Night in Brixton, Walk with Will Lg and Bank

The lovely Louisa lives in the area Brixton in central London. I met Lou almost two years ago in Addis, she lives now in London teaching in a Waldorf school. Below is a very flattering photo of her eating chicken wings.

The Brixton area up until about 5 or 6 years ago was fairly run down and now has been in a few ways revitalized by the city and private investment. One such example is the Brixton Market - operating as an open air market during the day, and at night there are many small restaurants and shops that open to serve dinner of various cuisines. We checked out this Chinese dumpling place, a vast difference in price from the NY spot I had tried a mere week before. But again, this is London the city of £££.

Roasted chicken wings - we were pretty hungry so I dont really have proper pictures of the dumplings.

A small jam session here in the middle of the Market.

Leftovers of some glorious meal.

20p for a piss u mad? I actually wizzed here though couldn't be arsed to find a toilet.

Weird hanging tinsel at a bar we went to later.

Later on in the week I met a friend William Lloyd George (hows that for a proper English name?) for a short walk around Soho and to chat and catch up. We hadn't seen each other in about 6 months. We met in Addis - he was doing journalism in the same time that I lived there, around 13 months. We walked and talked and saw a few sights, some that he had forgotten, all of which i had never seen.

Will in front of a christmas bazaar.

Here's Will in front of his school SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies).

Back of the House, there some wage protest happening.

Kings cross station.

Some street grafitti.

Ended the day with a walk around Tower High street and the Banking district of central London.

Monument, which is a memorial to the fire of London.

A better view of the Shard during the daytime, this is taken from the London bridge.

54 Lombard street, location of the first Barclays was nearby this address.

Tower bridge across the way.

Better view.

Thank heavens that they managed to fit in a Starbucks here, no ground is sacred here.

Of kippers, ponies and the South of England

Have you ever settled in nicely to a super quaint cottage in the south of England? No? I hadn't known the feeling either. At least I didn't until a few days ago when I made the two hour coach ride down to the small village of Alderholt by way of Ringwood. My friend and I guess you could say former professor though I never really had a class with him, Adam Brooks, has had a cottage down in these parts for the better part of 8 years. He and his wife Cindy spend part time here, part time in Chicago. Adam's currently on sabbatical from Columbia College Chicago, where we met some years ago. He's got time off until mid 2014 when he will return back to school to teach again. One of the perks of being a tenured faculty at an accredited college. See some of Adam's work here, under the name Industry of the Ordinary, in which he works with collaborator Matt Wilson. 

The duo recently had a retrospective at the Chicago Cultural Center beginning August 2012 until late February 2013.  I was able to take part of the Portrait Project, in which they commissioned artists to make portraits of Industry of the Ordinary. You can see more about that project on their website under Cultural Center. 

Now on to the photos from Hampshire.

Caught an early bus from London to Ringwood. Really early.

Properly named.

Thatched roofs are killin it in the South of England.

Backyard.

Nice morning light, small garden on the right.

Nice grass, it had this strange blue hue in the morning with the frost still on.

After hanging around the house a bit and catching up on some writing we went out for a walk around Christchurch. This an adjacent town slightly bigger in size and boasts a 'vibrant' Monday market.

This fish monger was a right nice guy.

We scored bass for dinner, and kippers for breakfast morning following.

Onesies are hot right now.

This old church and castle fort are still standing around 1000 years later.

Seagulls everywhere.

Across the harbor you can faintly make out the Ile of Wight.

What you looking at swan.

This cheesy George themed pub around the way.

The following morning before I left we went on a trip to the New Forest. It's a national park about a 20 minute drive away from Adam's place. There's lots of wild ponies and fir trees and small woodland cottages. Pretty nice hike in there, it was great to smell the country air. 

We surmised that the little hills and rolling nature of the fields were made by prehistoric glacier activity in the area.

Young love.

Adam walking in the forest.

After spending time both in the Irish and English countryside I have decided that I am a country boy at heart. I do like cities of course for their many things to do and cultural activities but the country for peace and quiet is really amazing. I don't think I could live in the country forever, but as a place to go as a retreat to travelling it is very nice.

Spitafeld Market and United game at a pub

Sunday I met a friend of a friend, Faiza and we walked around east London in a place called Spitafeld Market, which hosts many food stalls as well as clothing and good merchants. It happens every sunday and it gets pretty busy with people out walking around looking for deals and good food. Nice sampling of craft clothing and other items like jewelry and hand made tee shirts.

The market is near Liverpool street station, one of the large train stations of London.

One of the many food vendors selling a the market. There were reperesentations of a wide variety of cuisine from Middle Eastern, Asian as well as many other varieties.

The market boasted an Ethiopian stall, which happened to have cous-cous - not sure how Ethiopian that is.

Some trendy people hanging out at the Market.

As we left there was this sign to tell the leaving patrons to be quiet, especially geared towards the Italians and Spanish.

Loads of bikers travel commuter style in London.

We caught the game at a bar called cafe kick.

Walkabout in London

Got into London late Thursday night around 1am. The day was pretty long as I woke up around 630 from Galway and traveled all the way to London by days end. Took me a little doing to figure out how to make it to Lou's house from Heathrow, but I did eventually. After lugging my stuff down to Brixton I got in the house and had some tea and went to bed around 2am. Next day I didn't do too terribly much, caught up on some writing and stuff and hung out in the neighborhood.

Saturday we decided to walk around the city and eventually make our way Tate Modern. We made our way first to just north of the river by Lambeth bridge. An older industrial area, which has new buildings recently - really the norm all throughout London. Most of the older areas are getting really gentrified, comparable to the older neighborhoods of Chicago.

Vauxhall station, near Lou's place.

Not entirely sure what the building on the left is but the towers in the middle of the frame is the old power station.

Not too much further over the bridge and we made it to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Londons a nice walking town. 

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That's Big Ben and Parliament on the left.

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Westminster Abbey.

We headed down to the South Bank as thats the main way to the Tate. From what I've gathered the Brits have taken on the American tradition of starting Christmas in mid-November. As they don't celebrate Thanksgiving - they move straight from Halloween to Christmas.

Found some post cards here for about 10p, good deal as the rest along the bank were about 40 or so.

Further on there was a guy dressed as Santa getting his pic taken with the kiddies.

They had a x-mas merry-go-round and all.

Underneath the roadway above the South Bank theres a skate park that kids frequent. Apparently the city is trying to take it out but they were signing petitions to leave it up. It's been around for 20+ years.

We pressed on through the masses of people huddling around every which thing, and finally made it to the Tate. Below is a photo from the third story balcony overlooking the Thames. It's rather hard getting used to the light here. The sun sets around 330pm normally and doesn't rise until around 830am. So the really good light to photograph is around 130pm till sundown, very strange to me.

 St. Pauls across the river from the Tate.

Reflection of St. Pauls.

The Tate is a staple of British contemporary art from what I gather. It functions like the Art Institute or MCA in Chicago would. Though unlike the big Chicago museums most of their exhibition space is free entry, apart from the traveling shows they have on view. Currently its Paul Klee and Mira Schendel. The latter's work I was not so familiar with at all, she is a Brazilian modernist painter, this exhibition is her first retro internationally. There was no photography allowed inside of her exhibit but I've got some other photos of the collection rooms.

Third floor at the Tate.

Some Egglestons I hadn't really seen before.

Felix stack of paper.

Glenn Ligon represent.

Gerhard Richter again. Bad deal here though. They decided to tape down the ozclips instead of removing them. What kind of preparation is that, Tate?

Gerhard Richter, always like seeing this work.

Also came across this on the way home. A new building, referred to as the Shard - lots of glass, now apparently the tallest building in London. 

Overall, first real day walking around was a successful. Will report back with more walks and findings very soon. Also currently in the south of the country in Hampshire visiting Adam Brooks. Will shortly post about his small town of Alderhold and neighboring Christchurch and the New Forest.