Notting Hill, and especially the Portobello Road area seems obsessed with nostalgia and all things 'retro'. Forward thinking is frowned upon unless it involves the creation of some kind of twee 'heritage experience'. This will result in the area becoming a ghastly tourist ghetto filled with souvenir tat and crap fast food which will have no relevance to the lives of the local population and will kill the real market. Look what happened to Camden.
Instead of creating a crass shrine to the social kitsch we should be weaving strands of our history into something new and forward looking.
The punk thing appears to be the be all and end all right now but this infatuation will be as ephemeral as punk itself. Fads come and fads go and this my friends is just a passing phase which will be replaced soon enough.
It is also sad to see grown men salivating over memories of a short period of rebelliousness in their pasts, this sort of nostalgia should be safely locked away in the attic (next to the dressing up box) only to be brought out on Fathers Day.
The nasty habit of protecting street art with plexiglass is in itself nothing more than the enshrinement of society's self loathing; where is the next generation of disenfranchised youth going to express it's discontent when all the available wall space is dedicated to Banksy's (the Bono of street art) self congratulatory commercialism.
What is wrong with going forward? Only drunks and lunatics walk backwards.
Never mind the bollocks eh!
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