East Village to East London: Hoxton, Hackney and Bethnal Green (Part 3)

I spent the last few weeks of summer two blocks away from the canal in the Haggerson area. Or rather Hoxton, since I was just south of the canal. I love this corner of London. Like the far East Village (the area I refuse to call Alphabet City), it's a formerly industrial area and one of the most bucolic parts of the city.

This was the only one map I found that really shows the neighborhoods. But it doesn't show the canal. Limehouse (where the canal begins) is by Canary Wharf. See the the double decker bus? Imagine a blue line going up along the road above the bus and then making a left by Victoria Park and swerving under Broadway Market. Map by Running for Crayons. 

I was a five minute walk along the canal to Broadway Market, which I've written about previously. There's a fantastic Saturday market on this little strip right below London Fields, but even when it's not the weekend, it's amazing. Yes, there's a Costcutters, but beyond that, no other major chain stores. It's all mom and pops: a dozen great cafes and restaurants, a handful of Muslim groceries, a small pharmacy, a sewing store, a 300 year old pub and a nice assortment of other drinking establishments. Oh and THREE bookstores. Totally my kind of neighborhood.

View from Solche Cilician, a Turkish place at the bottom end of Broadway Market. I liked the breakfasts here and the view of the gasworks along the canal.  

I took this picture back in January when I first found Broadway Market. The strip is full of good buskers on a Saturday when the market is happening. This is in front of the Dove, a popular pub. Next door is Stories, another good place for drinks and up the road is The Cat & Mutton, which has been there since the 1700s. 

Broadway Market sells everything from food to vintage clothing. 

Never did try the pho here, but there always seemed to be a line. And the price is so right. 

I remember barbecued eel on a stick from my Taiwanese parents, but jellied eel? Sounds, um, interesting. At night, this place is a gin joint. Literally. That's all they have.  Check it out. 

One of my favorite cafes to hang is this gourmet grocery, La Bouche. Free wifi and a fantastic window to people watch. 

I always want to try everything in the shop. 

This is me editing at La Bouche. Notice the glazed eyes and air of resignation. 

I love the unspoken etiquette of the city. If someone is getting attention from a bunch of cops, city dwellers know to stand around and act as witnesses. This black lady was getting ticketed or something and there was not only that other black lady standing by on the corner but on that patch of lawn to the right, there were another three or four people. And I was watching from the window at La Bouche.  

Broadway Market is bounded by the Canal on one end and London Fields on the other. This place so reminded me of the Grassy Knoll in Tompkins Square. No dog run, but there's a heated swimming pool on the upper end of the park. Yes, I said it's HEATED. And there's a decent pub in the park too.

Cutting diagonally through London Fields, you'd find yourself on Mare Street where the Hackney Picturehouse is. There's a performance space here too that I haven't visited yet. But I did catch Lucy here on Monday, when tickets are only £6. More about that film one of these days... 

My favorite part of this area is the canal. I never did walk the whole way to Angel. I only got as far as  that small finger of water that juts from Regents Canal called Kingsland Basin, where there were a few cafes right along the canal.

Towpath Cafe. Amazing coffee and what a location. 

Spent a couple of afternoons drinking too much coffee at the Towpath. 

This odd looking barge has a screening room for films. 

Towpath Cafe from another angle. Next to Towpath is Proud Archivist, a restaurant/bar/cafe with a serious art gallery. And also a little arepa joint run by a Colombian family.  

Inside Arepa & Co. Got my little fix of sabroso latino here. One thing that London doesn't seem to have much of.  

Selfie reflection at Arepa & Co. 

Coot mum & chick on the canal. 

Yep, that's the life... (click for a pang of jealousy).

In the other direction from Angel, there's Victoria Park, which was opened in 1845 as a goodwill gesture to the poor people of the East End and became known as the People's Park. There was a soapbox in the park that was just as important as the one in Hyde Park and also a pagoda and a bathing pavilion, which closed in 1989. More about the history of the park here. The area outside of the park is still pretty working-class, but now there's Victoria Village, a little pocket of gentrified hipster chic at the edge of the park. 

Entrepreneurial boaters selling coffee, hot dogs and ice cream at one of the entrances to the park. 

Pigeons on some weird sculpture in the park. 

Hanging by the canal lock.

House envy. 

Chicken-sized pigeons. I was told they were from Turkey. 

This pear tree was growing along the park. Also saw blackberries and grapes. 

Roman Road market near Victoria Park is a largely Muslim with requisite fabric stalls, but also fruit and vegetables. 

Ladies on Roman Road. 

South of the canal, on the way to Shoreditch, there's Haggerston Park and Hackney City Farm. There were several city farms set up in London in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Wikipedia, they were inspired by the community garden movement in the Lower East Side. The city farms are volunteer run and there's usually a produce market on the weekends.

I was imagining the Hackney City Farm to be like the Children's Zoo in Central Park, but it was more like a couple of yards with a pig, two goats and a variety of chickens running loose. 

Giant porker at Hackney City Farm. 

Goat getting some sun. 

Chicken face. 

When you've had enough of gazing at the goat and chasing chickens at Hackney City Farms, you can pop by this amazing Italian joint Frizzante, which is right on the outer edge of the farm. 

Random beefeater costume in Bethnal Green. 

Is it a mark of NYC gentrification that there aren't any more shop signs like this? 

This is Lucy Sparrow, at the Corner Shop, her art installation in Bethnal Green. 

Everything in the shop was made of felt. 

Kingsland Road is where you can find the tube and also an incredible assortment of pubs. Oh and this mosque, which made me want to make an animation where it turns into a rocket and blasts off into space. 

This is by no means exhaustive of this area.

I didn't manage to take pictures of Columbia Road. (There is a great art gallery there called Nelly Duff and of course the amazing flower market on Sunday.)  

I didn't take pictures of all the pubs and nighttime fun on Kingsland Road in Dalston (ah, Passing Clouds on Wednesday night!) 

I was here for two weeks and it seemed that I really could live here if I didn't have to worry about pesky things like obtaining a working visa. Did I mention that my room was £100 per week? And it wasn't a hole in the wall with linoleum floors crawling with cockroaches either. No way is that possible in the East Village. Not even way back when. I'm already missing my walks along the canal and trying to figure out my way back for a longer spell...

Eastern Time: London Markets (Part 3)

I’m back in London so I thought I would resume my articles exploring the London that isn’t in guidebooks. Something about New York City makes it impossible to have extra-curricular activities. It’s like you’re on a ship that is full of holes and you’re constantly in need of running down to the hold to bail out buckets of water.

I saved the best for last back in January: the markets in East London. For my first few weeks, I was in the Marylebone area (very posh, like Madison Avenue if it were a couple hundred years older) but then I ended up way way way east in Homerton, which was a little depressing (think carpeted pubs, fish and chips shacks, and the Paki equivalent of bodegas).  As an antidote, I took several trips to Brick Lane, which was my haunt back in 2005 when I was weekending in London from Oxford. It seems to have gentrified some, but it still has a gritty edge, unlike the way Williamsburg or the East Village has morphed into Miami with rats.

Typical day in Brick Lane. Cheap good food! Vintage clothing! Two of my favorite things. 

Bagel shop had a line around the block. Apparently, it's spelled "beigel" here.

Street art everywhere.

Mysterious lady and her weird cat.

Angry South Asian lady yelling at the uniform Brit buildings.

Guy completing Geiger-esque street art.

Elephantopus, enormous stork and random mattresses.

The vintage shopping was amazing in Brick Lane. I was penniless so I window shopped and wistfully rifled through some wardrobe racks. Seems like there was quite a lot that could be bought for about £20.

This shop was mostly '60s and '80s, really inexpensive but not quite me.

Totally wanted that coat on the mannequin. It was £40, quite reasonable.

Self-portrait on line at the coffeeshop that I used to go to back in 2005. Seems like it's more of a bar and music club now. Gone are the free computers and copious handmade flyers for roommates and events in the back room that made it the community hub that I liked.

I also heard about Broadway Market as an example of a market that went way downhill but then recently resuscitated with local produce and specialty food. This was actually only about a 20 minute walk from where I was and there was a canal that someone said was an interesting walk. So on one of my last Sundays, I decided to take a visit and I discovered an amazing corner of London.

Turkish olive guy.

Pies, anyone?

Still have no idea what a scotch egg is. I was hungry but this didn't look that substantial and I only had about £6 to spend.

The mushroom risotto was only £5 and delicious.

Guys scraping cheese into my risotto. Mmmm, cannot wait.

Another cheap choice for eats at the Broadway Market with nice area of beach chairs.

Self-portait at Broadway Market.

Any place with second-hand books must be the place. There actually were TWO second-hand bookshops on this wee little drag.

At the end of Broadway Market, a little sign pointed to Regent's Canal down a set of stairs. Like Alice creeping down the rabbit hole, I found a whole other London, one that immediately felt like somewhere I wanted to live. It's beautiful and serene but it still has a working-class reality. The people living on the houseboats aren't wealthy yachters. They're fringe dwellers trading rusty, leaking, cramped quarters for the freedom of an affordable home and the sweetness of being right on the water. There are high-rise condos along the canal, but there are also bleak housing projects (what they call "estates" here) and houses that look like they date back at least a hundred years. You can find joggers and dog-walkers, as well as picnic parties and lonely men having a beer by themselves.

The Regent's Canal, so lovely but so very real.

Cat on a houseboat contemplating life.

Remnants of gas tanks and the industrial area this must have been.

Gas tanks and graffiti. I think about here was when I started to sing Dirty Old Town by the Clash in my mind. Freaking song was stuck in my head for days after this walk.

Under an overpass on the canal.

The canal at sunset.