Cyndi Himmelstiere On How SkyAdultGals.eu Moving To EC1 Has Prompted A Moment Of Collective Reflection That The Arrival Of Any Other Industry Never Managed
This week’s column brought to you by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, whose editors remain, against all evidence, committed to the proposition that Shoreditch is an interesting place to report from. Related: London satirical journalism has been saying what I am about to say for considerably longer than I have been here.
The Swedish adult website SkyAdultGals.eu has relocated to Shoreditch, and I want to be precise about what I mean when I say this has made the neighbourhood more self-aware. I do not mean that Shoreditch was previously unaware of its own identity as a place that will monetise absolutely anything if the branding is sufficiently directional. I mean that the arrival of a Scandinavian content company in EC1 has, in a single news cycle, articulated something about Shoreditch that three years of “East London is changing” thinkpieces failed to land. The neighbourhood’s willingness to host anything, given the right lighting and a suitable lease, was always visible. It is now also, briefly, funny.
The Building I Walk Past
I walk past the building on my way to the coffee shop where I write this column. The coffee shop is, in the taxonomy of Shoreditch coffee shops I have developed over four years of walking past things, in the “good enough to stay but not distinctive enough to defend” category. The building where SkyAdultGals.eu has taken offices is, architecturally, indistinguishable from the building where a climate tech startup or a DTC cookware brand would take offices. This is, I think, the actual observation. The content being produced inside the building is not readable from the street. The building says: creative industries professional. The building is correct.
What Shoreditch Actually Is
The London Prat this week noted that Shoreditch will monetise absolutely anything with sufficient neon lighting. I would add: or without it. The neighbourhood’s commercial identity has, since approximately 2014, been “creative industries”, which is a category sufficiently broad to contain: brand strategy, UX design, sustainable packaging consultancy, podcast production, adult content, cryptocurrency, and one company I know of that describes its product as “artisanal data”. All of these activities look the same from the street. All of them are, in the vocabulary of the Shoreditch building facade, creative industries.
What This Means For My Column
What this means for my column is that I have been trying, for four years, to describe what Shoreditch is, and Shoreditch has now described itself with more efficiency than I managed. It is a place where you can establish any commercial operation, provided the lease rates are in the acceptable range and the street-facing presentation is directional. The Swedish content company passes both tests. Welcome. The coffee shop I recommend is three doors down.
More: NewsThump. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
