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Stroud Green Road in The Times, this Saturday (July 19)
There will be a major feature, on the cover of the Times Magazine, about Stroud Green Road this Saturday (July 19).
I wrote it. I'm not announcing this to blow my own trumpet, but because I've lived in this area for around 20 years, and I was really pleased to find this website, and so many other enthusiasts when I was researching it. And I am hoping that the people who use this site will get a kick out of seeing the story of their high street in a national newspaper.
I've always been deeply impressed by the mulitcultural nature of the area, how so many different nationalities are able to live alongside each other and get along. Ethnic ghettos, on the other hand, really depress me. Stroud Green Road is the embodiment of mulitcultural London.
So I interviewed 10 people who live and work on the road, all of them immigrants, all of them different nationalities, and wrote down their stories. It's accompanied by some brilliant portraits taken by Muir Vidler – really a world class photographer.
I hope you'll go out and buy the Times on Saturday, and have a good wallow in the joy of being a Finsbury Parker. For a weekend at least, it will surely be the coolest, trendiest place to live in Britain, so make the most of it...
Thanks, by the way, to whoever it was suggested Ho Chi Minh might have lived on Stroud Green Road. I can't help feeling this might be bogus, but I repeated the notion in the article, and I expect it's going to stick now...
Hedgetrimmer
I wrote it. I'm not announcing this to blow my own trumpet, but because I've lived in this area for around 20 years, and I was really pleased to find this website, and so many other enthusiasts when I was researching it. And I am hoping that the people who use this site will get a kick out of seeing the story of their high street in a national newspaper.
I've always been deeply impressed by the mulitcultural nature of the area, how so many different nationalities are able to live alongside each other and get along. Ethnic ghettos, on the other hand, really depress me. Stroud Green Road is the embodiment of mulitcultural London.
So I interviewed 10 people who live and work on the road, all of them immigrants, all of them different nationalities, and wrote down their stories. It's accompanied by some brilliant portraits taken by Muir Vidler – really a world class photographer.
I hope you'll go out and buy the Times on Saturday, and have a good wallow in the joy of being a Finsbury Parker. For a weekend at least, it will surely be the coolest, trendiest place to live in Britain, so make the most of it...
Thanks, by the way, to whoever it was suggested Ho Chi Minh might have lived on Stroud Green Road. I can't help feeling this might be bogus, but I repeated the notion in the article, and I expect it's going to stick now...
Hedgetrimmer
Comments
Looking forward to seeing it!
I've had a few drinks, so I'll probably regret this in the morning, but I have to be tiresomely sincere now.
As a fellow who bleeds Finsbury Park every time he is upended by one of the many pitbull turds on my street, all I know is that if someone else had written this story, I'd be mad keen to see it – I just imagined people getting wise to it a couple of weeks after it had come out, and being disappointed because they couldn't get hold of a copy of it. Outrageously, journalists don't actually get royalties for their articles. The sum of my weeks of hard work compiling this piece now belongs to The Times. So it benefits me nothing at all by alerting you all to it.
What would benefit me immeasurably would be if Tosscat could be banned from buying it, reading it, smelling it, or even being allowed to wipe his arse on it.
I hope everyone else enjoys it. It was an eye-opening experience for me to meet some of the amazing people who live on Stroud Green Road, and I'd like to think some of that will filter through to the people who read the magazine, too. Even those who do wipe their arses on it.
I bet you couldn't do it. You'd give up after the first interview and turn in an a thousand words of meaningless, florid, cynical claptrap with far too many adjectives. Personally, I'm looking forward to Hedgetrimmer's words.
While we're on the subject, does anyone else think the Observer's gone down hill recently? The magazine's diabolical since Barbara Ellen moved over to the main section. As for the feature on Sophie Conran's kitchen last week - aaargh!
Anyways I'm cycling off to The Times in Wapping now to pick up some early editions of the magazine. Can't wait to see it myself. And to hand out copies to those who so kindly took part. I think they were all a bit bemused when I first wandered into their shops back in the spring and tried to explain what I was doing. It'll be great for them to see that indulging me was – hopefully – worth their time.
The elephant hedge is truly one of the wonders of the world. It crossed my mind to attempt a unicorn or a turtle on my last trim, but I found I could barely manage a straight line. In fact I couldn't even do that. The elephant man is up there with Michelangelo in my books.
I'm not sure about the Observer magazine going downhill, don't see it often enough. But it's generally better than the Times mag...