Going Back To Camden

Back in February 2008 I wrote about the fire that had damaged Camden Market in North London:  http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/02/flames-in-gothdoms-mecca.html  Recently I was fortunate enough to go back to the area and have a look around at how the repairs, especially to the Stables area of the market had gone.  I must say I was incredibly impressed.  Many areas were untouched by the fire and the shops on both sides of the road up from the tube station to the bridge over the canal are pretty much as they were, though some with dramatic new frontages.  The market hall you come to in the first building having crossed the canal is very similar to how it was before.  Throughout there are new faces but also familiar ones still there.  Interestingly there is a lot of demand for assistants to work on the stalls, I saw three signs along one strip of stalls.  I guess given how much it costs to live around Camden working on a market stall is not going to pay enough for you to live in near vicinity, nor, I guess to commute from too far away.

In the area of the main market, previously I had noted how large companies had been buying modern commercial units dropped like alien pods into the midst of the food and retro clothing stalls.  Whilst some of the reconstruction has put in new shops, I was incredibly heartened to see that far more numerous and small market spaces that now house numerous clothing and accessory stalls.  This space for small traders has helped retain the character of Camden Market, and in fact, I feel give it renewed vigour.  One concern for me is how few now stock Gothic clothing.  Fairy Goth Mother has moved out to Spitalfields in East London and anyway seems to have followed the common trend away from gothic clothing to burlesque.  The only stall I could find selling corsets was by a company called Berlesk.  There only seemed to be Darkside and Black Rose back out on the main road.  I do fear that Gothdom is ailing.  

There were shops selling heavy metal teeshirts, leather belts, silver jewellery and such like, 1950s style dresses shading into Rockabilly style seem pretty popular but the dominant style in Camden now appears to be what I would term 'Brideshead-wear', i.e. light, floaty stuff in pale colours with lots of white, in 1930s styling.  That style was on so many stalls.  I guess I may have to accept that that is the fashion. What concerns me is that it is hardly 'alternative' which is what Camden was supposed to be about.  It used to be Goth or punk clothes, genuine retro clothes, leather and latex clothing, things that you would not find in an average high street.  This remains in the shops on the main road, but it is a pity that it has gone from the smaller stalls, which since the rebuild are actually more numerous.  Why bother to go all the way to Camden to buy something you could get in a branch of Laura Ashley in Guildford?  I suppose that alternative clothes have gone online and this is a pity because people will miss out on the buzz of finding that piece of clothing or jewellery and putting it on and feeling transformed.  I suppose it is a question of supply and demand and in the old days, young language students dressing in the mainstream were always more numerous at Camden Market than Goths on a daytrip.

The rebuild seems to have grouped together stalls of the same kind.  There are now very clear areas for Oriental food, for clothing and for antiques.  This seems sensible and to work.  Some have clearly taken advantage of the rebuild to aggrandise.  I remember Cyberdog being in a kind of multi-roomed pod that as best it could replicated a rave.  Now its doors are flanked by two-storey high statues resembling the robot from 'Metropolis' and certainly you could not miss it.  One delight of Camden is being able to go into stalls/shops with a very different feel.  However, the one characteristic I love that they have kept is that often you feel you are in a souk or a market from either 'Star Wars' or 'Blade Runner'.  Middle Eastern cafes which have appeared wonderfully add to that sense.  The element which most surprised me though, were the statues, huge horses' heads in the Stables area alongside life-sized realistic statues of a farrier shoeing a horse.  There is a metal pergola with pillars in the form of life-sized statues of a range of women, some in Victorian outfits.  This element brings something distinctive to the areas where there are no stalls and people just sit, chat and photograph each other.  There is now a ramp down to a lower level with more stalls as well as the ramps up from before and not knowing where the fire was strongest, I can only guess this was the area which saw the most damage.

I guess I am probably slow among admirers of Camden to have gone back there since the fire.  I guess I was awaiting some announcement that it was back in business.  Being unemployed and living 150 Km away probably did not help either.  I am glad that the rebuild has been so successful and has stimulated small business rather than left the market to be flooded by corporations.  Camden is not to blame for the decline in popularity of Goth culture, and maybe it has not declined greatly, just relocated.  Maybe I am expecting too much, after all, you can buy some great leather coats and a whole range of New Rock boots around Camden still.  However, the Brideshead style seems to be dominant now.  I am heartened by the fact, however, that Camden remains unique and you can have an experience there that you could not find anywhere else in London let alone the rest of the world.  I cannot think of any other occasion when a district has been rebuilt with such success and sensitivity to what was important about it, I am just glad, that they got it right for one of the most culturally important locations in the UK.  If you have not been for a while, I urge you to go back to Camden.

Flames in Gothdom's Mecca

Probably like Goths all over the UK this morning I have been looking apprehensively at the awkward BBC shots of the fire at Camden Market, trying to work out the extent of the damage and what remains. In recent reports on prejudice against Goths it is often stated that the kind of proof that they were a Goth was that they had visited the Whitby Goth Weekend. However, in almost all cases you will find that Goths had made an earlier pilgrimage to Camden. In the Muslim religion one of the five pillars of Islam is that you should make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in your life, and I feel that a similar rite of passage exists in the Gothic world. To some extent, like the Islamic world, the Gothic one is less about geographical boundaries and more about shared attitudes. It does connect with the physical world in locations and Camden is one of them.

Camden Market of course has never been the preserve of just Goths. Many ravers, fetishists, interior designers could all legitimately claim it as its own. Millions of tourists to London have been there and usually heavily outnumber the people from the sub-cultures who visit. Camden, like any London district, is also trendy with its restaurants and wine bars as much as almost any borough in London. Even the Open University has its London headquarters there. However, it is the coming together of retail outlets which provide Gothic clothing and the venues that host performers that Goths like (amongst many others of course) that has made it a focus. Camden is often where someone actually becomes a Goth, they kind of 'come out' to steal a gay phrase, or possibly better termed for Goths, a word a friend of mine uses they are 'turned'. With the age of the internet of course you can pick up Gothic clothing anywhere, but there is nothing like going from shop to shop; stall to stall and getting a coat, boots, trousers, dresses, jewellery, etc. Once you have done that you feel that no-one can now challenge your Goth credentials. I remember going from shop to shop to buy my girlfriend of the time her first pair of New Rocks and feeling a real tingle as if she was on the verge of something exciting and I just loved being part of that. Despite his hectic nature, weirdly, Camden can be a location of many very personal journeys.

I remember the first time I went into the market. It was late afternoon in the Autumn so it was turning dark but not late enough to close. With its food stalls with frying Chinese food and the small lights picking out stalls of memorabilia, large halls of glossy black clothes and seemingly as we wandered among piles of 70s clothes and furniture it seemed to me like a mix between a scene from 'Blade Runner' and something I would expect in the Marrakesh souk. It is labyrinthine and you can see why it would burn so quickly with all its narrow alleys. The assortment of items is just bewildering and you come to learn where you need to pick among the stalls, ushering passed stalls with furniture if you are just seeking out vintage clothing. Many of the stalls would not be out of place in a Home Counties craft market or car boot sale, with huge candles and wooden games, second-hand books and cutlery and postcards and Far Easten puppets and boxes. Then you come across a dark one with rave gear or impossibly long boots. The diversity tempts you into straying into new areas and even a Goth can come away with an old paperback and a sandalwood box. The rambling area has more than one location for stalls, the very grid-like pattern area closest to the underground station, the squeezed in stalls along the edge of the lock and then the main zone mixing buildings, free-standing structures and stalls among the stables. Sewn between all these are the leatherwear shops and the boot shops and the pubs and the venues, even just newsagents and grocery stores. Nowhere I have been has such diversity of products in such a small space. There is the mundane, but crucially there is also the very exotic.

What happens now? Is Camden dead? Well it has always been a commercial place with a spiritual aspect simply laid on top and capitalism and its commerce is robust. Many of the traders are small and you hope they are well insured and can revive. There has already been the encroachment of corporates into the area and the smaller, more individual stallholders, I have long feared, would be muscled out. This fire may accelerate this process. Hopefully the authorities will not simply put a big fence around it and let it mould away as sometimes happens in fire-damaged locations. No doubt though, the density of stalls will be decreased and some traders will never get back in. Hopefully it is not transformed into a kind of Camden theme park simply a shadow of what it once was.

Camden has been ever-changing and will change again, but hopefully it rises from the ashes quickly and without losing its vibrancy and its independence. There are few places in the world that I know where not only can you walk down the street, fully 'Gothed up', not only with pride but feeling you really belong and the back-pack wearing muggles can just look on in awe. That maybe a selfish wish, but it is important for any community to have a place where you feel at home. Okay so we can buy our boots online, but nothing will beat striding out with your bags of new clothes that you have got in Camden. For a new Goth it is almost a test of faith to go and shop alongside members of the community you wish to join. It is the second time you visit that makes the difference, when you step from the underground station in all the newest things you have and now feel you have come home.