Okay, this weekend I was in London and I figured I would do a gentrification tour. Well I didn’t get very far as the first day walking around Brixton, I walked so much that my ankles hurt. Then it did not help that I got sick and spent half of my vacation close to the hotel, in bed.
There is the very busy Brixton that I remember near the Tube station, with the market where one could buy halel meat, fish, fruit, cheap clothing items, beauty supplies, what have you. Go a few more blocks away into the residential sections, where I rarely went before, and it is quiet. Of course, it could have been quiet because it was the middle of the day on a Friday. I took a few pictures and wandered around and managed to talk to one person. I had already walked around “Poet’s Corner” and up to Herne Hill and was making my way to another part of Brixton, cutting through Brockwell Park. The park is big, almost as big as Roosevelt Island here in DC, but without all the trees. I was comparing my map with one the park’s “you are here” spray painted over maps when one of the natives asked if I needed any help. The native was a middle aged white woman pushing a 2-3 year old red headed kid, who had lived in the States but relocated back to the UK. I asked about the neighborhood and she said she liked it because it was very child friendly. There was a playground where I had seen a bunch of kids, who from a distance seemed like a non-white crowd. She said near the playground was a building that the kids could go into for activities. I must note that the majority of kids I saw were under the age of 12. Not a lot of surly teens. I’d also seen a mother and child over by one of the duck ponds feeding the ducks and geese. The woman I was talking to told me that at night the ducks and the geese take over, they come out of the ponds joining other ducks from other areas and wander the park.
She considered the area to be friendly.
