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Riot of colour at counter-culture scene
It’s one of the hottest tourist attractions in town – in more ways than one! Don Ryan soaks up the atmosphere of Camden Market
CAMDEN Market is a world-class tourist attraction and London’s premier spot for music and gigs. It is also home to a multiplicity of restaurants, bars, clubs, pubs, cinemas, theatres and even art galleries.
Alongside food stalls offering international cuisine to takeaway for a few pounds are hundreds of vendors selling arts and crafts and a huge collection of clothes, old and new. The clothing styles, while usually original, are often downright weird and make “window” shopping great entertainment.
Outlets selling jewellery, books and obscure religious artefacts are peppered among the many antiques sellers who in the late 1970s were the backbone of the market.
But while the world may love this place, many local people simply take it for granted, some even dislike it. To them its role as a centre for the youth counter-culture is responsible for creating in Camden Town an environment that is tacky, unkempt and on occasions even threatening.
Walking around the six individual markets that make up the sprawling Camden Market complex on Saturday was on the whole an enjoyable experience. While a hot sun shone, thousands of cheerful travellers from around the world roamed its streets and walkways, revelling in the atmosphere. The small army of traders who man the market’s retail units also come from across the globe.
The clothes sellers cover every facet of popular fashion, past and present. Carnaby Street may have lost its cutting edge as a centre for teenage style but the memory of what it once represented can be found among the numerous outlets displaying retro clothing from the Swinging Sixties and hippy gear from the happening days of peace and love.
Old meeting new is a common theme: narrow, cobbled walkways lead to Victorian arches occupied by retailers selling futuristic cyborg fashions and ultra-modern contraptions (art?) whose style often harps back to the Surrealism of Salvador Dali.
In the Proud bar, situated in an old horse hospital, cocktails are sipped by punters seated on modern settees and comfortable armchairs in what appear to be a network of stalls that may have once housed sick horses.
Colour is provided not only by the retailers and their goods, but also by the people. Fierce-looking punks – a few appear middle aged – with mohican haircuts were camped on the canal bridge, while younger, dark-garbed goths loitered a bit further down the canal. Both groups were unperturbed by the whirring cameras of thrilled tourists.
There was just one big drawback on Saturday: the market was swarming with people. The many terraced bars were crammed and the best shops were packed. I often had to turn and go back as their was no easy way through. After a while I decided to call it a day and left the market to the tourists who had spent good money to get there.
I went back on Monday as much of the market is now open every day of the year, excluding Christmas Day. Again the sun shone, but the bars and walkways were considerably less crowded. True, there were fewer stalls and some of the shops were shut, but there was still plenty to see and lots to buy.
With me was Charles Dawson, a young local resident who regularly shops in the Lock. Charles does not like the new three-storey glass building beside the Stables Market area.
“It is an out of place mini shopping centre, plonked in the middle of the market,” he says. He feels the current construction within the Stables and the redevelopment of the area effected by the fire in February will lead to similar disasters.
“A market should operate in the open or semi-open, at ground floor level, not in a multi-story building,” he says.
“Ordinary people in Camden have no real say anymore,” he says. He believes the atmosphere and philosophy that has sustained the market for more than 30 years is in the process of being seriously diluted – even, perhaps, destroyed. |
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