C*****m takes a well-deserved battering in local writer's twitter thread

The horror of Clapham Common on the first hot weekend of the year. To be fair, this was taken in May 2018, long before social distancing was an allowable phrase. I took this to illustrate yet another unpublished article on the strange behaviour of  the tribes of Clapham. 

After many weeks of lockdown trying to write a post explaining why lockdown might be a good thing for the dread postcode, SW4 - along comes a much more agile critic with a twitter thread that demolishes any of my remaining excuses for thinking it's OK to live here.

In an epic 17-post twitter thread yesterday, the Clapham-raised, Stockwell-based writer and podcaster Daniel Ruiz Tizon explained why he now avoids the place he so loved as a child.

And why these days, he says, "You cannot get me to #Clapham for love nor money and those that know me well, know not to ask to meet in SW4".

Like Daniel, I also loathe what the name "Clapham" now stands for in discussions about London suburbs (these discussions have been getting very heated on twitter of late).

It has long been a mockable address.  People have been joking about "Cla'am" for two decades or more now. I stopped rising to the bait in 2003, when those same people saw the values of their sensible homes in New Cross and Nunhead and Dalston soaring.

It got to the point in the early 2000s where I started to lie, rather than admit to living here. I would say "close to Lavender Hill". Sometimes more blatantly, by saying Battersea or Stockwell. In my defence I'd point out this flat is less 100 yards from the SW4/SW8 border. But that's like saying you're slightly pregnant.

Face it, hypocrite: you live in Clapham! And are you going to move? No, of course not. Like it or loathe it, I am rooted.

In fact a lot of this blog has been about trying to justify my presence here, even though I am now much more like one of those sad old relics living and dying in their bedsits back in 1985.

I agree with each of Daniel's points about the awfulness of Clapham now. I also agree that "No part of this city, or any city, should be exclusively white and middle class".

I agree that we've lost much of the diversity, the blessed shabbiness, the easy-come-easy-go transitory character Clapham had that made it attractive to all manner of migrants, external or internal.

I was about to argue that Clapham still has a lot of that diversity, it's just not quite so visible, and of course it has. There's still that patchwork of social housing; there are still the old grandees living on the North Side in their well-padded bohemian splendour.  With their views over a Common, often including the little camouflaged tents of migrant workers: late evening campfires, accordion bands, short stay visitors, sharing common turf with the crows. Park bench business dealings. Skunk smoke under the horse chestnut trees. Lone music students practising flugelhorn scales by the paddling pool.

There is still diversity here, but as in most of London's inner-zone residential areas, it's not the diversity you notice so much as the polarity.

There's a local photographer, Jim Grover, who has revealed some of richness of the Clapham demographic, right now. His work, inspired largely by the African-Caribbean congregations of his local church, tapping into the family histories of Jamaicans of the Windrush generation, or by the Jekyll/Hyde character of Clapham High Street, by day and by night.

Yes, here I am on the defensive again, sorry. The problem is that the most visible section of the population, especially in summer, are those youngish, well-off, white, "just-down-from-uni" types that Daniel complains of. The 2020s versions of the 1980s yuppies, of which I was one, if a distinctly shop-soiled example.

The worst time is early summer, when they (we) emerge all at once from their (our) flatshares like flying ants on National Flying Ant Day, to crowd the pavements of the "Old Town", pastel-shade tailored shorts, flip-flops, carefully casual cashmere jumpers, pink flesh turning red, oh Lord. This year, perhaps because of the press coverage of breaches of social distancing, they have been more noticeable than ever.

Poor old boring old Clapham Common. Come on, you can't blame it for the packs of loose-bowelled doggies on shared dogwalker leads who foul it so, nor for the hordes of keep-fit fanatics who will happily shower you with thier sweat if you get in their way.

But Daniel has much deeper reasons for the anger he feels towards SW4  as it is now. The gentrifiers have defiled the neighbourhood he grew up in. It is much more painful for him, than for a latecomer like myself.

I grew up in the leafy suburbs of Croydon, which in those days was categorically not in London. As a child of 7, I remember how the cityscape changed as we pulled out of Clapham Junction on the way to Victoria. The view across the smoking chimneys to the steep terraces on Latchmere Road, the then-new tower blocks of the Battersea council estates, and then the billowing clouds of steam above the power station: it might as well have been the title sequence for Coronation Street.

Yes, here I go, defending the place I arrived in almost by accident after a decade of moving around the postcodes north of the river, from NW1 to W9 to SW3 to E8. Despite claiming to hate everything Thatcher stood for, I too was lured into getting a mortgage, a foot on the ladder. My foot's still on the same rung of that ladder, but all around has changed beyond recognition.

As I peer out of the window so there's a god-awful howl reverberating off the houses, a black open-top Ferrari is hovering and revving up outside, a couple of thirty-something fellers in their designer shades, are braying away.  Lockdown? Wtf's that, matey?

Yep, OK. Clapham now. You win, Daniel.

Note to Brixton graffiti writers: thanks, nice...but we've too many yups here already

Some useful signposting on the overground rail bridge in Brixton High Street...trouble is they all tend to go right, straight to
the Pop Brixton container park....

That new bit of graffiti on Brixton's high-level rail bridge made a nice little photo-story for the Brixton Buzz site.

The writing is on the bridge. It reads: "Clapham that way, you 2D Flat White Tepid Colonialist Yuppy Wanker". There's an arrow pointing west down the Overground line towards the next stop: Clapham High Street.

Yes, it's fun, it's funny, it's to the point. Clapham was thoroughly yuppified back in the 80s - and that strange breed still prevails in much of SW4. But please, I've lived in the bloody area for longer than is reasonable, and the last thing we need is more of the buggers!

In reality the Yuppie has changed a bit since the 80s. Maybe the truest 2018 successor to the yup is the hipster with their artisanal this, their authentic that; the obsession with everything being just so. And of course they would not be seen dead in this postcode: strictly east and southeast London, please...

Vaguely hipsterish people I've met like to mock SW4: it's either Cla'am or Crapham. Probably the least fashionable place in all of London, from the viewpoint of Hackney Wick or Peckham Rye.

What used to be the yuppiest bits of SW4 are now colonised by corporate types - families with live-in au pairs and even chauffeurs living in huge houses. They are much, much richer than thou, antiquated Golf GTi driving yuppy of Peter York fame!

But keeping an Attenborough-ish, threatened species eye on the place, it's clear there are still millennial versions of real 80s-style Sloaney yups in Clapham, with a few differences. 1980s yuppies bought their crappy flats; the 2018 versions have to rent. They tend to share flats in the slightly cheaper parts of the area. Here they often mix with another strand of the young professional type: sports-mad Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans who for some reason still seem to love SW4. Probably it's the proximity of wide-open space on which to play games with strange shaped balls and frisbees.

How consoling it is that the young flock to our great open spaces at the first
real sniff of summer: May 19 2018, Clapham Common...

Every bright morning, every evening, the Common is a nightmare of grunting and sweating types, trying so noisily hard to get in trim like their bronzed Australasian neighbours.

But the core breed, yuppie lethargica, are most visible on the first really warm weekends of summer when they come out en masse and sit their well-fed, pastel-coloured-tailored-shorts-clad bottoms down on that little triangle of the Common nearest to the Old Town shops.
Sadly, they know nothing of re-cycling or even taking their litter (Prosecco bottles, etc) away with them. All the rubbish bins will be overflowing with over-stuffed orange Sainsburys carrier bags by early evening.

....but how sad that they so often neglect to take their rubbish
with them.

The richest ones (who live in the more expensive new builds in Old Town), will show off their powerful sports cars, often annoyingly revving the engines for no good reason at traffic lights. That really is wanker behaviour.

Yet, as one commenter on the Brixton Buzz story says, Clapham is actually a bit shit: it was always a byword for the "ordinary" suburb, ie mediocre, drab, stuffy. And it always will be.

It's not really a place, it's a collection of tube stations. It has no real centre: it's defined, if by anything, by a dirty open space - Clapham Common. The better bits to the north are either Stockwell borders or Battersea-Nine Elms borders. The better bits to the west around Lavender Hill are Battersea. The southern bits improve when they become Balham.

There are a couple of visibly smug areas - Clapham Old Town, Abbeville Road - that typify that first wave of well-heeled yuppiedom. Many of that first wave moved a bit west and south when they shacked up and had kids: hence Nappy Valley (really Battersea again, by Northcote Road, wrecking what was once a decent street market).

But there's a lot more to the social fabric of this district than the stereotype would have you believe. There's still a lot of social housing, and there are still a few hanging-on 1970s boho types, who, as we all now know, were actually the first essential phase of re-gentrification.

This blog has tried to throw some light on the social history of the area. But no-one, in recent years, has done more to reveal the many layers and deep and diverse roots of Clapham residents than the Jim Grover , who has had five acclaimed exhibitions in quick succession, all focusing on the area and the people who live, work and play here.

A fine example of a "Front Room" display cabinet, a rarity
now, but these took pride of place in many West Indian family
homes in south London back in the 60s. From Clapham-based
photographer Jim Grover's recent Windrush Generation
exhibition at the Oxo Gallery, London SE1.

photographer

His most recent show was Windrush: A Portrait of a Generation, a celebration of the West Indians who arrived in this part of south London 70 years ago. He got to know some of the original Windrush passengers and their children and grandchildren at his local church; as with all his work, he earned the trust of the people he wanted to portray before getting out his camera.

Other exhibitions have focused on the long-established Café Delight at Clapham North and its varied clientele; the double life (daytime and night-time) of much-maligned Clapham High Street; and the work of a priest at the church in Clapham Park Estate. It is already an impressive body of work that shows this area in a very different light to the media stereotype.

It's work like Jim Grover's, patient, painstaking, that truly reveals the complexity of a neighbourhood, of communities; lives that are led, families that flourish...others that do not. 

But thanks anyway graffiti people for reminding me of the way home. As for being a yuppie, well maybe 40 years ago. 2D? Well I guess I know what it means: bland, dull, fake. Flat, yes, flat white. But am neither smooth nor sane enough: I'm more like 5D. Flat-white? I prefer espresso. Tepid? Yeah, OK. Colonialist? Well, had to live somewhere. At least I got out out of Dalston just in time so that the real Dalstonites could move in. Wanker? Obviously.

Photographer gets under the skin of Clapham High Street's Jekyll and Hyde character

This uninspiring photo of Clapham High Street is by me: to see this much-maligned thoroughfare in a totally different and much more interesting light, check out Jim Grover's photos on the BBC Online site or better still get along to his exhib-
ition at the Omnibus Arts Centre in Clapham, April 3 - 20

Thanks to photographer Jim Grover, the south London Babylon otherwise known as Clapham High Street is being shown to the world in all its glorious ghastliness - and even a bit of unexpected beauty -  on the BBC website.

 Jim Grover's amazing photo essay has been chosen as this week's  BBC Online"Picture This" feature  - a few days before the photos go on show locally at  Omnibus (the arts centre in the old Clapham Library building on Clapham Common northside).

Jim hit on the brilliant notion of treating his subject, rather like Hieronymous Bosch, in two parts - heaven and hell, and photographing them differently, one in colour, the other black and white.   The division is between night and day - cleverly working on the split personality of this singularly unattractive thoroughfare.

And he works some real alchemy with his camera: sometimes it looks almost beautiful, sometimes as sordid and threatening as a Mean Streets era New York. The real stars of the show, however, are the people, and thankfully there's hardly an upturned-collar rugger shirt in sight.

His daytime shots beautifully capture a suburban world of shoppers, street cleaners, mums, kids, shop keepers, rough sleepers, pensioners, commuters, itinerants; the same old Clapham set. These photos are all in colour, and are all taken on the south side of the street.

The nightlife shots are all black and white and are all taken on the north side of the street, focusing on the true inferno of Infernos, the notoriously tacky night-club, and that strip of bars leading down towards Clapham North. You don't get too much sense of the literal tackiness of this street on a busy summer night, when your shoes can stick to a pavement awash with puked-out Baileys, half-digested kebabs and a mixture of human and canine urine.

Generally he's very kind to Clapham - he doesn't mock or caricature it, and the yuppie-buppie-yummie-mummy-rugger-bugger set don't get too much of a look-in. They tend not to use the thoroughfare that much anyway, in my experience, sticking mostly to the "Old Town" area of max wealth, the plus Venn Street and the pubs around Clapham Common tube station when there are big matches on.

Jim Grover makes gold out of the base metal of this conflicted bit of Lambeth. There are many beautiful photos, even on the BBC site: I am eager to see more at the exhibition.  Favourites so far include some of the long-term shopkeepers and some very atmospheric shots of made-up revellers, and of my favourite bit of the street including the old Greek restaurant (Sappho) and that strange mystical charity shop.

I'm looking forward to seeing these pics at the Omnibus - especially as I have been trying to do something similar in words for years, and failing.

For as long as I can remember the authorities have been trying to clean up and gentrify the high street, to make it more yuppie-friendly. I remember when the Sainsbury's opened on the site of the old bus depot (and later, British Transport museum) - when, for a while, people thought this might be the beginning of an invasion by upmarket retail "brands".

Thank God, it never happened!

Instead it remains as scuzzy as ever, even after the building of that posh new library and health complex with its classy (but vandal-friendly) Andrew Logan artwork spelling out "LIBRARY".

As Jim's photo essay confirms, Clapham High Street remains a real Jekyll and Hyde of a street, a bit down at heel during the day, and an all-out alcohol fuelled war-zone every Friday and Saturday night.

It's rather quaint and old-fashioned in its way. It has nothing to do with the world of cool, arty nightlife so highly prized in places like Shoreditch and Dalston and Deptford and Peckham. It is totally uncool, unfashionable, and un-smart. And yet it remains incredibly popular, mainly it seems, for the kids from the further-out south west London suburbs. In short, it's a rite of passage place for kids with fake IDs.

They come to get hideously drunk in the bars here, they hope to pull, but most seem just to wander up and down in groups, vomiting occasionally, and shouting loudly to each other (I heard one say last week, "Guys, I really have to take a shit right here right now") - before tapping their phones to rustle up some sort of Uber car to take them back to dad's post-divorce black-leather-lined bachelor pad in Putney or Purley.

But, like so many other of London's suburban high streets, the real boss here is the traffic. Like the A23 through Brixton and Streatham, this is a trunk route, combining both the A24 as well as the A3. It is just too big a road to tame.

The pedestrian crossing lights are some of the most ruthless anywhere in London - you get half way across and they start blinking at you. Impatient drivers in their white vans, Audis and Aston Martins - they are  all in such a hurry. You run the last yards and off they go, heading perhaps for lovely gated homes in Nappy Valley, or further out, in Surrey and Hampshire. Heading north, they're looking for posher places to spend their bankers' wad of an evening.

They don't care that they are on Clapham High Street.

But there I go, fantasising again. See the reality of 48 Hours On Clapham High Street in Jim Grover's great exhibition at the Clapham Omnibus, April 3 - 20.