Stratford - What's good?

sufi

lala
i take it all back
Cartandhorses.jpg

Cart & Horses, Maryland point
birthplace of Iron Maiden
 

luka

Well-known member
This place is the future and not in a good way. Evrry time I go back to see my mum im shocked, its always got a bit more extreme. The homelessness is insane.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I go to Stratford quite regularly one of my mates lives there. It is a very strange place, this juxtaposition of poverty and these blade runneresque towers jutting out into the skyline, alongside cranes. It's got a very haunting skyline. I often think they could shoot a Blade Runner movie there.

It's also a place where the Westfield Centre acts as a sort of social hub for local people. Which is probably a bit grim.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's very very strange. I think it has the most aggressively ugly new architecture of anywhere in the world. You have African preachers yelling at empty air, Muslims handing out free Korans, tent cities, stabbing gangs, acid attacks... it's fucking fucked plus half of Essex in Westfields
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I don't know of anywhere in London remotely like it.

You mean specifically the homelessness or something else? Maybe the old shopping centre provides a good doss down space, IDK. Been going there since the 80s so very weird to see how much it's changed.

It's a weird place to be sure. I like it for cycling - it's nice to go around the stadium, and cut into the park by the canal but this is mostly 'cos it's safe because the predicted traffic has not materialised. It's very empty. What I imagine Dubai to be like, with all the weird massive architecture. Am fond of the new pool I have to say. I think it looks amazing but yeah, visions of a technocratic elite, just a bit. The shopping centre is a fundamentally hollow experience, like a sheet of glass.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Never been there yet on match day. Maybe that brings it to life. I'm not a football fan but I wonder how the WHU massive feel about their collective decanting.
 

luka

Well-known member
Its already alive Danny. Liveness is not the issue. If anything its too alive! Its writhing fervid insanity. I've been to matches obviously and it's a seperate thing. The fans exist in an isolated airstream.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
It's very very strange. I think it has the most aggressively ugly new architecture of anywhere in the world. You have African preachers yelling at empty air, Muslims handing out free Korans, tent cities, stabbing gangs, acid attacks... it's fucking fucked plus half of Essex in Westfields

Just read this. I think we crossposted earlier. I think your describing the immigrant experience of Newham, the poverty of Tower Hamlets colliding with this shit ugly neoliberal facade. In other places in London that have horrible weird new architecture every cunt has a suit and a desk where they can eat their Pret A Manger so it doesn't seem as weird. Then you have the Olympic facade overlaid over the top, regardless of the economics of people's lives.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I once say some charity muggers in operation down Bethnal Green Road. They asked some little bloke in a baseball cap who was with a mate, they looked like they were on their way to score. He snapped back in full on hideous druggy cockney "You taking the fakking piss, I've got enough problems of my own!!!" and his mate laughed his head off. The muggers had radically misjudged the area. Reminds me of what you wrote above. The same kind of consensual rules don't apply the farther you get away from the "nice" (i.e. middle class) bits of London.
 

luka

Well-known member
I go to Stratford quite regularly one of my mates lives there. It is a very strange place, this juxtaposition of poverty and these blade runneresque towers jutting out into the skyline, alongside cranes. It's got a very haunting skyline. I often think they could shoot a Blade Runner movie there.

It's also a place where the Westfield Centre acts as a sort of social hub for local people. Which is probably a bit grim.

Imagine how mortified you'd be to bump into me there
 

luka

Well-known member
I had a ride round the Olympic park. Very interesting. They manage to keep the poor out so it feels like a kind of mirage. A projection of how London would like to see itself

healthy well adjusted people of all colours and creeds happily co-existing, exercising, reading, romancing, eating expensive gelato, drinking speciality coffee.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've only just realised that the Stratford Wetherspoons, The Golden Grove, which is opposite the Hopkins memorial, is a reference to Stratford's second most famous poet
 

luka

Well-known member
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
 
Fuck knows, I never asked to see if they had a shorthold tenancy agreement or deeds. It was one of those big 3 storey terraced houses, we were all mates of the main dealer. The music was mostly house, cos they were in their 30s and we in our 20s, slumming it for the freebies.
 
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