Up My Street. Photo: Dylan Collard (4/5)
Posted: September 27, 2012 Filed under: Shops, Street Portraits, Vanishings | Tags: Archway, Blue Carbuncle, Dylan Collard, Tesco's, The Security Shop Comments Off on Up My Street. Photo: Dylan Collard (4/5)
The Security Shop, Junction Rd., Archway. © Dylan Collard.
Dylan Collard:
The Security Shop is, as you would expect, a local locksmiths and one that only opens when the owner fancies opening up. He doesn’t really open in the winter because it’s too cold just to sit in the store … The store is opposite the Wedding Shop and the Blue Carbuncle both of which feature in the series, but that have now both been forced to close. Unlike the other shopkeepers on the road, the owner here is hoping for the arrival of a Tesco’s as it will bring in more customers.
Up My Street is Dylan Collard‘s project documenting shops between Kentish Town and Archway. His exhibition The Twelfth Man is currently showing at Exposure Gallery, 22-23 Little Portland Street, London W1. Dylan is represented by the Vue agency.
Up My Street. Photo: Dylan Collard (2/5)
Posted: September 25, 2012 Filed under: London Types, Shops, Street Portraits | Tags: Archway Roundabout, charity shops, Dylan Collard, Rowan Arts, Stories of the Holloway Road Comments Off on Up My Street. Photo: Dylan Collard (2/5)
Laurence Evans, Second Chance, Archway Roundabout. © Dylan Collard.
From Born and Bred – Stories of Holloway Road:
Laurence Evans was born in Whittington Hospital in 1952. He lived first in Poynings Road and then moved to Caledonian Road where he has lived since 1962. He has volunteered at Second Chance charity shop at 7-9 St John’s Way, in the middle of Archway roundabout, since 2008.
“We’ve got a couple of customers, like a lady called Jenny who comes in and has a cup of tea or coffee and a couple of biscuits, she comes maybe three times a week and there’s a couple of other people who just come in for a cup of tea and they just like the atmosphere and the service.”
“Barry [the manager] and one of our volunteers Basil, they do all of the window displays and a lot of people have commented that the windows are very nice, and ask ‘do you have a professional come in?’ and no it’s just done by volunteers who have a knack for doing window displays. I don’t think I could do that. After Christmas we just did a purely black and white window and people commented that it was a very nice difference. A lot of people say ‘Oh I like that in the window, is it for sale? We don’t want to disturb your window display’ and I say ‘No, everything in the window is for sale’. So you have to take it out of the window and sell it to the customer and then try and find something to replace it.”
The above interview is taken from Born and Bred, an oral history project by Rowan Arts documenting the life of the Holloway Road. You can hear more at www.storiesofhollowayroad.com. Up My Street is Dylan Collard‘s own project documenting shops between Kentish Town and Archway. His exhibition The Twelfth Man is currently showing at Exposure Gallery, 22-23 Little Portland Street, London W1. Dylan is represented by the Vue agency.
Up My Street. Photo: Dylan Collard. (1/5)
Posted: September 24, 2012 Filed under: Interiors, Lettering, Public Announcements, Shops | Tags: Born and Bred, Dylan Collard, Holloway Road, Rowan Arts, Up My Street Comments Off on Up My Street. Photo: Dylan Collard. (1/5)
Elizabeth Sullivan, Beautiful, Holloway Road. © Dylan Collard.
From Born and Bred – Stories of Holloway Road:
Elizabeth Sullivan was born in Hackney in 1991. She moved to Liverpool Road until she was 6 and then moved to Penn Road just off Holloway Road where she has lived since 1997. She has worked as a Beauty Therapist at Beautiful at 639 Holloway Road since 2010.
“I’m always over in Holloway shopping. Even now I’m like ‘I’m just gonna pop over to Holloway’ and I’m over there for hours. I do love it as a little shopping place, you can get a right bargain and if I don’t get my nails done in here there are always the little nail bars. I’ll always meet up with a friend over there and we’ll go for a bit of lunch and have a little shop around.”
“I do waxing, tanning, nails, tinting, facials, massages, a bit of everything really. I really like it here, it’s lovely. The people that come in are lovely. I get on with the staff here hence why I’ve been here two and a half years already and I haven’t planned to move on. I get regular clients who come in and come back to me. With this kind of profession you do build up a clientele just because either they like the way you do certain things or they like coming to see you. You do get a lot of requests. I do think the salon is really good for the area. Everyone that comes in says it’s so nice to have a salon like this locally.”
The above interview is taken from Born and Bred, an oral history project by Rowan Arts documenting the life of the Holloway Road. You can hear more at www.storiesofhollowayroad.com. Up My Street is Dylan Collard‘s own project documenting shops between Kentish Town and Archway. His exhibition The Twelfth Man is currently showing at Exposure Gallery, 22-23 Little Portland Street, London W1. Dylan is represented by the Vue agency.
Rotherhithe. Photo: Geoff Howard, text: Charles Jennings. (2/5)
Posted: September 4, 2012 Filed under: London Types, Pavements, Shops, Street Portraits | Tags: Charles Jennings, corner shops, gentrification, Geoff Howard, London docklands, Rotherhithe, SE16 Comments Off on Rotherhithe. Photo: Geoff Howard, text: Charles Jennings. (2/5)
Corner shop, Brunel Road, Rotherhithe, London, July 1974. © Geoff Howard.
Gentrification by Charles Jennings:
Two geezers in overalls flicking litter into a truck (‘Could’ve bleeding stayed in bed, didn’t know it was only this one’). Keeping their ends up against the taggers and bomb artists on the main road. ‘That shouldn’t be allowed ’cause they laid out a lot of money’. You’ve got your haggard local shops, giving out, giving in, ‘Houses & Flats Cleared, Apply Within’, a stupidly optimistic fingerpost. The coughing of the birds, the single, muted noise of a car driving along in first a block away. ‘Big Reductions on Room Size’, with a tiny old lady picking at some cream-vinyl dining chairs stuck out on the pavement as if they were poisonous, a dysfunctional boy pulling at the hair of a girl in a newsagent’s doorway, the sullen rumble of a train. Who’s going to be passing through? Dead cars, living cars, stuff you do to your car, garages. Those jaded avenues of small houses, nervy pre-dereliction, the effort to keep up. The midget shops, the kebabs, the roaming crazies (woman in a tank top scouring the bins: ‘Fucking said to him, “Fucking listen”‘). This tomb of obscurity: drowning in toxins, grimed-up, catching screams from the estate on the west side, the traffic barrelling to hell on the roundabout. Sort myself out a nice K-reg Astra. It’s shy of life, but only because it’s keeling over.
… for The London Column. © Charles Jennings 2012.
Rotherhithe Photographs: 1971-1980 by Geoff Howard is available direct from the photographer at £25.
The London Column 