Bobby Joe opened a store not long ago

Independent shops make life more interesting. If I walk past a Tesco or a Costa either I don't notice it or my mind is sent down predictable ruts (tax/cloned high streets/gentrification) round and round and round until even I'm bored and I like tax policy.

'Bobby Joe's Music Music Music' on the other hand fueled an afternoon's puzzling and had me humming 'Peggy Sue got married'. 

It opened last week on the corner of Tollington Way and Hornsey Road, on the same stretch of road as Ajani's, the Petter Pharmacy, the Organic Stall and Atlas World of Birds. 

The only disappointing thing about the shop is that Bobby-Joe turns out not to be a grey-bearded rocker from Montgomery Alabama. He's a young man who spent ten years working in his dad's music shop (Johnson and Jones, which has been on Dalston Lane for forty-five years) before deciding to set up on his own. His brother's called Steve. I assume their parents took turns choosing names. 

Anyway, with Steve's help, he worked out that there are a lot of people round here who play and a lot of gigs going on and no-one repairing instruments or selling things like guitar strings or indeed guitars.  Or ukeleles.

Or drums. 

They're ace and they know what they're on about so here's hoping it works out for them.

Steve on the left, Bobby-Joe on the right. 

So far it seems to be going well. They've had more customers than they thought they'd have, so much so that they're behind on setting up a website/facebook page/twitter account and on replacing the shutter with something less ugly that lets people see the merchandise because they've been busy doing repairs.  

They're also not sure what to do about opening hours - there's very little trade in the mornings and then a rush of people after 5:30 and it's tricky to balance that with any kind of family life or personal life. I was trying to persuade them not to open until lunchtime and to close at seven but, understandably, they were doubtful. 

Blushing unseen and all that.

I've been past the Savewell Supermarket (corner of Tollington Park, opposite Tesco's) dozens of times since Inkie painted his Mucha-like swirls and they've been on view about twice.

I'd understand if keeping the shutters up meant you could see the stock,  but you can't because the shop's windows are blocked by white panels.

I'd understand if the owners were mad because their property had been defaced, but here the landlord has graffiti artists friends and invited them to paint the shutters.

Meh. Goodness knows there's enough drab shutters on show nearby.

Anyway, there are two more paintings on the Hornsey Road side. One is a black swirly one that I've  never been able to see in full. The other is a bright cubist piece and here it was last week:

March 2013: from a distance

March 2013: closer in

This one is by Hunto. There's less about him on t'internet than there was about Inkie, but you can read a review of his 2009 show at the Rag Factory here and a preview here.

March 2013: close-up with gaping mouth

He was born in Brindisi in 1982 and reminds me for reasons I can't articulate of Repubblica's  cartoonist Altan, who's been drawing Italians resigned to lives of quiet desperation for decades.  Here's his reaction to the latest election:

No?

Okay then.

Pakeman ghouls, or how I'm a scaredy-cat

First things first. Pakeman primary, opposite Kinloch Gardens,  is a fine school. Ofsted love it.

Second things second: In daylight, and if you're expecting them, these cut-outs of children decorating its railings are lively, cute, engaging, and all that stuff.

Third things third: If you first notice them in the dark, around Halloween, and in the kind of mood that once saw you jump because you'd mistaken a cow for a hedgehog (long story) they are spooky as all hell.

Proof:

Eenie, meenie, miney mo; catch you and never let you go

This way to Hades

Minion of Mictecacihuatl

Inkie lighting up the streets

The independent supermarkets opposite the new Tesco's have looked forlorn since it opened. Then this happened:

 It turns out that the Savewell Supermarket landlord is friends with Inkie.

Here's Artbelow on Inkie:

'This artist is one of the most notorious graffiti writers in UK history to emerge out of the 80's Bristol scene. Painting alongside 3D and Banksy, coming 2nd in the 1989 World Street Art Championships, the Kingpin was arrested as the head of 72 other writers in the UK's largest ever Graffiti bust, Operation Anderson.

Inkie has since worked as head of design for SEGA, Xbox, and currently resides in Jade Jagger's west London studio. As in-house artist and designer for prints, illustrations, clothing and with his trademark beauty on large-scale pieces, the globally respected artist, whose diverse inspirations collect Mayan architecture, William Morris, Alfons Mucha and Islamic geometry, has exhibited worldwide, been denounced by The Daily Mail and simultaneously lauded by The Times, his art published in the books Banky's Bristol, Children of the Can, Graffiti World and magazines Graphotism and Dazed & Confused.'

There's more in Time Out, the Telegraph and BBC Bristol.

Here is a picture of Inkie with Kanye at Jade Jagger's house. That is not a sentence I expected to write for this blog.

Pic by bigbadbanshee, thanks to the Stevio...LA LA Lovin' It blog.

Proof of the Mucha influence:

Inkie
 

See? You should go and take a look. C'mon, what else have you got planned for tomorrow? 

I now want: 

A) Kanye to go to Ajani's.
B) Inkie and friends to take over the horrid shutters at With Love and Ajani's and Atlas and the Chemitex Pharmacy and hell the whole damn road. 

I'll settle for B. That would make me happier than seeing this Sydenham or this Leyton initiative being replicated on the Hornsey Road. And the world exists to make me happy for I am the centre of all things. 

I'm going to lie down now.

When someone great is going

Mizhenka is moving to somewhere-else-in-London. This is bad, for us if not for her.

Take a look at her blog to see Upper Holloway looking as beautiful as it can and scroll down to see the Hornsey Road through her eyes and her many cameras.

Elthorne Park

View from window

Redscale view from window

1900/2012

W Plumb butcher's shop

This creates a vacancy for the Hornsey Road official photographer post. Don't suppose you'd like to apply?

Listen carefully

I promised you an upbeat post. This one isn't kittens and ice-cream, but it is about something that makes me glad. Last week an anonymous commenter who goes by BNWY3K on Soundcloud posted this link to their Hornsey Road music.

The piece is built around a recording of a drawn-out argument with a man and woman shouting at each other as his voice gets ragged and hers scornful. It won't solve anything. They've had rows like this before and will again. The voices drift in and out against a slow, claustrophobic haze that loops around like fights do when people are tired and drunk. It sounds how walking through London on a hot day with too many things on your mind feels.

If you've got any, tell me about your Hornsey Road limericks, etchings, raps, clerihews, cyanotypes, jokes, sermons, lomographs, ballads, etc... If you haven't got any, then for goodness' sake hurry up and make some. Tsk.

Batman on Birnam Road

One of the things I feel guilty about (a category that can't coincide with the things I should feel guilty about because otherwise it'd include my belief that people who threaten Bruno Mars are on the side of the angels) is not knowing enough about comics. I blame Rob Liefeld.
 

Liam Devereux 'Nighttime'

Anyway, until andy off stroudgreen.org pointed it out,  I didn't see how this graceful Whistler/Beardsley thing makes Birnam Road look like Batman's about to swoop down and foil crime.

Find out more, including how to buy the print, here.

I'm now reading the collected xkcd. I'm not sure it will help.

This is the second post in a row to mention mediums.

The Holloway Arts Festival closed with a talk by A.L. Kennedy at Platform. She turned up looking comfortably uncomfortable, the uncomfortableness of someone who is used to feeling uncomfortable and doesn't mind it any more.

I copied this photograph from her website. I hope she doesn't mind. It is a good photograph.

I don't know what she's going to be like because I haven't read any of her books.  My bias against novelists that are still alive defeated my bias in favour of people with initials instead of names: E. Nesbit, LBJ, WH Auden, AJ Raffles. I like her face though, and how she wears her hair and have decided that doing a review unprepared is brave rather than incompetent. You may disagree, but it's my blog and I'll dress up shoddiness as elán if I want too.

She starts off being funny and talking about stand-up then something shifts and she starts talking about not being able to speak clearly, how bloody difficult it is to stop mumbling, and how once as a child she got so angry that she started shouting and everyone turned round in shock because they didn't expect loudness from her; and she makes me remember being fourteen so clearly that I can see the classroom and hear my own voice shouting out louder than it had been or would be for years and how it should have felt liberating but didn't.

Next time I'm in the Big Green Bookshop I'll buy her latest novel, Blue Book. It's about a fake medium.

London belonged to them

I found Norman Collins' London Belongs to Me thanks to the wonderful Big Green Bookshop and bought it for its opening sentence: 'There may be other cities that are older. But not many. And there may be one across the Atlantic that is larger.' But not much.'  Collins wrote the book towards the end of the second world war and put a magnificent, partisan love into that line.

I also hoped that in its 700 pages there'd be a mention of the Hornsey Road. I spent four years looking for references to the Mongols with lower odds than that. Did you know that Ghenghis Khan turns up in the Canterbury tales?

Anyway, on page 415 Mr Squales goes 'off to a professional engagement. Right over to Finsbury Park [...] where the North London Spiritualist Club held their meetings'.

Mizhenka photograph

Mr Squales is a conman, who has taken up spiritualism having failed at phrenology, palmistry and astrology. At Finsbury Park he takes on the persona of the Red Indian [sic] 'Mocking Bear', 'gruff, throaty and pregnant with vision' and declares that Hitler will die in 1940.

'Twenty minutes later Mr Squales with a two guinea cheque in his pocket was stepping out in the direction of the Seven Sisters Road.'

My overlooked launderette.

Sometimes I act like I'm blind. I walked past the launderette at 450 Hornsey Road dozens of times before I could see how good a melancholy film set it would make.

The story would be about people falling behind with the rent and in or out of love, the cast would dress in 1950s pastels to match the washing machines or wear dark red saris like the lady who runs the place or go about in converse, hoodies, and a hungover haze. 

It might have a happy ending (I'd like it to, I think) but it couldn't be a hero-wins-the-lottery-and-gets-the-girl type of happy ending. There'd have to be a sense that the happiness was a fragile thing, its feathers in danger from loose nails or an overloaded machine.

 

Time breaks the threaded dancers/And the diver's brillant bow.

There used to be a Tollington Park dance club and it started a craze called 'bohemian dancing'. You can see it here. It was an uncoordinated slow twist and comes with this kickable voice over:

'Hard-boiled, perhaps, but there's certainly nothing stale or bad about the average teenager today. The present generation is probably more maligned than any since the turn of the century, but while some merit this criticism the vast majority are much the same as teenagers have always been.

 Let's take a look at the very latest form of exhibitionism 'bohemian dancing' it is called and these kids start dressing up where the Teds and werdies left off. The craze started here at the Tollington Park dance club in North London, but it's already catching on in other areas.

The youngsters, from 14 upwards, come from all walks of life and include schoolgirls, bank clerks, junk dealers, labourers and window dressers [interesting interprestation there of 'all walks of life'], and talking of dressers the most conventional clothes on view are the new pointed shoes, presumably not for the square person.

As you can imagine, the idea is to look like nothing on earth, even if it means looking like a nightmare, although we must admit there's no limit to their ingenuity. By comparison, ordinary dance floors are dull.

Although they're allowed to let of steam here there's never any trouble. If someone gets hot and bothered they cool off with a long drink of [dramatic pause] lemonade. So remember, next time you're thinking of throwing away those old moth eaten clothes, save them for your teenage son or daughter. It could, in their words, make them look fabulous.'

(The title's W.H. Auden. It breaks my heart, but I doubt he ever came to the Hornsey Road)

'I should have gone barmy, if I’d been a more sophisticated or fragile human being. I wasn’t. I came from Finsbury Park.'

In 1958  Don McCullin took a photograph called 'Cafe, Hornsey Road'.

I can't post it for copyright reasons, but you can see it here. In it a young man with black hair that's almost but not quite in a quiff is biting down on a cigarette and looking sideways and sort of down at you. He's at ease, maybe even prepared to be charming, but he also looks like he'd laugh as he hit you.

The cafe behind him is blurred out by soft focus and by cigarette smoke. It takes a while to see that there's another man sitting beside the protagonist - a friend or a hanger on or both.

This, I suppose, is what gangs look like when you're on the edges of them.

The title quote is from a Financial Times interview, where McCullin says growing up round here prepared him for working in a warzone. 

Picture Framing Therapy

I carted postcards, prints, photocopies, pages torn from magazines and exhibition posters from rented flat to rented flat for years thinking that as soon as I knew I wouldn't have to move for a while I'd put them up. Then we bought here and lived for two years with bare walls. For all my ambitions I didn't know what I wanted or how to get there or who to ask for help and the longer I waited the harder it seemed to choose anything.

The blog was my salvation.Well, when I say salvation I mean kick up the arse to stop me dithering because I found Art and Soul in the Belgravia Workshops and went there.

Zoological drawings, bought in Lille, framed off Hornsey Road

It was heaven. They should market picture framing as therapy.  The workshop is a set of interconnected rooms, painted white, full of the flotsam and jetsam of tools and bits of wood, with a big round window looking onto the courtyard and TMS playing. I'd move in if they'd let me. 

Smyrna/Izmir sea-scene, as per above.

I spent so much time choosing between different mounts, frames and glass types that my dad (who was visiting that day and had kindly come along) decanted himself next door to Libertea for tea and cake. And the pictures look beautiful, far better than in my photographs.

Map here: 

Contact details here:

telephone: 020 7263 0421
mobile: 0771 569 7345
email: bec.b@mac.com

North London Spiritualist church, AKA Electric Music.

This is the North London Spiritualist Church:

Mizhenka photograph, taken with cat camera. 

This is 'North London Spiritualist Church' the 2000 album by Electric Music AKA:

The NME called it one of the 'peripheral, unorthodox musical pleasures of Y2K' and the Scottish Herald said it was one 'of the year's most understated but rewarding albums'.

I am as tongue-tied and uncomfortable talking about music as I am happy talking about books and pictures, but I am listening to it on Spotify as I write this post and it is good. It's on iTunes too.

It was also unlucky, caught by the Hornsey Road singularity where nothing goes as planned.

Electric Music had signed to the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label. It went bust.

Then Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk, whose side project was called 'Electric Music' made them change their name. Have to say, 'Electric Music AKA' is a better answer to that problem than 'London Suede' was.

Then they were thrown out of their North London studio Scabby Rd. This is how they told the story to the Herald:

'It was effectively an old shed with lots of power points up an alley, and during the whole time we were there we never paid for electricity, it had been set up in the past to run off one of the meters upstairs, and I guess they used a lot of electricity and had never noticed. We, of course, were completely skint, and dreading someone finding out, but one day we came back and the guy upstairs had installed one of these sensor lights that go off when someone breaks the beam. ''Unfortunately, he must have used one of our fuses, because when we went into the studio, none of the lights worked any more. The actual studio gear did, so recording continued for a while by candlelight, before we had to give the studio up because we ran out of money.'

They're called Boo Hooray now and in 2010 released 'Haunted'. I wonder if they're still local?

The Tollington Initiative: Hornsey Road Baths 1998

Hornsey Road Baths, 1998, thanks to Daniel Lobo

Daniel Lobo, who goes by the name of Daquella Manera on flickr, took this photograph from the top of Montem Primary School around 1998. 

I'd have posted it anyway, even if this had been the only photograph of the Hornsey Road he'd taken and even if there hadn't been a story behind it because I like the way it makes it seem like derelict London is swirling around you.

But the web is serendipity country and the best things turn up by accident. This photograph is part of the Tollington Initiative, a regeneration project run by London Met (then University of North London) with the Council and the neighbourhood. A book came out of it, as did many other photographs of the Six Acres and Andover Estates.

More later.  

What are you crying about?

If you look up next time you're outside 471 Hornsey Road you'll see this man above the carpet shop:

Look closer. He's wearing a red frock coat and black hat, has a bell in one hand and scroll in the other. 

He looks kind of like this lady: 

Shirley Ballard, the Isle of Wight's official town crier
Thanks to jonno259 on flickr

The carpet shop has been there seventeen years. The Town Crier picture was there when they arrived, and must have been there a long time before that because it was a mystery to them too.

It's signed MS. The shape of the building and its being on a corner near what was once a railway station made me wonder if it had been a pub, but there's no sign of it on deadpubs.co.uk

I'm stumped. Any ideas?

Name the snowman.

I think it might be Robespierre, or George Washington. 

Or James Adam as painted by Allan Ramsay.  Whoever he is, he seems amused to find himself by the Hornsey Road. 

Ideas?

Thanks to @monadic for photographing this pensive Roubillac snowbust.

Got an idea for Platform this autumn?

This is from the good people at Creative Islington:

'Platform are seeking proposals for their autumn programme. The deadline is 20 June (although interested parties are welcome to submit proposals at any time, to be part of future programming).

The Platform Programme at Hornsey Road Baths is focused on engaging 13-19 year olds, primarily from Islington, in arts activities. The two major elements are participatory projects and a programme of performances.

Most importantly, the Platform Programme will be developed and chosen by young people. There is a current group of Young Advisors working to influence the opening of the building through May, June, July and August 2011. A group of Young Programmers will be created to make the programme for the Autumn term 2011, supported by Trestle Theatre Company, who are running the venue in partnership with Changemakers and Isledon Partnership.

Platform will offer a range of art forms, a mix of in school, out of school and holiday projects, and a range of project timings from one day to ten weeks or more. It will target a mix of age groups, led by a range of arts organisations and practitioners in and around Islington.

For full information and how to submit a proposal please contact: Olly Jones platform@trestle.org.uk

www.platformislington.org.uk'

Oh, and check out the cafe at Platform.

Steve Potts' 'Hornsey Road' drawing.

Steve Potts is a local artist (here since 1997) who one day took some photographs from the top deck of the 91 and decided to draw this:

His blog is worth looking at, for his other drawings and for his thoughts on why and what he draws.


'Perhaps there’s something about the combination of immediacy and intimacy of drawing that instinctively attracts me. Drawings tend to live their lives on a small scale, and as such are quieter and often more personal than the declaration of painting. These objects, often made from the most basic materials of pencil and paper, invite us into their world without thinking.'

John Constable

One month before Constable turned nineteen and five years before he gave up the corn and coal trade for art, he painted this: 

John Constable: A Kiln on the Hornsey Road

It's a water-colour on lined paper, measures 20 x 23 cm and sold for £12,650 in 1999.

That's all I can find out about it, without going to the British Library and trawling books. Constable painted many many sketches like this and most haven't had much written about them.

I wonder, though, why he chose to paint the kiln rather than just the countryside.

There had been brick kilns in North London since the sixteenth century, and tile kilns since around 1800. They brought trouble (rogues and vagabonds) and coughed up millions of bricks a year.

So this wouldn't have been novel, and it wouldn't have been idyllic. It feels like, at eighteen,  he went looking for working countryside rather than landscape.