Rookery Road on Clapham Common: the re-surfacing job that time forgot...

Rookery Road cuts across the north-east corner of Clapham
Common. It gets very heavy traffic (as you can see) and yet it has
not been resurfaced in decades. Unlike all the other roads
around here. Why not?

Both Lambeth and Wandsworth Councils have shown exemplary enthusiasm when it comes to re-paving certain troubled areas of their boroughs.

Soon after the 2011 riots, the whole of the Clapham Junction area broke out into a pleasing arrangement of tastefully-variegated pastel-shaded paving blocks: the old dark grey filth-stained pitted tarmac and granite gave way to soothing garden centre chic.

Seven years on this lovely new work is already showing serious signs of decay; no material known to humankind can cope with the daily downpour of spat-out chewing gum, nor the vile stains of McDonald's toxic shakes as they dribble out from discarded polystyrene buckets.

Let alone the pollution from tens of thousands of combustion-engined vehicles passing through the junction every day.

Meanwhile, Lambeth labours away to make little bits of nice street furnishings: Clapham Old Town; Windrush Square; Stockwell Cross. Weeks and months of disruption to locals and passing traffic as gangs of workers rip up the old and carefully lay the new.

All jolly good - we suppose; if we are charitably-minded. What a splendid way to use our council tax quids.

Pity they totally fucked up the traffic flow in Clapham Old Town in the process - giving even more rat-runs to the mumsnet SUVs and off-white-van drivers, confusing cyclists with a ridiculous cycle-lane layout and sending pedestrians all round the houses to find safe crossings. Trouble with those rat-runs is drivers tend to speed up when sneaking into them, hoping they won't be spotted.

And - AND - above ALL! - what about Rookery Road? Yes that little but very important bit of road between Clapham Southside - the main A3 trunk route - and the left turn turn down to the Northside one-way system.

The deeply pot-holed surface of Rookery Road: enough to throw you off
your bike and under the wheels of a speeding SUV.or whatever.
Who will take responsibility for this death-trap?

This couple of hundred metres of road sees very heavy traffic. It is called Rookery Road because it passes under the great plane trees that still accommodate  some truly fine murders of big black bastard carrion crows.

But the surface of this road is also MURDEROUS! It's bad enough in a small car - but approach on a pushbike at any speed and you are dead. Especially if you are trying to position yourself centre road to take the north-flowing lane towards Old Town and Larkhall Rise.

Does this bit of road not fall into one or other borough's care? Who is responsible for this? Most of the other roads around there have been re-surfaced two or three times since even one bit of gravel has been replaced here.

Why?

Maybe Lambeth and Wandsworth think the crows should do it.

Is crazy paving Wandsworth's answer to community cohesion and urban regeneration?

All around Clapham Junction the streets are being paved - not in gold, but in some rather expensive-marble-looking multicoloured patchwork quilt effect.

Yes, urban regeneration is afoot, street furniture is being torn up and rep[laced with more street furnitutre. The old, bloodstained riot-age pavings and railings are being torn up in hugely disruptive stages.

That whole area - St John's Road, Battersea Rise, Lavender Hill, Falcon Road - is undergoing a very thorough post-riot tarting up. Except that I think it all started well before the riots. But that would spoil my entry.

So what they - Wandsworth Council - are doing is covering the pavements and roads in that sort of marble paving, three colours, different sizes, the un-crazy paving of a million architect's impressions.

It looks quite nice at first, and then you see more and more it it, and you start to wonder why - what is this saying to us all, post riot?

That this is now a nice place, like those desirable residential developments in provincial towns or new-build gated retirement resorts on the Algarve, or the patios of gangster-villas in Marbella or Bishop's Stortford, all the better for burying dissenters beneath?

The new paving stretches several hundred yards from the epicentre of the August 2011 events, up to the LIbrary on Lavender, all the way up St John's Road, and large tracts of the worst-hit street are now getting this harlequin-check treatment.

Two or three uncharitable thoughts: first,  it must cost.

Second, is it worth it? Already, where this new paving has been in use for a few weeks, the staining is  just the same as  the old pavements, the unmistakeable chewing gum blots and McDonald's grease spots. The vomit-splashes and urine trials.

Third - most urgent - where are the new bike racks? They've taken down all the old railings around Arding & Hobbs, etc - and so far only a dozen or so new individual bike stands have appeared. These are mostly of the dismal 'n' design, hopeless for attaching more than one bike. And this at a time when the numbers of cyclist-commuters in London  is growing at record rates.

Dub Vendor, the 2011 riots, and the death of Smiley Culture

Not sure if it was the 2011 riots that were to blame, the recession, or the shifting tastes in music and shifting populations - or, most likely, a mix of all these factors.  All I know for sure is that the great reggae record store in Battersea, Dub Vendor, has gone from this area for good.

In fact, it went ages ago. As I began to write this I looked the store up on Google and found that the two final  Dub Vendor shops - in Ladbroke Grove and at Clapham Junction - closed a few weeks after the riots of August 2011, when its founder and owner John McGillivray decided to concentrate on the online mail order business.

For that sad fact I am indebted to an article by Ian Burrell in the Independent. When I heard about the riots, and particularly the destruction by fire  of the old Party shop on Lavender Hill, I wondered why no-one had mentioned Dub Vendor bang next door.

Read the article, it tells you all you need to know -  the way reggae went put of fashion, how Dub Vendor was always not just a shop but also a record distributor, and partners with the label Fashion Records, run by McGillivray's old schoolfriend Chris Lane, which had a studio in the basement of the Clapham Junction store.

As sales of Jamaican import dub-plates and such gradually slipped away as younger audiences moved off towards hip-hop, etc, so Dub Vendor and Fashion moved with the times, cultivating a new generation of local talent,  the toasters and MCs of south London dancehall clubs. Names like Maxi Priest were cutting records there - and in 1984 their biggest ever success arrived in the form of Smiley Culture. He cut Cockney Translation there, and then at the end of 1984 the real chart success, Police Officer. Both tracks are sheer joy, the sharp and hilarious wordplay between Smiley and the cop (played by Smiley) is timeless.

Even before major the UK chart success, Smiley attracted the attention of the ITV show Ear Say which did this special on him and Dub Vendor in 1984.

Dub Vendor  and the burned-out
Party Superstore a few days after the riots
of August 2011

Do watch this video, it is priceless, and  extremely poignant. See the young Smiley - real name David Emmanuel, born in Stockwell 1948, pupil at Tulse Hill Comp -  just as success was hitting him, then think of how he ended, during a police raid on his home out on the rural fringes of south London back in 2011.

Stabbed himself, they said. There was an IPPC report in to all this but its findings were never made fully public, leading of course to intensified suspicion of a cover-up, which in itself - in a hideous bit of irony - was later cited as a possible contributor to the tensions that led to the 2011 riots.

Seems the truly bad riot at Clapham Junction on August  9 2011 was a final straw for owner McGillivray, who sold his shop to the the burnt-out Party store next door to allow them to re-open as a much bigger superstore.

Still, Dub Vendor keeps going, with a great online reggae store, and also a  living presence in the BM record shop in Soho. So, cutting cloth to fit, it is doing.

One step forwards, no steps backwards, please.

No more tears, just buy, buy, buy!