#shoreditchhype

All I need now is a football……

'Where do I go for my Lunch?' I ask my new boss. He's different to back home too, he's proper,speaks proper like… he's English. Some directions are given but I won't remember any of it, so I walk out the doors of the Ace Hotel, it's lobby full of people running their own businesses on their MacBooks, the flower pots, the juice bar, the coffee bar, it's different, it's cool, in a good way. I walk in search of a place that does nice eggs.

Streets full of cobbles, red bricks, spray paint and posters for the first time since the very unplanned jump over to ‘Blighty’ I begin to feel a little something in the air. This isn’t the London I’ve known from before. It’s not visits to Leicester square and number 10. No trips to Drama school reciting Shakespeare. I’m not eating fish and chips outside Highbury singing terrace chants in a cockney accent. I’ve been watching it all around me this time round, it’s electric.

I happen upon another seemingly derelict building, it’s just around the corner from ‘Chance Street’. Outside a poster gives the sign to all the people who gather this special thing: ‘OASIS’. An exhibition with unseen photos, videos and memorabilia of the great brit pop band called ‘CHASING THE SUN’. It’s here for 10 days only to mark 20 years of the debut album ‘DEFINITELY MAYBE.’ Inside crowds take photos of the photos of the band. There’s guitars, parka coats, a replica room of the album cover of ‘Definitely Maybe’ where people can take their photos in, and of course the music. Blaring out the album, Rock n’roll star, Live forever……it’s impossible to not be inspired. The band of unemployed Mancunians, who went and took on the world…. via London.

Leaving the place all a buzz, I get what it is that’s here. The great coffee shops/ barber shops/ gig venues, multipurpose cinema thats a place to do what ever the fuck you want too! There’s banksy and Conor Harrington pieces on the walls of the streets, theres goes Alex Turner…. it’s here.

It’s like every idea you ever had about making something, someone did it here, and they weren’t afraid to try it out. They created themselves. You want to be a rock n’ roll star?

'You can wait for a lifetime to spend your days in the sunshine…..you gotta make it happen' Whatever it is that I want to make, I can touch it here.

I head home that night, to the loft in a warehouse I live in…..

Yes Mammy, I live in warehouse, "IMPERIAL WORKS" at the end of a street of warehouses, where the air smells of burning weed and the shit of a Rottweiller. Where the the black, crack smoking beggar calls me a cunt, and the rain drips through the roof. Where the raves last for two days before a warehouse is cordoned off…someone’s dead… yes…again.

It’s ok I really don’t mind, because now I’m living on chance street and it doesn’t matter what’s going on around here, because there are indeed, those of us who are,

Chasing the sun.