I'M FUCKING DONE

[shakahislop]

the answer is that they are for me, they should be optimised for me, which means i should be the only person who's allowed to be a tourist anywhere and the rest of you can stay authentic

 

[WashYourHands]

Retail space converted to low cost housing might be a start

 

[luka]

We, and when I say we, as always, I mean I, were talking about this. What happens to the city when retail is gone.

 

[luka]

Retail has been, as long as I've been alive, really the only thing that gets people out and about and circulating through the city during the day. So there's a good chance that in its absence you have ghost towns, people hidden indoors, like over the last two years.

 

[luka]

And obviously in the central districts, offices and shops are in symbiosis. The cages get opened and the inmates flock out en masse for sandwiches and cigarettes.

 

[luka]

The big question for cities now is what might we do together

 

[WashYourHands]

Repurposing is the new normal

 

[luka]

The pub is dead, and retail is dead. What is there to do? Embroidery classes?

 

[luka]

Church is dead... If the only answer to the question is go online then obviously cities lose their raisin detre.

 

[shakahislop]

Retail has been, as long as I've been alive, really the only thing that gets people out and about and circulating through the city during the day. So there's a good chance that in its absence you have ghost towns, people hidden indoors, like over the last two years.

i feel like it's almost over anyway, the retail thing, the going out to go shopping as a leisure activity thing, the stuff that Trainspotting was dead against. the exception being clothes shopping because it actually is better to do in person, unlike a lot of the rest.

i think the 'going out to eat something' thing has replaced it. or at least, the two things (fall of the former and rise of the latter) have happened at the same time.

i don't think its much of a cultural loss personally. especially in england, with how absolutely dominated by massive chains it is.

the question of 'what is there to do?' is a big one that i don't have an answer to. peoples' lives get more and more atomised, or at least this is the trajectory that i can see, and that is really noticeable traveling between england / us and eg south asia. it's a loss and a gain at the same time and hard to make a judgement one way or the other.

 

[shakahislop]

The pub is dead, and retail is dead. What is there to do? Embroidery classes?

basically the only problem with the pub being dead, retail being dead, and embroidery classes being boring, is that people have got to have a way to meet each other in real life. that's the big cultural gap that the last 15 or so years have left i think, that the culture is still figuring out how to resolve, that a lot of changes in the way people live have been great in some ways but in others have made it harder to become mates (or make other enjoyable kinds of social connection) with other people

 

[luka]

I agree retail is done, which is why the question has arisen. And I don't think it's a huge cultural loss either (albeit people were sentimental about record shops) but it does pose the question of what happens to the space. The street is the foundation of democracy, there has to be that shared space that gives us a connection to what is happening to our country, we have to see all the representative types out and about in it, milling around, we have to see the state of the infrastructure etc

 

[luka]

Yes exactly, you can't have a community without a community hub.

 

[luka]

One of the things that's under appreciated about grime is just how young the people making it and consuming it were and as a corrolary of that, how important the youth clubs were in terms of building the networks and incubating the sound

 

[luka]

@yyaldrin as a town planner what do you think about the future of cities?

 

[luka]

Obviously one big argument over the last 15 years is over whether the Internet is good enough and whether it can replace cities as the site of cultural of production.

 

[luka]

It already drives 'The Discourse' and throws up figures like Mark Fisher and Ben Shapiro.

 

[IdleRich]

wow. do you like that part of the international superstar DJ life? i can see how it would be class to rock up in a city and have some ready made mates who want to drive you around and show you things.

Well I'm hardly that unfortunately. I do like that at our level (which is a really low, small level) there is a lot of kind of DIY stuff and on the rare occasions when you do get to play abroad it does feel more as though you have mates ready made than if you were a famous guy who stayed at a posh hotel cos you probably sleep on their floor and so on.

It was ace in Moscow, one guy put us up in the bed in his studio flat and he slept on the kitchen floor for the three or four nights we were there. Then he drove us round everywhere and we never used our Metro Card or whatever you call it. At the end we wanted to give our cards away cos they were totally unused but it was really hard to do, Russians are just really suspicious of someone they don't know giving them something. Older people just wouldn't respond and young ones thought it had to be a scam until eventually some hipster guy got excited cos I was English and he started banging on about Black Books and I pretended to like it a bit just so I could give away our ticket.

Also in Moscow there was this weird thing where if you're the DJ and you go to the toilet they basically kinda cleared everyone out of the way and let you go to the front of the queue - I suppose it made sense cos they were small places where you might have to queue for a while and so if you took ages then it might suddenly all go quiet and everyone would be going "What happened to the music?" "I think he's having a shit" but that did make me feel like a famous person and wonder what it would be like if you were Madonna or someone who lived their whole life like that except much much much more.

I just think it's a bit kinda like sofa surfing or whatever. Like those guys looked after us in Moscow and then we went to Chelyabinsk and someone else looked after us and chances are I won't pay either of them back (definitely not the main guy in Moscow cos he's dead now) but the other day we put on a band in Lisbon and the guy stayed with us and we looked after him in the same way. I like to think that there is a sort of international society of bands and djs and stuff below the level of proper success and as long as you all look after roughly as many people as those who look after you then it will work out even if they are not the same ones.

 

[IdleRich]

Oh right. Well I remember you telling me this and it being sort of awkward because you didn't want to seem ungrateful but at the same time you wanted to say "I don't really like bitter, have you got a Beck's or something I could have instead?"

Yeah that was pretty much exactly what happened.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Church is dead... If the only answer to the question is go online then obviously cities lose their raisin detre.

Queueing for vaccines seems popular and appears to be here to stay. A new kind of church with periodic sacraments, special headwear, sinners and saints.