SpamMisery
Pretty comfortable here right under your skin
lol
Coldharbour Lane, Brixton - news and updates
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ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
That's definitely noticeable. The lack of solidarity you might expect on what would appear to be really obvious cases needing community support is quite depressing. It seems that some people would rather defend the prices of some posh cocktail bar than support long term traders fighting for their livelihoods.
Unfortunately, there's an assumption underlying a lot of what's happening to Brixton of "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen". It's a perspective that divorces social value - the utility to the broad local community of a shop catering mainly to local needs - from economic value, and gives us those who say "well, landlords are just charging market prices, they'd be stupid not to".
bimble
floofy
oh shit Rushy, I hope you haven't just got banned for challenging me and my cheese because I'm not offended one bit. Hope you've done something really offensive elsewhere.
I had a window seat near the door whilst eating my expensive delicious cheese in Mamma Doughs, and that woman who sometimes asks for change on CHL was just to the left of me on the other side of the glass. I loved that cheese but yeah, it felt grim. That doesn't mean I won't have the cheese again but for me there was an aftertaste if you know what I mean. It's not about that though - that's the whole point of me coming out as a cheese-munching person who has serious concerns about what is happening in my immediate environment.
What I think you're basically saying there I totally agree with: "A lot of the toxicity and hostility derives from people feeling aggrieved at being painted as insufferably nasty, selfish or depraved": that's what I was trying to get at, the idea that the defensiveness works both ways, people are sort of driven into the trenches by this sort of stupid "there are two camps" thinking.
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ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
In my experience, the only posters engaging in "kneejerk contrarianism" are doing so not as some kind of inchoate opposing reaction to a stimulus, but because they have an investment - be that social, economic or intellectual - and are defending it.
I think you're missing a supremely important point: Some of those sippers are there entirely to experience the context of which you speak. They're flaneurs, wafting through the city vicariously experiencing a version of "real life" that's divorced from their own. Others of those sippers simply don't give a shit about the context or the locale, except as a site for their revels.
Of course.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I'm confused Bimble. First you say this (which I agree with):
But then you say this:
Which is fairly offensive if you think about it - you are suggesting that those of us that like drinking cocktails are wilfully blind to inequality. And yet eating posh Italian cheese is apparently OK? But - oh dear- we are back then to the endless debate comparing one thing that people like to do with their spare cash with another - which is completely boring as you say.
She's suggesting that some of those that like drinking cocktails in such an environment, are blind to it. I think she's wrong. I think that all see the inequality, but that some don't care.
bimble
floofy
Yes. I think I'm ignoring that on purpose instead of just missing it because it makes me feel a bit sick to admit that you're right. You're saying that a lot of the popularity of Brixton as a tourist destination / wild night out is a sort of vicarious thrill / poverty tourism?
Winot
I wholeheartedley agree with your viewpoint
Hopefully it's a big mistake and a mod will be along to correct it in a while.
SpamMisery
Pretty comfortable here right under your skin
A permanent ban for "rules violation". Judging by Rushy's post history, it looks like he didn't do something really offensive elsewhere
leanderman
Street Party: July 2
I'd love to. It was just that today I have been accused of:
cheerleading the destruction of Brixton's 'community';
of being a developer;
of being 'predisposed' to misreading the local situation;
of being inane;
of misreading scripture;
and of be(hav?)ing, er, odd(ly)!
bimble
floofy
Pointless excessive punctuation should be a bannable offence.
But come on, "Feel free to mutually ignore, or ban" was a bit of an odd thing to say kind of out of the blue on a Sunday afternoon.
leanderman
Street Party: July 2
Interesting - but I'll stick to the authoritative, traditional, and obvious, message of forgiveness (and don't do it again).
bimble
floofy
Whilst we're on the theology tip. .
I met a defrocked priest recently told me a really good thing:
You know that bit in the new testament that goes 'it's harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle'?
So he told me that 'the needle' was the name of one of the gates into the walled city of Jerusalem, back in the day, and that the way to get through it was to unburden your camel because the entrance was narrow and low. You could presumably load him up again on the other side if you wanted but you might realise that you didn't really need all that stuff you were carrying. This is totally unrelated to cheese or to coldharbour lane, sorry.
I met a defrocked priest recently told me a really good thing:
You know that bit in the new testament that goes 'it's harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle'?
So he told me that 'the needle' was the name of one of the gates into the walled city of Jerusalem, back in the day, and that the way to get through it was to unburden your camel because the entrance was narrow and low. You could presumably load him up again on the other side if you wanted but you might realise that you didn't really need all that stuff you were carrying. This is totally unrelated to cheese or to coldharbour lane, sorry.
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teuchter
je suis teuchter
I don't think that is the only or even the main reason.
Further comment would earn me a ban.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
That's been the case, to some extent, for many years.
Arguably, more so in the past than now.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
This reminded me of the sociologist Goffman idea of "civil inattention".
Heard it on the thinking aloud radio programme.
Unlike the past when people lived in small groups, for example in villages, we now live in mass societies.
Goffman put forward the idea of civil inattention to explain how people in mass societies deal with with this change.
I would say that on one level many would be troubled by what they see. I would not say its necessarily wilful blindness. Psychologically it can all be to much to take. "Civil inattention" is not necessarily nasty its a way of dealing with mass society.
It can work the other way. Was chatting to colleague about how going around Mayfair does my head in sometimes. He told me that way madness lies and you have to forget about it sometimes.
I do think your are right about the emotive defensive idea in certain cases.
Maybe living in mass societies requires a certain level of callousness. Even if its presented in a civil way.
Occasionally this breaks down. As seen in the last riots. This is what can happen to societies where a lid is kept on inequality. The return of the repressed in Freudian terms. Cities are in a sense living organisms in a way. We like to think of ourselves as independent entities but we are social animals. Freud saw how this was a conflict in humans they could not solve. Marx would disagree.
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bimble
floofy
Yes to all of that except lets please try to leave Freud out of it. I think everything in the world would be better without him having existed and written his ridiculously catchy theories but that's a whole different thread.
editor
hiraethified
If I've read it right, it appears that number 342 (opposite the Barrier Block) is going to be a new branch of a super trendy hair salon run by this East London based gentleman.
I don't think he'll be getting many customers from the estate opposite.
editor
hiraethified
Judging by the way that the nearby strip is being turned into the East Village/Nu-Dalston, I don't think that dark day will be far away
but he might be able to employ someone from that estate!
editor
hiraethified
A low paid cleaner, perhaps?
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
What's Carlos going to do then?If I've read it right, it appears that number 342 (opposite the Barrier Block) is going to be a new branch of a super trendy hair salon run by this East London based gentleman.
I don't think he'll be getting many customers from the estate opposite.
Or do you think the parade will get like "Phone City" on Brixton Road?
P.S. It's a pity they've got rid of George Fell's holy Sri Lankan elephant parade mural from the back wall.
editor
hiraethified
Yes. Get the poor people to service the rich. Right opposite their estates. That's assuming this place will even give anyone from the estate a decent, well paid job, which I doubt.But a job is a job perhaps?
If I've read it right, it appears that number 342 (opposite the Barrier Block) is going to be a new branch of a super trendy hair salon run by this East London based gentleman.
I don't think he'll be getting many customers from the estate opposite.
You never know. Maybe barrier block will get the Aragon Tower treatment. No riverside view though. But I'm sure they could get some trendy fuckers to pay through the nose to live there.
