Every April I Walk the Full Length of Brick Lane and Write Down What Has Changed Since Last April
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Brick Lane in April: The Annual Inventory
I do this every April. I walk the full length of Brick Lane from the north end near Bethnal Green Road to the south end where it meets Whitechapel, and I write down what has changed since last April. I started doing it in my third year in Shoreditch because I noticed that the changes were accumulating faster than my memory could track them and I wanted a record. I now have five years of records. The trajectory is clear.
This year’s notable changes: three curry houses in the southern stretch have closed since last April. One has been replaced by a natural wine bar with a name I will not reproduce here because it is the kind of name that sounds like a parody but is not. One is empty. One is, according to a handwritten sign, “under refurbishment,” which in my experience of Brick Lane has a sixty percent chance of meaning it will reopen as something else and a forty percent chance of meaning it will reopen as the same thing after a kitchen renovation.
What Has Not Changed
The bagel shop at the south end is unchanged, as it has been unchanged for fifty years and will presumably remain unchanged for fifty more, because it serves the best beigels in London at a price that has increased but remains reasonable, because the bagel shop understands that its value is inseparable from its accessibility and has not yet decided to optimise for margin. This is rare. I am grateful for it every Sunday when I walk past the queue and join it.
The street art has turned over approximately forty percent since last April. The murals on the railway bridge have been repainted. The paste-ups on the lower stretch change faster than any other wall in London that I track. A new piece appeared on the side of what used to be a fabric warehouse and is now apartments: a large-format figure in a style I associate with a specific artist whose work I have been following for three years but whose name I do not know, which is precisely how street art should work. Managing a neighbourhood’s character through the forces of market, planning, and cultural energy is something that Brick Lane has been negotiating since the Huguenots arrived in the seventeenth century. It is still negotiating. The beigel shop is still there. The natural wine bar is new. Both are London. Both are Brick Lane. Both will change. I will be back in April to write it down. Walk Brick Lane yourself and see what you find.
