To think London has become a parody of itself?

[NattyBrickMember]

Everything is overpriced, gentrification is out of control, and the chaos somehow feels unbearable and iconic at the same time. AIBU to think London has become a caricature of what it used to be - like a city pretending to be itself for tourists and TikTok?

My train today as so unpacked I got a seat at 8.30am. Unheard of before covid.

Also tne West End has not been a particularly good or interesting place to go out or shop for years now. The interesting stuff happens East and South these days.

You've had enough of public transport? In London? You really think it's awful? Moved to SW three years ago and had to learn to drive for the first time in my life. Busses here are double the cost of TfL, there are never enough drivers so they just get cancelled about 50% of the time. It takes me two hours to get to work on public transport (20 min car journey) because all bus routes go through city center and you have to change - there are no direct routes connecting peripheral areas.
I've lived in "a small coastal town" in 2015 as a student too. Again, busses double the price and take three times as long as cycling the same journey.
In London, I can get anywhere within an hour on a tube/train or a bus which are frequent and reliable.

And yes weed literally everywhere (though this seems nationwide). And Gaza marches, fucking Gaza marches.

i used to love London but not it feels like chaotic energy and anyone could pop off and do something crazy at any moment.

If you miss the meeting you get put on buying-luxury-flats-and-emptying-them duty. Just a warning. I'm exhausted from buying up Nine Elms.

@peanutbuttertoasty - yes it's the sense of creativity which has been steamed out of it. Lots of music venues and clubs are gone.

I assume it is a cycle and eventually those things do revive, but at present it has lost a distinct edge. It seems very corporate.

@peanutbuttertoasty

I’m a Londoner and I think what is happening is we are losing the presence and feel of the working class and what they contributed to big cities. I’m in Paris now and I can’t believe how clean and safe it feels - I’ve visited places I would have been apprehensive going to on my own during the day in the past and my memories from 30 years ago of the city were that it could feel quite seedy in places - none of that now it’s fabulous but it is missing something that I can’t quite identify. I spoke to someone in a bookshop here who said the working class and the poor have been moved out of the city centre to the suburbs and further. I think that if you identify with that world you can sense it has moved - alongside the music scene, a kind of tension that kept you feeling alive and excited and some sense of wonder at being in a world city. Now, it can feel like you visit, pay for things and go. Next tourist is already lined up. If you make inhabitants of a city feel like this, it’s the end as they work hard to make a life in expensive cities and they need to feel they have something to gain from it.

I grew up having fun in Shoreditch, going to raves in car parks etc. it was fun. Now much nicer but utterly sterile. I think the most interesting creatives and people doing innovative things fucked off years ago. The startup scene is dead too.

One of the problems with the West End is that councillors are elected by the people who live there and some of them are weirdly opposed to nightlife despite living in central London.

So the council panders to their views because they want to be elected.
Businesses cannot vote so unless their owners live about their business, council doesn't care much about their views.

Interesting nightlife is now more distributed around London - Hackney Wick, Deptford, Peckham etc is where the young people at work go out for nightlife - Soho is just for dining for them.

I think its grimy and run-down. I'd much prefer it if gentrification was out of control!

London is one of my least favourite places to visit in the UK. I find other cities such as Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle have good cultural attractions and quality hotels/restaurants at a fraction of the cost compared to London. Also the people are by far friendlier IMO. But as London is so densley populated the cost of everything has been driven up but not necessarily the standards.

If I never had to visit for the remainder of my life I would lose no sleep. However, I only visited a handful of times as a adolescent and adult so it holds no sentimentality for me.

@Cattreesea

But, I also think London lost a lot of its character with chains and developers taking over.

While I love London, and love living here, I do agree there's something to that, at least in the centre - the neighbourhoods still have lots of interesting places and shops. I think that's an issue on pretty much every high street that's still surviving, though. They tend to be very samey.

Eh? Not at all.

I went to London last week and really hated it and felt very stressed. Everything was busy, the paths were too full so people bumped into us without a 'sorry', shops were too busy, food places all had long queues then nowhere to sit and eat the food, all the toilets were broken and wet and filthy, all I could smell was a mix of drains, weed and urine everywhere just walking around the streets.
It was awful. I live somewhere completely rural so this was the complete opposite end of the spectrum to me which is probably why I found it so hard but I genuinely dread having to go to London.

@peanutbuttertoasty

some of that scene could have a nasty side for others (drugs, aggression, general arsy attitude to locals) that the people in it didn’t see but the people going about their business felt that’s why it was removed. It had pushed out the old working class pubs and culture some of which had gang roots, some that didn’t. Crucially, it pushes out all that is familiar that gave a sense of community to locals - launderettes, newsagents, grocers, although I remember these changing in the 70s too. I think we underestimate how important that familiarity is to people on a human level particularly when you don’t have much money. It’s the very ordinariness of everyday life that reassures people, elderly and young alike.

Awrigh’ darlin’. See you at the compulsory How to Speak CockEstuary Level 2 class later.

I think if you are lucky to have a house on a leafy street, a well paid job and you don't rely on the awful public transport
@Cattreesea
Seriously! Where in the UK do you know that has better public transport?

I live in the North West and DH and I have recently come back from a week's holiday in London. We both commented on just how easy it is to get about. We don't visit often but it seems easier now than it ever has.

We live not far from Manchester and the public transport there is not bad at all, but I don't think it can quite compare with London Transport

Yes someone mentioned upthread about cockneys which made me laugh. Those communities were pushed out long ago. Good luck finding a cockney in London.

i agree with much of what you say, but fabulous is not a word I’d use to describe London now. I would have done before, but to my eyes the working class communities that you mention have been replaced by a peripatetic underclass that give the place a horrible edge. Look at the tents on park lane. Litter everywhere, human excrement. Gangs, knives, stabbings every day that barely get a mention they’re so common. In broad daylight too. This is our capital city now. I don’t see an instagram shoot. I see extremely rapid decline.

I think op might mean the touristy areas with the insta cafes and £15 strawberries covered in chocolate- I work in Soho and it’s really disappointing how it’s become Insta cafés and chain shops

No, it’s home! And it’s the best place in the world. I am getting a bit sick of how posh my area is getting, though.

Are you sure you were in London, maybe you had accidentally strolled onto the set of a BBC Charles Dickens tv spectacular.

No. I think you sound like a tiktok bot using current slag to describe a city.

I don't disagree that some of those things are an issue though.

You meet cockneys every day when you live here. And also other kinds of Londoners. Plenty of working class communities here, too. I think be honest and say what you mean. You mean white people, don’t you?

TBF in 32 years everywhere will have seen many changes and people do tend to put on the rose tinted specs when they look back in to the past.

@Blondebrownorred it is true. Every single toilet in London is broken. The place smells of wee as we all throw the contents of our chamber pots out in to the streets each morning.