Monday, May 24, 2010

East East London

A great exodus from South East London yesterday on the first full day of the extended London Overground East London Line, celebrated by Brockley Central and others. I went to Columbia Road flower market in the morning and then back again to a party in Mare Street, Hackney later on. Left the party at 9:45 pm, took two buses to Dalston Junction and was back in New Cross Gate by 10:30. Others headed to Brick Lane and Spitalfields. Seemingly, as Diamond Geezer reports, many from the other side of London took the train south to check out what we have to offer. Must have been like this when the Berlin wall came down!

As I said here before, the Line could shift people's mental geography of the city to an East/West polarity rather than just a north/south divide: 'By directly linking Croydon and Hackney (or at least Dalston) via Brockley and New Cross it could generate a sense of East London that crosses the river. Today when people talk about East London they generally mean the Eastern part of the city north of the Thames, whereas in Victorian times for instance, Deptford was often described as being in East London'.
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6 comments:

  1. Wolfgang Moneypenny24 May 2010 at 11:11

    SPLITTER!!

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  2. .24 May 2010 at 18:00

    Not suggesting abandoning the South London Republic, more proposing a kind of federated free floating deterritorialized pirate utopia that straddled both the south and east lands!

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  3. Culla24 May 2010 at 21:51

    Hi neil, I did a little review of the ELL when it reopened to New Cross and had already been seeing quite a few people change at New Cross Gate in the morning for the service. My four-year-olds love those open plan air-con trains too. As you rightly suggest I hope it’s not all one-way curiosity/cultural traffic and that there continues to be a good flow of east Londoners checking our area out too!

    best, murray

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  4. bob25 May 2010 at 12:13

    I found the lineside fire delaying trains a rather inauspicious start, but there was joy in my heart as I waited on the Honor Oak Park platform yesterday.

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  5. patrick197125 May 2010 at 17:35

    I'm sure I read somewhere that the Lewisham Centre had done some research when the DLR opened that proved that 15% of their customers came from the Stratford/West Ham areas, so the DLR has already helped people to discover our area. Maybe the ELL will do the same...

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  6. Wolfgang Moneypenny26 May 2010 at 19:04

    "A kind of federated free floating deterritorialized pirate utopia" - beautiful, simply beautiful.

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