The grime crews are right; each part has its own specificity. It wouldn’t be the worst sin to call it ‘soul’. Camden nostalgic for itself, giant nipple rings and boots on its shops like discards from a punk god. Chelsea riverside. Drab towerblocks in Silvertown by the sugar factory. Facades echo Deco, variably magnificent: Kilburn’s Gaumont State; the Hoover building in Perivale; East Finchley Tube. There are skateparks under the concrete sky of the Westway and the big sky of south London: ‘Brixton Beach’, those graffitied concrete dunes. Each is irreducible, each a gallimaufry, and each clines into its neighbour zones. Topography patchworks – 17th Century noses up through building-years to horrible modern brick the colour of mustard, 80s, 90s and noughties jostling with the centuries-old stones.
Someone’s left a sofa under a hoarding at Dudden Hill, overlooking the railway cut. You could spectate the city. Keep your phone out, and not to talk. London’s preening.
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