2 ms·

I know a lot of tech people in london worked in old street and dalston, but Soho was actually real. One of the nice things was that real people lived and worked

I know a lot of tech people in london worked in old street and dalston, but Soho was actually real. One of the nice things was that real people lived and worked in soho. Mostly it was people to do with clothing or restaurants. Soho never really had the influx of twats marvelling at the quaintness of poverty, you lived there because you either had a workshop, were astronomically rich, had a council house, or worked in either sex, drugs, food or booze. Berwick market is a husk of its former self, and shop rents are way to fucking high to allow experimentation on a new idea. Moreover all but one of the big VFX shops have moved away. its a husk of its former self. It doesn't help that a bunch of rich twats have moved in and gone "gosh, its terribly noisy at night". > The residents group even stopped a comically ugly post-war Tesco from being demolished I suspect the reason for that is because when they did crossrail, they knocked down the top end of dean street and replaced pub, flats and office blocks with a massive souless glass mega shop. which kinda defeats the purpose of soho really. If there was 50 council flats in the top, then it would be more appealing.

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throwaway22032 2y ago
Yes to all of this. What comes immediately to mind is the chip shop in Notting Hill that closed up recently and sold the terrace they were in for 5 million or something daft like that. Rents, rates and generally just policy have made it impossible for real people to exist in basically any "known" area now. Any new business that's even remotely interesting is either loss making or barely breaking even, and so has to have a rich backer. I say rich here not as a slur, but to indicate that they can just decide to spend money on a pet project. That's not how business works, normal people with interesting ideas are pushed out as a result and all that works is huge mega chains and Instagram shit. The odd oldschool place that is either owned outright or has some sort of mega long lease deal might hang on but again it's basically loss making like that chip shop, it'd make more money if you just sold it, which means normal people can't even do it in the first place.

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throwaway22032 2y ago

Yes to all of this. What comes immediately to mind is the chip shop in Notting Hill that closed up recently and sold the terrace they were in for 5 million or something daft like that. Rents, rates and generally just policy have made it impossible for real people to exist in basically any "known" area now. Any new business that's even remotely interesting is either loss making or barely breaking even, and so has to have a rich backer. I say rich here not as a slur, but to indicate that they can just decide to spend money on a pet project. That's not how business works, normal people with interesting ideas are pushed out as a result and all that works is huge mega chains and Instagram shit. The odd oldschool place that is either owned outright or has some sort of mega long lease deal might hang on but again it's basically loss making like that chip shop, it'd make more money if you just sold it, which means normal people can't even do it in the first place.