There is that distinct smell out there tonight. My awareness of it does not necessarily stem from the consistent weather warnings they had during the day regarding strong breeze, heavy winds..
Every city has one of its own. London's got that one with a mix of yeast, piss, greenery, deity, piety, prosperity...
I am on a side street off of Theobald's Rd.
There are not many side streets of such relative insignificance off of Theobald's Rd. Most of the streets lead to somewhere significant... that's the cost of being a major thoroughfare in central London. Your branches lead off to somewhere of such significance that either the pavements are too wide (which means many pedestrians will walk through there at the dark of the night) or that the roads are 2+ lanes; and in either case, that's not a street you would want to take an emergency piss on..
but this one here, called King's Mews is a particularly narrow one...
there are houses with fake, freshly white painted colonnades...
the small alleyway leads to a wider street. It is a common makeshift adaptive English planning heritage but it reminds me of the ad hoc street typologies created in modern Istanbul.
I feel like I am walking through a street in Bomonti. A Jewish cemetery left of me, an Armenian school to the right, an off-license straight ahead, a transvestite across the road --- all, a travesty of urbanity...
only difference in being that I wouldn't be out on a hunt to piss on the streets in Istanbul, it never was part of my "culture" but neither were the Danish ladies I first encountered kneeling down and pissing on the spot at Roskilde.
Across from the side of King's Mews from Theobald's Road is some Inns, demarcated and boundaried by walls, the height of a 1.5 human's height (just about the size of Berlin Wall?).
Beyond there is where lawyers luncheon every day, I always cycle past it. It is always on my sight but why weren't these "sale" signs on this side of King's Mews that I see put up on abandoned buildings? There is a house under renovation with furniture scattered about, dirty white look like dead mannequins at night. These signs remind me of the Eskidji signs, green on yellow that popped in the affluent neighbourhoods of Istanbul in mid-2000s, at that time of my life when every fresh breath of breeze I inhaled smelled of identity, of urbanity, of places afar that had lived and will always live long past my life and my apprehension.
I stand next to a fake collonade....
I want to have you in my arms.
Every city has one of its own. London's got that one with a mix of yeast, piss, greenery, deity, piety, prosperity...
I am on a side street off of Theobald's Rd.
There are not many side streets of such relative insignificance off of Theobald's Rd. Most of the streets lead to somewhere significant... that's the cost of being a major thoroughfare in central London. Your branches lead off to somewhere of such significance that either the pavements are too wide (which means many pedestrians will walk through there at the dark of the night) or that the roads are 2+ lanes; and in either case, that's not a street you would want to take an emergency piss on..
but this one here, called King's Mews is a particularly narrow one...
there are houses with fake, freshly white painted colonnades...
the small alleyway leads to a wider street. It is a common makeshift adaptive English planning heritage but it reminds me of the ad hoc street typologies created in modern Istanbul.
I feel like I am walking through a street in Bomonti. A Jewish cemetery left of me, an Armenian school to the right, an off-license straight ahead, a transvestite across the road --- all, a travesty of urbanity...
only difference in being that I wouldn't be out on a hunt to piss on the streets in Istanbul, it never was part of my "culture" but neither were the Danish ladies I first encountered kneeling down and pissing on the spot at Roskilde.
Across from the side of King's Mews from Theobald's Road is some Inns, demarcated and boundaried by walls, the height of a 1.5 human's height (just about the size of Berlin Wall?).
Beyond there is where lawyers luncheon every day, I always cycle past it. It is always on my sight but why weren't these "sale" signs on this side of King's Mews that I see put up on abandoned buildings? There is a house under renovation with furniture scattered about, dirty white look like dead mannequins at night. These signs remind me of the Eskidji signs, green on yellow that popped in the affluent neighbourhoods of Istanbul in mid-2000s, at that time of my life when every fresh breath of breeze I inhaled smelled of identity, of urbanity, of places afar that had lived and will always live long past my life and my apprehension.
I stand next to a fake collonade....
I want to have you in my arms.
