By Penny Rimbaud
Walking down today’s thriving restaurant-lined Church Street, it’s hard to imagine what it might have been like way back in the early 1980s.
In those days Stokey proudly maintained its historic roots as a centre of radical activity: anarchists, lefties, bums, beats, squatters and scallywags, not to mention its notable connections with East London’s gangland. From the Angry Brigade to the equally angry but considerably less politically motivated Kray Brothers, N16 had a colourful past. Ironic, then, that over the last couple of months Church Street’s once vibrant but now defunct Vortex Jazz Bar was squatted by a group of radicals whose credentials were better suited to N16’s black and red flag-flying past than to the gold-paved neon future promised by its numerous estate agents. For an all too brief moment the Vortex became a Social Centre whose stated aim was to offer ‘an essential community and cultural resource’. Nice idea, shame about the bailiffs (they arrived on 6 March). Well, you may ask, is this the last gasp for Stokey’s almost legendary bohemianism? I, for one, hope not.
Before going any further, let me dispel the rumour that the current owner of the Vortex, smooth-talking property dealer Richard Midda of (amongst others) swanky Mayfair’s Centric Securities Ltd, intends to sell-on to coffee-giants Starbucks. Firstly, in a recent phone call with N16’s publisher, Midda categorically denied that this was the case. Secondly, Starbucks head-office have stated that although they are looking at properties in the area, the Vortex isn’t one of them. So I guess that should be that, although, for the record, I want to make it perfectly clear that private entrepreneurs and global capitalists are not the sort of people to whom I generally look for straight answers. That said, the rumours led to a ‘Stop Starbucks’ campaign being set up by a group peripherally involved with the new Social Centre, which in turn led to anti-Starbucks graffiti being sprayed in and around Church Street, pissing off residents, trades-people and organisers from the Social Centre alike. Efforts were then made by the Social Centre to remedy bad feelings through offers to do a clean up, but a schism had been created that helped absolutely no one but Starbucks who I’m sure don’t care two espressos where their advertising comes from. For all this, based on observation of the average Saturday afternoon buggy-pushing clientele of Church Street, my own feeling is that many of them would be more comfortable flicking through the Guardian in a Starbucks than discussing climate change over a cup of Zapatista coffee in a radical social centre, but maybe that’s just what a disgruntled anarchist like myself would say.
In previous issues of this magazine I have documented in detail the history of the internationally famous Vortex Jazz Club, it crucial artistic importance, its significant contribution to the cultural and economic growth of Church Street and its eventual closure under the unsympathetic and calculating deliberations of Richard Midda (for the full story read Issues 22 and 23 on http://www.n16mag.com/). With cynical indifference to its celebrated past, for the two years following its closure, Midda rented the upstairs of the building to ‘The Lounge Bar’, a smoochy jazz outfit serving spicy African dishes to all comers, while the downstairs was rented at a less than charitable price to a Romanian charity organisation. For me, at least, Church Street without the Vortex seemed to have lost its bohemian soul. Small shops seemed to be closing down weekly, while more and more restaurants and estate agents popped up in their place. The bendy buses had turned the street into an over-ground underground station, the Carnival had been ripped-up and dumped in the park, the Leisure Centre was leaking and parking was becoming impossible. But still the house prices rose and the up-and-coming upped and came. The mood was changing, and then, at the end of last year, Midda terminated the leases at the Vortex and vacated the building.
|
