rakin' and scrapin'

as is our nature to do contrary "holidays", we spent a few days in london celebrating H's birthday, in what could be termed as the UK snowpocalypse - the media was full of horror stories about the terrible weather, and such... which we averted, by travelling the day before it kicked-in and leaving the day after it all stopped.
but i digress, wednesday night we hit the city in search of vintage fun+japes!
admittedly this led to spending the next morning recovering in the nearby euston station's branch of ed's diner - a chain of retro 50's diners, serving-up authentic hot food on demand(uk sized portions).

nice people in both venues though - at one point, they were so understaffed due to various unavoidable incidents/bad weather - that they had to shut the restuarant, so both us and two other customers were "locked-in" for breakfast, having the whole place to ourselves... friendly people who work there, which is a big change from usual city venues.

the weather was blisteringly cold though - most shop-owners were just glad to see someone come in, even if they were only browsing, luckily i'd packed my woolrich hunters jacket and plenty of pendletons for the sightseeing walks!

we are of course, avid fans of the poirot - thanks to the complete boxset, and so we visited the house where the tv show is set... although it looks a lot less enclosed on camera, almost like it faces onto a public park, which is in fact a locked private green, in the heart of london.

but no matter, it was a great looking art-deco building, looking very dramatic in the snow, and set back from the main drag in a little square.

being a new-wave music fan(since my sonic coming of age in '79), this rather plain street corner was strangely signifigant to me - not only rossmore road, but lissom grove in one shot!

here's me, giving some clash-style attitude, with the mythical westway behind me.
rock&roll icon time...

we headed off into an area i dubbed hipster hell, due to all the on-street shops selling skinny jeans, and second-hand nike pumps(occasionally coming across gems like the above - a great little shop called dolly diamond).

 alfie's antiques was out main destination though - several meandering floors of vintage furniture/items, anything you could want - a pile of 1920's suitcases? a huge 50's light-fitting? tables, chairs, etc...
it's all there, not a lot in clothing, unless you're a collector, but otherwise all the other stuff you don't see in vintage shops(and a hairdressers!)...

we ended-up chatting for a long time, with graham who runs the above stall - manic attic, as he loved to expound on his stock, and swap stories with customers, great guy with knowledge of just about any 50's homeware item.

fortified from the rooftop cafe, and with the blue fluffy poodle radio(no, i'm not kidding), we headed off in search of more japes.

i spotted this interesting jumper on the underground - which i immediately named the bridget jones look, although, farah seem to have issued a zip-up ski-jumper, which we saw around town a lot.

we even had our own nostalgia trip, revisiting the good mixer pub, where we'd both first met-up in fourteen years ago... where we both got carried away with the beers in, missing both our trains, causing an overnight stop-out in london.

we've been through a lot since then, but it still feels like it was yesterday.
the good mixer, has gone back to being a strange mix of aussie barmen and old drinking men, now that the britpoppers who made it famous, have all long gone.

herein is another great london rock landmark now lost forever and proof of the lack of respect that developers have for the cultural heritage of the city.
this is the birthplace of rock&roll in the UK, now a faceless restuarant.
where vince taylor, cliff, the shadows/drifters and every other UK rocker played or hung-out.

i'm not even going to mention the new piccadilly, which will one day be written about in the same hushed tones... too bad they put the rent up so that the owner had to sell-up.
shame on you, whoever you are.

we fitted-in a walk down by the thames, which was of course, tourist free, thanks to the freezing weather... where we stumbled across somerset house - which was showing a dior artwork exhibition, featuring all the classic adverts in their original form:

and, as an extra treat, i also stumbled across an exhibition of kevin cummings joy division photographs.
godlike.

ok, neither of us are particularily chap, i spend most of my time loafing around looking like a truckdriver on a duckhunt, but i also dress madmen style(that's what it's called nowadays!), when the need arises, due to owning several classic suits... that's me + H. heading to the chap ball, wearing a vintage tonic aquascutum raincoat, 50's dark POW suit, and a christy's pork-pie(brogues out of shot).
we've both read the chap, from issue #3 though, and appreciate the humour... indeed i once ran a yahoo group cravateers of the world, which parallelled the world of the chap.
i do believe in being polite though - always let other people go first if appropriate, andi think it's a smart thing to help others out... although i'm too much of a ruffian, to let bad manners go unremarked.
i have a vintage attitude, to go with the haircut(shop owners, restuarantuers... why not play some really obvious nostalgia music, when i'm in your establishment, it's not only fun, but original!), so be warned, i will laugh at you for behaving like a square.

the ball was interesting though - some good acts, and plenty of people watching, which is never tiring(although i didn't regret drinking tonic water, the next morning!).

debates rage now, in regards to the people who turn up to such events, in obvious fancy dress... again, i'm not going to get into the debate(others have said it so much better), but what i wear isn't fancy dressing-up.
imagine, all you hipsters, that stuff you put-on, had a laugh with, that made you feel somehow eclectic.
i feel like that every day, so why don't you try it for real?
anyhoo, we found ourselves outside the venue, at some ungodly hour of the morning, overdressed and in need of a ride home... no taxis were forthcoming - so the fuckitt-notion kicked-in, and we caught a rickshaw home to the hotel!

old clothes a tortured artist do not make

this weekend was definately a bit of a vintage event - i spent yesterday (friday) mooching around vintage shops in town, and of course top banana in kingsheath - where i bought myself a classic A2 flight jacket(brown, and without the fur...), and some unbleached linen converse(very vintage looking).

today - was supposed to to be taken up by waiting for boilerrepairman to come round and sort out our heating with a new boiler(etc...), but they reneged at the last minute, so we suddenly had time to spend.
luckily when i was in top banana, i picked-up a flyer for a vintage fair at the custard factory(even though i didn't think i was going), so we went there instead!
as usual it was in the old library, which despite us arriving within five minutes of opening time, was already filling-up.
there was humourously quite a crush going on, in the aisles(i'm a veteran of the rag market and jumble sales though, so i'm used to it... the trick is not to move out of the way all the time when people cough in your ear, otherwise you will get nowhere! remember YOU bought the ticket.), and i wasn't going to be buying the same stuff as the young hipsters anyway(get thee to urban outfitters, dammit!), so there's no need to worry.
i'm kind-of bemused by the way most people there seemed to just throw the different decades together though, into a sort of pre-millenial mish-mash of 80's and 90's symbolism(very odd)... i came of age in the 80's, and i seemed to have spent most of my time+money in a shop called flip! that sold vintage american clothing(no surprise there)in glasgow, i fcuking worshipped that palce, it was my mecca/lourdes/vatican/whatever all rolled into one(or two if you are counting the basement...).
but some of the ironic 80's stuff i see people wearing nowadays, was only, and i repeat ONLY worn by squares who worked in offices, or skinny boys who thought that tom cruise or the karate kid were role models.... and who spent most of their time fruitlessly chasing the girls i'd hung out with... i remember one xmas night, when i spent the whole evening fending off a square girl, who was wearing a pink denim jacket!
at the fair though - not much in the way of men's clothing(this had been mentioned beforehand, and they are trying to resolve this issue), - but a good cake stall, selling cups of tea and coffee.
admittedly it was a fight for somewhere to sit, but cupcakes were consumed and bought again(in a box to take home), as they were very good.

we visited the regular flea market(which was free to get into, and actually spent most of the money there, at one stall which had piles of 50's exotica( i want to go back to that one!)... plus a fruitless search around a snooty mod section(too many plastic zips on the plaidjackets and strangely a LOT of tweed for my liking).
the living embodient of paulweller/stevemarriot gave H. a really dirty look, which amused me no end, as 1. he was wearing a suit like one i used to wear, back in the 90's, 2. we both wrote mod-fanzines that won "fanzine of the month" in record collector(one month after the other), 3. i once had a long conversation with johnny moke about the whole mod thing, which i can never divulge without fear of a lawsuit 4. i still have a vespa(albeit off the road for the time being - i'd rather have a 650 cc motorcycle these days!, 5. i was born in the damn 60's and - an original revival type(although i was more into the blues+soul than anything)... the first person in my hometown to order a copy of the re-issued my generation album... 6. H. herself is mates with an old rocker who knew steve marriot - need i go on?
thanks to my melungeon head shape though, i never really mastered the paulweller/stevemarriott haircut, i always looked like ronnie lane's taller goofy brother... i look much more comfortable with my hair smothered in grease.

this was a good vintage fair though, bereft of attiutde - but i'd actually forgotten the attitude that some traders (not the ones at the vintage fair, i might add, who were all very pleasant) have towards customers(i think it's a collective insanity brought about by hoarding all this crap that they think is going to be their pension), even though in the past i've experienced stallholders being openly rude(which usually involves yelling that you should be looking at their stall/shop in case you dare to walk past without buying one of their mouldy suede overcoats), and in brighton, one disgruntled shopowner even bellowed down the street to the owner of the shop we WERE heading to(i think it was because we had spent time in his shop the day before without buying any of his mouldy suede jackets!) telling him that he had some customers coming who were going to buy his stuff.
muppet.
i even got a few sideways looks for wearing my A2(i guess some people don't care, that i wear this stuff because i like it, not because i think it's trendy), and my new york hat company gatsby style cap, even got a salacious remark from one sniffy fart... (woah, a clothes snob... but that's "me" isn't it?).
on the whole vintage retailers are nice people, who do it because they like old items and like to sell stuff to people who appreciate vintage, they are always interesting to talk with... funnily enough while on a weekend trip to haworth(a small hillside town that is the home of the brontes) we came across quite a few vintage shops, on the cobbled mainstreet, and wasted a few hours in them, when we should have been soaking-up the literary atmosphere.
at the flea market - our faith in humanity was restored by the nice bloke with the 50's exotica(see pictures), so we left the venue... only to be confronted by a queue heading round the block(they have a facebook group of about 2,000 people, i later discovered, which explains the numbers!), and headed home to enjoy our new old stuff, and imbibe cocktails( i made a cool manhattan).