to drive ordinary folk out with house prices, fill their pockets with ill-gotten gains and run away, and the people can only resort to tossing a splash of paint at their windows. House Prices Vs Paint? Sadly Foxtons have the most powerful weaponry. They have the ability to strangle you with leveraged capital and they remain loyal to crumbling remnants of a dead political ideology. Ordinary folk will be driven out long before Foxtons.
 
So last night I heard about the gathering in Windrush Square around 6-ish. Saw a few photos appearing on Twitter etc. but had to go to a work event in East London. Forgot about it completely. Got back to Brixton around half eleven-ish and thought "Yeah, might as well get the bus, oh look there's the 35 at the stop". Had my headphones on, by the way. Absolutely fucking lost in my own broken world of ambient dubstep and angst-y electronica. Must have noticed peripherally there was some odd people around, but hey, that's not totally unusual. Actually it's usual. So anyway, I get to the bus stop and the bus has no door. The door is all over the floor in many pieces. "Oh great, some dickhead's smashed the bus up. Oh well, there'll be another one in a minute". So as I turn to my left to look back towards the tube two police officers bolt past me and my head and eyes follow them to the right towards Windrush Square.

You know that bit in Jurassic Park where like, Jeff Goldblum and that other dude and that woman and that other other dude are in those jeeps and shit and they see the dinosaurs for the first time?

Yeah, so that was me.

So I hung around for a bit to soak up the chaos then wandered down past the Ritzy home.

Overall I would rate the experience four Foxtons out of five possible Foxtons.
 
We went home just after 8pm as I have a very bad back and it was killing me. Great time had, very pleased to see so may old friends including many, many urbanites.
 
jrangers82 said:
Great atmosphere until the green brigade turn up singing pro IRA songs. (Ironically enough under the union flag of the town hall.) they always love singing their sectarian bile in the nation they proclaim to hate so much.
Click to expand...
What the fuck are you on about?
 
Frumious B. said:
Very puzzling, those dogs. All four of them were so fixated on tearing into each other that they kind of cancelled themselves out. I think it would have been more effective to leave three of them at home.
Click to expand...
About a thousand years ago when a young un in NZ they used to have Doberman police dogs.Turns out Dobermans are pretty intelligent and when asked to do something are likely to come up with that dog face which kind off translates into why? also not to happy about people giving them orders which led to their handlers getting attacked as often as they would attack a "perpetrator".Outcome they got shot of the lot and went with German Shepard's.
 
I see the Mail has used the Tweet I got from Bigham.
Alex Bigham, a councillor in Lambeth representing Stockwell condemned the celebrations and said 'Even if you detested her policies, many of which I did, it is tasteless posturing.'
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Rushy
Ros Griffiths & Co. Reclaiming Windrush Square
2 3 4
Replies
109
Views
7K
blameless77
blameless77
editor
New Year's Eve 2023 -> 2024. Where will you be celebrating?
2
Replies
45
Views
2K
kalidarkone
kalidarkone
editor
Congregate Brixton music and street food festival returns to Windrush Square, Sat 10th Aug 2019
Replies
0
Views
479
editor
editor
editor
Congregate Brixton Festival in Windrush Square, Sat 12th May/1st Sept 2018
Replies
2
Views
832
TopCat
TopCat
editor
David Bowie 1970s Brixton Party Night at the Dogstar, Fri 10th Jan, 2020
Replies
3
Views
685
editor
editor
Back
Top Bottom