So my friend is being forced to move house (flat)! It’s one of those now ubiquitous “unscrupulous” but probably legal ejections that’s tearing sane minds & lives apart all over London as the residual vestiges of interesting people are expelled from the crapital due to extortionate rents & government solicited land-lord tyranny as part of the Cancervatives undeclared social purging initiative. It’s a peremptory affair, with the landlord urging for the quickest move possible, like a traveling-businessman creep incessantly trying to dragoon a horrifically drunk & reluctant woman at a bar to come back to his cheap hotel room. I get involved because you always help your friends & I know how dreadful moving in a city under pressure can be, let alone London in 2016. But as I watch, I see the toll & extremity of the task having a more & more pernicious effect on my friend & ergo become more active & indignant in the mess. The longer it drags on without solution or respite, the greater the stress & exasperation inflicted, like an untreated wound that starts to fester. It’s a process of attrition & misery proliferation, & the landlords know this & use it to great effect with less & less regulation or restriction thanks to their diabolical assailants in Parliament who make these sick abuses easier, rampant & “socially acceptable”. The economy right? Money making! To hell with people’s lives, any reasonableness or even a scintilla of morality, we don’t care about the details, circumstances or ramifications. Economy over everybody. Economy over everything. No wonder we are at such an unthinkable nadir.
Anyway, I should mention that he is happy to move to any area of London within the radius of zones 1-4, so we are not restricted region wise.
Dudes a drummer & a musician that can live lo-fi…I’ll take the son-of-a-bitch to the Industrial straights of North Acton, just below Harlesden. It’s a huge expanse of ancient warehouses, studio spaces & largely “non-domestic” buildings in what’s considered by many as an “industrial wasteland”. Cheap, or if that no longer exists in this miser city, at least “reasonably priced” accommodation under the guise of studio space should be no problem?! It’s a grim but cult spot that I always enjoyed the excuse to go to. Public transport dependent lame-arses have over ground & underground access, but best of all it’s right close to the canal, which is like the sacred Nile for us urban rats, particularly in this part of town where it’s often overgrown/unmanaged & frequented only really by long range bikers, boat-dockers & vagrants, a demographic that suits me just fine. I’m scheduled to meet the loon at Willesden Junction, so git’ on the wheels & pedal along the canal. Always love the excuse for a canal foray, as long as it’s not to the more gentrified & urban sections. The first thing I look forward to is the cult derelict office block that I am so endeared by, that’s adjacent to the bridge on Old Oak Lane! One of the best defunct & decaying structures in London, inhabited by goodness knows who, open to the world, element ravaged & graffiti tallowed. Best of all was the gigantic blackberry thickets spewing from its environs. Huge green plants spilling there spiked tendrils over the smashed concrete that you would have to walk through to get in. & yes, they produced astonishing fruit late summer/autumn. Well, that’s all gone. Now there’s this giant piece of tawdry eye-gouge dross called “The Collective”. A repulsive stack of leering visual-heresy that’s guaranteed to make you feel depressed. Seriously, who designs this garbage? Who grants this direst of dire planning permission without insisting that they propose something less wilting & retch-heavy? The building is literally disgusting, & I can’t even begin to imagine what those responsible for its design must be like.
Practice in public…cos’ none of us can even begin to afford any kind of art/studio/rehearsal space after the deliberate decimation dolled from the Cancervatives. Blatting like Joe Fraser!
So we walk down Old Oak/Victoria Road, first stop, shabby-as-shit looking warehouse with a placard that suggests space & sectors out front… looks condemned, but there’s a buzzer with professional looking insignia. We are buzzed through into an entirely different environment than the exterior. It’s a little surreal – red carpets, spiral staircase flanked by a life-sized stuffed giraffe (seriously), knights armor, and other antiquated miscellany. I guess it’s a prop-hire? Up the stair-case, past more weird shit & into the office. A girl receptionist is very decent, but nothing’s happening here. Back out & back down the road. Much more inquiring & buzzer bashing, but basically nothing. Finally we get to East Acton tube station, which has had a micro “down-town” grafted to it. Gauche, tacky, speed-built, modern-Chinese-style (puke-inducing basically) on-the-cheap urban unpleasantly. Some express super market & this spacious diner-type structure that we end up in out of pure desperation. The place is awful, maximum sterility, just like our abomination of a government. A bottle of mineral-water just for an excuse to take a seat & get out the cold. It’s then that I notice the toll or exacerbation that this assault is taking on my friend. He does not state it, but I notice in his mannerisms that this situation is out of control & starting to really affect him. The protraction of it, the injustice of it, the indignity of it, the gratuity of it, the feeling of futility & the total waste of energy & time. “All this for just four walls” he keeps saying. & he’s right. You can’t call yourself a “civilization” if the most basic components (a dwelling/even just a room) are so hard &/or ridiculously over-expensive to acquire. But then the NegaTories aren’t civilized creatures, they are utter nihilist reprobates, so I guess it figures. Meanwhile, back in humanity, we watch as a few young girls turn over some chairs then run out laughing. The broad behind the giant counter shuffles out. “Gypsy kids” she says. “They come here all the time to cause trouble”. It was a pretty pathetic display from the kids. But considering how trite & barren the surroundings are, I can’t help but appreciate it as signs of life in some way. The yuppies excreting from East Acton tube are another obnoxious reminder of how diluted, if not contaminated this homogenized city is becoming, once again thanks to our good friends in the Cancervatives, who have killed, very badly impaired or stolen & flogged-off almost everything that was once a thing to celebrate in this dying city.
A modern day Kapsturr in a human capsule! Shut-th-fuck-up & sell your chest hair for pillow-stuffing to survive! & play me some goddamn Papa Joe Jones whilst yur at it chimps! & mek’ sho it swings like Theresa in a wire-wool noose!!
Anyway! My friend eventually managed to find a place in Finchley, at a massive compromise. It’s partially luck & contacts, as he was able to find somebody who still exercises some decency & does not want to charge through-the-roof for their own ethical reasons, even though it’s become legitimate under the “cultural shift” that now means its fine to act like ruthless, unprincipled blood-drinkers & exploitation-fetishist (“Trickle Down Corruption”). As for Acton, I guess it will get the shit treatment like everywhere else? Enjoy it whilst you can, before they concrete-over the canal & insert toll-booths for cyclists manned by G4S taser-teams, operating under their own rules of engagement & corporate by-laws, financed entirely by the tax-payer to an anonymous offshore entity registered to a space-satellite & exempt from prosecution or scrutiny.
The motherfucking Kapsturr in days of yore – in a band that no longer exists, in a studio/venue that no longer exists, in a city that no longer exists, with a standard of creative capacity that is no longer existent – to all but a puny privileged percentage after being scrubbed sterile by Tory pestilence.
If you’re thinking about coming to London, don’t bother. It’s shit, unworthy of your human aspirations, criminally over-polluted to extremes & worst of all, it’s being repopulated with rich wasters that make a mockery of the culture & versatility that this capital used to possess & flaunt.
Clinging on for dear life!
Kaprikansas’s graphic art can be viewed here – https://www.instagram.com/holtzkaner/
great article on projectile-vomit building “The Collective” by Miles Brignall for the Guardian emerged a few days after this event which is worth checking – https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/apr/27/corporate-answer-to-flatsharing-london-collective