The Battersea end of the Nine Elms nightmare: is there an uglier road in London?

Look what they've done to our road, ma! Look what they've done to Queenstown Road.  This long final strip of Queenstown Road, from Battersea Park roundabout up to Chelsea Bridge, was always a sort of runway or ramp, a diving board from which south London likely lads and lasses launched themselves into the monied worlds of the King's Road, Chelsea, Westminster and beyond.

Mods, rockers, boy racers used that half-mile of tarmac as their catwalk or drag strip. Bikers would meet at the tea hut on the south side of the bridge en route for their Friday night runs out to Heston Services and back.  That bridge, with its Christmas tree lighting,  was always a potent symbol of the gap between north and south London. Posh and arty on the north side, industrial and a bit rough on the other.

Now, it's getting bland on both sides.  The money-zombies have taken it for themselves. They've taken over the Queenstown bit, the whole length of the bit that faces dear sweet Battersea Park. And soon the road that continues on the north side will be overshadowed by the Chelsea Barracks re-development. The views into Battersea Park are still there, but that knockout close-up view of the great looming power station has gone completely.

Look at this photo - how on earth has this happened? People joked about how absurd the old
Observer/QVC building, Marco Polo House, was. This place - occupied briefly by the supposed rival for Sky TV, BSB (later BSkyB as Murdoch added its scalp to his knapsack) - was a veritable cathedral of restraint and good taste compared to what we see now.

Looking north towards the bridge from the Battersea Park roundabout, it seems that three or four bulky, mass-market holiday cruise liners have backed up against the road. Those horrible blunted curves. Wrap-around balconies in some dismal white stone-look material.

It seems they have used every available inch to shove their bulbous bodies as close as possible to each other and to the public realm, the street.

Are these the "affordable" bits of this monster development? Or are the people paying their £850,000 plus happy to stroll around their balconied decks, looking straight across at another block which is identically ugly to the one they live in?

Tell me, please, I really don't get it.

A Saturday in London

World Naked Cycle Ride 2013 reaches Waterloo Bridge

Get east, get out of this south-west airbubble, go and breathe some city air, head east.

Run into trouble if you can. But no , the only trouble was avoiding the publicity seekers - the good, honest demanders of justice, the shiny-eyed, pink-arse-cheeked, body-painted-blue-and-gold naked cyclists, the angry Turks, the oppressed Zimbabweans, the ones who protest on behalf of the hungry of the planet.

Reach Waterloo, wander to Thames, South Bank side, find kids on boards and bikes putting on shows, hear sounds of strong music, hear the great Big Youth chanting so loud and clear, like he's still alive, over the wandering crowds of tourists and culture-vulture folk, the London eye people, the festive hall people, the National Theatre people, the BFI people, the arty ones. But this music rings so clear, and it's another protest.

The kids under the Queen Elizabeth Hall are protesting, because the Arts Centre Folk are going to fill in their dangerous skating place.

The big South Bank plans do not have room for this only - this ONE and ONLY bit of real folk art, of real local art, or real art - in this absurd, now almost completely ersatz zone.

The tragedy is so clear, once you visit South Bank. All those dear old 1950s and 60s  buildings - Hayward, QE Hall, RFH - have been glossed over with a whole lot of 1990s public-funded arts initiative stuff. Words written on banners. Bright splashes of Central American colours, a vain attempt to do something about the death-dark grey of the stained concret casts, the cladding.

As though they needed to do anything to these buildings which have hosted so many of the greatest artists on this planet over the past five decades!

They try so hard to do this.  Why do they have to?

Will it ever work? No, not while it's basically just a ploy to sell overpriced fish and chips to tourists.

Oh yes, thing like Meltdown are marvellous for the 35-55-year-olds who can afford the tickets to listen to the radical artists of their collective younger selves. Themselves now worn down and only too happy to pick up a late cheque or two.

Art? It only worked it's magic in this strange undercroft that the skaters and BMX kids took for themselves, they  were uniquely qualified to make huge things out of those  hostile angles and geometries, which to most seemed like some sort of medieval fortifications, warning you of the depredations of the art within. Fuck off if you don't appreciate what we  appreciate.

So, I cycle away from this place for a thousandth time, I cross Westminster, where already large beer-bellied fellas on mountain bikes are striking out to score another hit for public nudity. I see hundreds of old men, naked on their bicycles, their tired genitalia bobbing and bouncing on the crossbars.

Why am I not joining them? I too should be inflicitng my ghastly nakedness on this Saturday afternoon audience of theatre goers, tourists, lost fans of the Royal family, people on the look out for a better demo, we are all here for some reason, or no reason.

Next year if I am here and they are here I will do the ride, although I doubt if the day will be as good as it was today.