Really not trying to tread on toes but...

[Streathamite]

yes, I expressed myself clumsily. What I meant was firstly, precisely AKs argument, but secondly theTallulah situation of yuppie-esque types wanting their little bit of vicarious gritty innacitysatylee living, but also expecting Brixton to change to their ways when it suits them. (as referred to on another thread about luxury flat owners objecting to the noise)

 

[reubeness]

Ises One and Ones,

I get such a laugh from this website!!!!

Sit down, take a few deep breaths, think about how lucky you all are to be living and able to say what you like on an open forum.

I was once at a party given by a friend, she had some 'luvvy' friends - they were all a bit 'PR,Stylist,Music, Fashion' - on the surface, OK people, considerate, jolly, black culture tolerant, liked to be living 'on the edge', making friends with the local gangstas and keeping the local dealers happy - as it were. They talked of the neighbours (working class local) as 'pikies' and one described how awful her job had been this week because she had to deal with 'dwarves', who, in her opinion 'were gross'. Oh how they laughed! They weren't particularly rich, nor were they from upper class backgrounds but they obviously thought they were 'better than'.

Look around, how many 'locals' are sweating alongside you at the local leisure centre, yoga class, how many community-based groups are benefiting from the influx of money to the area, how many locals are in the wine bars and pubs, clubs and events. How many 'incomers' are demonstrating about police brutality, stop and search, gun crime, closure of youth clubs, schools.

I sound angrier than I am - I was born here, moved out by my parents when I was 10, because there were too many 'black people' coming in, we sold our house to a Mr Brown from Jamaica. I moved back 14 years later with my children. Brixton is a wonderful place I want it to remain so, there are some absolutely incredible people here and the majority that I know live alongside each other peaceably. I love that the place is noisy, that the driving is unique, that Saturday market is like downtown Jamaica or Lagos and that some of the women (and men) put on that fashion show thing in the summer, I love the heated arguments (the verbal, not the physical).

Blessed Love

 

[hendo]

yes, I expressed myself clumsily. What I meant was firstly, precisely AKs argument, but secondly theTallulah situation of yuppie-esque types wanting their little bit of vicarious gritty innacitysatylee living, but also expecting Brixton to change to their ways when it suits them. (as referred to on another thread about luxury flat owners objecting to the noise)

Who is Talullah?

Have you met her? How many of her are there, and where are they?

If you have seen her does she get in your way?

Which bit of Brixton, or "its ways" are they changing, these Talullahs?

Is it damaging? How?

But how is it any part of your or my business to decry the ethnic or social background of anyone who wants to come and live in Brixton, or anywhere else?

I suspect its reassuring for some people who post here to think of these people as some sort of cultural or class enemy. There's this mad fantasy, half expressed here quite frequently, about somehow presiding over the area and monitoring the habits and outlook of incomers, like the residents committees do in the posh apartment blocks in New York.

Far right or far left, the ultimate objective is control, and the tool to acquire it is the creation of fear by the manipulation of caricature and stereotype.

If you want to defend your idea of Brixton, be precise about your enemies, having first taken the precaution of knowing exactly who and what they are. Otherwise Reubeness will just laugh.

 

[tom796]

You sound just my sort of person.

Say hello if you see me around.

will do mate

My parents story is a bit like that btw. Ordinary but tried hard to rise up you know. (But a bit like Mrs Bucket or something; my dad thought my aunty Ethel and Uncle Reg were "common".

odd thing is, my mother's family was/is a lot better off financially than my father's, but they identify themselves much more with their working class (and scots/irish) roots. my father's family was dirt poor and, more significantly, fairly neglectful (i won't go into it, but nasty history there).

but my dad, who was a hugely talented singer, won a choral scholarship to a boarding school (and then to university) and pretty much created a new (middle class) identity for himself in order, understandably, to distance himself from the nastiness of his own family as well as to 'fit in' at his new school. as far as i know, he paid absolutely nothing for his education, a product i suppose of a different time.

 

[fanta]

Who is Talullah?

Have you met her? How many of her are there, and where are they?

If you have seen her does she get in your way?

Which bit of Brixton, or "its ways" are they changing, these Talullahs?

Is it damaging? How?

But how is it any part of your or my business to decry the ethnic or social background of anyone who wants to come and live in Brixton, or anywhere else?

I suspect its reassuring for some people who post here to think of these people as some sort of cultural or class enemy. There's this mad fantasy, half expressed here quite frequently, about somehow presiding over the area and monitoring the habits and outlook of incomers, like the residents committees do in the posh apartment blocks in New York.

Far right or far left, the ultimate objective is control, and the tool to acquire it is the creation of fear by the manipulation of caricature and stereotype.

If you want to defend your idea of Brixton, be precise about your enemies, having first taken the precaution of knowing exactly who and what they are. Otherwise Reubeness will just laugh.

Now that is a bloody reasonable question!

Nice one Hendo!

 

[Streathamite]

Who is Talullah?

Have you met her? How many of her are there, and where are they?

If you have seen her does she get in your way?

Which bit of Brixton, or "its ways" are they changing, these Talullahs?

Is it damaging? How?

But how is it any part of your or my business to decry the ethnic or social background of anyone who wants to come and live in Brixton, or anywhere else?

I suspect its reassuring for some people who post here to think of these people as some sort of cultural or class enemy. There's this mad fantasy, half expressed here quite frequently, about somehow presiding over the area and monitoring the habits and outlook of incomers, like the residents committees do in the posh apartment blocks in New York.

Far right or far left, the ultimate objective is control, and the tool to acquire it is the creation of fear by the manipulation of caricature and stereotype.

If you want to defend your idea of Brixton, be precise about your enemies, having first taken the precaution of knowing exactly who and what they are. Otherwise Reubeness will just laugh.

WOAH there! stop misrepresenting me! I am NOT slating anyone for their backgrounds, ethnic, social, whatever. How on EARTH did you get that idea? and your jump from there to 1984 is, well, bizarre.
What I am talking about is the sort of smug,arrogant behaviour I have personally witnessed from moneyed incomers who seem to expect to take a pick 'n' mix attitude to Brixton, whose very attitude seems to shriek "this place would be great if it weren't for some of these scruffy shops and people".
The sort of people who object to the noise from the local late-night joint next to where they bought their luxury condo. Who don't give a toss if a long-established, quirky local boozer closes down, just so olong as they get their poncey 'style bar' who seem to me to regard the long-established community as, well, an inconvenience and an embarrassment, but who just love the counter-cultural cool they get from saying "yeah, maaan, I live in Brixton". I've seen this general type of behaviour and attitude manifest itself too often, and in too many different, grating ways, for it to be a delusion on my part, or one or two tossers. It also shouts disrespect for local community values and spirit.
That's Tallulah-isation. And yes, that was a cheap crack...
edited to add; I'm also referring to the economic process currently at work in Brixton. I do believe that long-standing locals are being shafted by the gentrification process currently happening, and that I am bitterly opposed to.

 

[hatboy]

Hendo said:

"Which bit of Brixton, or "its ways" are they changing, these Talullahs?

Is it damaging? How?"

I find this naive. Leaving aside dislike for particular individuals (represented by "Tallulahs"), you can't see it Hendo can you?? The creeping control and oppression? The sanitisation... and demands to turn down Brixton's loud character by monied (and therefore powerful) conservative tastes?

Check the "Brixton Blanding Out" thread again.

Check out Reubeness's insights? She knows.

 

[Brixton Hatter]

There's an interesting parallel here. Some of you may have heard of Cristiania in Copenhagen, Denmark. Basically, it's a kind of autonomous squat/commune/neighbourhood on the edge of the city that's been there since about the 60s. It is unique. Now there is the possibility that the right wing city council will bulldoze it all for yuppie loft conversions.

I think their situation and some of the things they are experiencing mirror totally some of the things going on in Brixton.
- A unique social/cultural area
- Under threat from commercialisation
- Housing shortages
- Drugs/tolerance of drugs as a key factor
- Tensions between older and newer residents etc etc

Read about it here

I'm not really saying anything about - I just thought people might be interested in the parallels.

 

[Anna Key]

The economic part of the argument that AK often puts here though, I tend to agree with.

Often? Didn't you mean "sometimes" or "very occasionally and with persuasive expressiveness?"

Brixton makes estate agents and property developers both salivate and despair.

They salivate because Brixton's beautiful zone 2 parades of Victorian and Edwardian houses should be worth an absolute bomb.

They dispair because they're not... yet.

I heard a local (black) businessman on the radio last year calling for the return of SUS.

The interviewer was stunned (for those who don't know, SUS was a major cause of the 1981 Riots) and asked:

"You want the return of SUS? Why!!?"

The businessman answered (words to the effect of) that wealthy young white people were put off coming to Brixton because they were frighted by the young black men they saw on the street. London money, he said, is in the hands of white people so they must be made to feel safe if Brixton's cash registers are to "ping."

Accordingly, Brixton's young black men should be disciplined by SUS (or some similar law) to make the place "safe" for the white London middle classes to spend their considerable incomes.

OK, this is just one greedy businessman mouthing off on local radio but I suspect many others feel the same.

In economic terms Brixton "punches below its weight." Rents and house prices should be higher. Pret A Manger and Starbucks should be here.

The trouble is that Brixton's wonder and diversity and 190 spoken languages - the reason I love living here - depends on keeping out the conventional white London middle classes. Their blandised culture - supported by Pret and Starbucks - would wreck Brixton. It would transform it into another Notting Hill.

And I remember Notting Hill before it was "made safe" for white middle class culture. I was caught up in, and witnessed, the 1976 riots.

1970s Notting Hill was very like what Brixton is like now. Then the white money and culture wrecked it. Which is precisely what some people want to see happen to Brixton.

 

[pooka]

The businessman answered (words to the effect of) that wealthy young white people were put off coming to Brixton because they were frighted by the young black men they saw on the street. London money, he said, is in the hands of white people so they must be made to feel safe if Brixton's cash registers are to "ping."

Erm, I think your stretching it a bit with 'words to the effect of'. As I recall, it was the guy who owned the Juice Bar, was it not. Basically he said he was sick of dealing going on on the top end of Coldharbour. At that time, everybody and their granny were screaming about it - black, white, yuppy, crusty, the lot. He was wrong to think the Sus laws were either desirable or necessary (the police have plenty of powers under PACE or the Misuse of Drugs Act), but the fact that a Black man should contemplate the return of SUS shows just how exasperated people were at the time.

At no point at all did he say, or hint, anything about 'wealthy young white people being frightened of young black men they saw on the street'.

That's your construction Anna and, sadly, another example of your tendency to exploit race in pursuing some erstwhile class-war bollox. But then, as you might point out yourself, middle class whites are very adept at using whatever it takes to get their way.

 

[moyeen]

That's your construction Anna and, sadly, another example of your tendency to exploit race in pursuing some erstwhile class-war bollox. But then, as you might point out yourself, middle class whites are very adept at using whatever it takes to get their way.

(Runs for the shelter as the bombs are about to go off......)

Isn't being a "yuppie" more of a state of mind rather than a function of class and wealth?


Moyeen

 

[editor]

The sanitisation...

I can't say I'm too upset to see Coldharbour Lane being 'de-edgified' and 'sanitised' to the point where women can now walk down the street at night without feeling unsafe, pawed, hassled or threatened.

Are you?

 

[editor]

Then the white money and culture wrecked it. .

What's "white culture"?

Pubs? Cafes? Cinemas? McDonalds? You tell me!

 

[hatboy]

Mike - I feel sad that you never seen to get me/it either.

No-one approves of genuinely threatening or anti-social behavior. I DISapprove of the more conservative people misunderstanding what is genuinely anti-social or threatening.

Some coming here now have a low-tolerance. And a low-understanding. But their money and therefore power enables them to enforce their intolerant standards. That is wrong and unfair on Brixton.

Juicebar man only cares about money. As he has made very clear on several occasions.

 

[RatuntaMcBlart]

WOAH there! stop misrepresenting me! I am NOT slating anyone for their backgrounds, ethnic, social, whatever. How on EARTH did you get that idea? and your jump from there to 1984 is, well, bizarre.
What I am talking about is the sort of smug,arrogant behaviour I have personally witnessed from moneyed incomers who seem to expect to take a pick 'n' mix attitude to Brixton, whose very attitude seems to shriek "this place would be great if it weren't for some of these scruffy shops and people".
The sort of people who object to the noise from the local late-night joint next to where they bought their luxury condo. Who don't give a toss if a long-established, quirky local boozer closes down, just so olong as they get their poncey 'style bar' who seem to me to regard the long-established community as, well, an inconvenience and an embarrassment, but who just love the counter-cultural cool they get from saying "yeah, maaan, I live in Brixton". I've seen this general type of behaviour and attitude manifest itself too often, and in too many different, grating ways, for it to be a delusion on my part, or one or two tossers. It also shouts disrespect for local community values and spirit.
That's Tallulah-isation. And yes, that was a cheap crack...
edited to add; I'm also referring to the economic process currently at work in Brixton. I do believe that long-standing locals are being shafted by the gentrification process currently happening, and that I am bitterly opposed to.

I've always thought you were pretty careful to not generalise or say anything without backing it up, so I don't think you needed to defend yourself at all. I guess you must have struck a nerve so to speak...

 

[RatuntaMcBlart]

I can't say I'm too upset to see Coldharbour Lane being 'de-edgified' and 'sanitised' to the point where women can now walk down the street at night without feeling unsafe, pawed, hassled or threatened.

Are you?

I've heard that Cold Harbour Lane used to be a bit of a nightmare like, I agree wholeheartedly with what you say. There's "street" behaviour and there's downright fucking cuntish nasty behaviour.

 

[Streathamite]

I can't say I'm too upset to see Coldharbour Lane being 'de-edgified' and 'sanitised' to the point where women can now walk down the street at night without feeling unsafe, pawed, hassled or threatened.

Are you?

you can 'clean up' that street (and I agree-good changes) without turning it into Starbucks Alley. Can't you? It doesn't look to me that it's been 'Sanitised' at all-mebbe regenerated.

 

[Streathamite]

I've always thought you were pretty careful to not generalise or say anything without backing it up, so I don't think you needed to defend yourself at all. I guess you must have struck a nerve so to speak...

no-I just felt that hendo had seriously either misunderstood or misrepresented what I was trying (clumsily) to say - unusually for him.

 

[reubeness]

White culture = privilege, power, superiority - worldwide

 

[hendo]

no-I just felt that hendo had seriously either misunderstood or misrepresented what I was trying (clumsily) to say - unusually for him.

Jezza mate, I have'nt 'misrepresented' you, and I think i understand you clearly..

I think you and other posters here generalise and stereotype as a way of validating your view of what Brixton was and could be. As others have pointed out it tends to be heavily nostalgic and varnished with a kind of cultural snobbery.

When you rage and fume about "Talullah and Tarquin" you come over just like those people on Channel Four documentaries who lament when Slovaks move into their corner of Oxfordshire and start collecting the strawberries.

When you say these people move in and then demand changes, I say, who are they, what changes are they demanding and who are their representatives?

You exaggerate them, if they're there at all.

The truth is that massive economic pressures are bearing down on all of the UK's housing market at the moment, so people of virtually whatever colour or educational background are finding it hard to get a foothold and build a future.

If you want to discuss this, then let's go right ahead, I for one am very very worried about it.

But if its sixth form debating style about the allegedly obnoxious Tarquin and Talullah, then I say, lets postpone. Or if its stuff about how recently arrived "conservative types" don't understand the fragile ecosystem that is this part of Lambeth, well, then I'll take a raincheck.

People are looking for a place to live, as you are, and I was. Sticking a lazy label on them and claiming they have poor manners doesn't help us sort out what should be done.

If you want to make the economic argument stick, and I agree with you about its validity, you have to move beyond caricaturing your opposition. Otherwise you run the risk of coming over as a rump of annoyed nimbyish residents looking for their own variety of special treatment.

 

[tom796]

White culture = privilege, power, superiority - worldwide

this hardly warrants a response, does it?

 

[reubeness]

Ises tom

I guess not!

Blessed Love to all, have a great strong-end whatever you choose to do with it

 

[editor]

White culture = privilege, power, superiority - worldwide

Right. So there's none of this 'white culture' to be seen on rough, poor council estates then?

 

[editor]

you can 'clean up' that street (and I agree-good changes) without turning it into Starbucks Alley. Can't you? .

Indeed.

I'm just trying to find out what people mean by an area being 'sanitised'.

Some could argue that by 'de-edgifying' ('scuse the Bushism!) Coldharbour Lane it was making the street more 'user friendly' to the err, 'white yuppies', and thus assisting gentirfication and therefore could only be a Bad Thing.

 

[editor]

Some coming here now have a low-tolerance. And a low-understanding. But their money and therefore power enables them to enforce their intolerant standards.

Could you give me some examples please?

I don't feel anyone "enforcing intolerant standards" on me when I'm out and about in Brixton.

 

[tom796]

Blessed Love to all

urrr. whatever.

 

[Bob]

Blessed Love to all, have a great strong-end whatever you choose to do with it

Blessed love to you to. Have a nice weekend, Bob.

 

[hatboy]

I was going to say "white culture = mainstream, majority culture" , but I also like your version Reubeness.



Mike - examples of what I've talked about - conservative intolerance - abound in Brixton. I'm sorry you don't see it but I can't keep repeating myself. Search this forum and my posts.

hope to meet you in real life soon Reubeness.

 

[ViolentPanda]

White culture = privilege, power, superiority - worldwide

Bit of a generalisation there.

What do you mean by "white culture"? American, British, French, German, Australian?
D'you mean "high" culture, "low" culture", upper class culture, middle-class culture or working class culture?
D'you mean male culture, or female culture, straight or gay culture?
Unless you define the point you are proceeding from, then you shouldn't expect to get (possibly ) informed replies.

Seems to me that what you mean is a culture that includes some elements of the above, but even then if you're taking it to the point of being "worldwide", I think you'll find that the dominant culture there is the one prefixed with "corporate".

 

[Dubversion]

White culture = privilege, power, superiority - worldwide

i'm sorry, but i find that really simplistic.. as Violent Panda says, it's about corporations and money.. without coming over all Foucault, power is a matrix and it depends where you're looking at it from.. a white person living in grinding poverty in Brixton has no privilege, power or superiority when compared to a black CEO of a US corporation. or a Japanese politician. or an African church leader. or a South American landlord. or whatever the fuck..


generalisations like that aren't helping anybody.