Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire

by Iain Sinclair

  ‘Live in Dalston or Hackney? Come and have your portrait drawn.’ A card with a full‐length, front‐on impression of a man in a tie, folded arms, eyes shut, falling away to his left: Milton. The name of the subject is inscribed, but not the artist. Dan Dixon‐Spain. Who ‘aims to record and capture the local community in and around Hackney. From the butcher to the lollipop lady.’ Dan’s drawings take ‘between 10–30 minutes’ to execute. Sitters receive a free print. Dixon‐Spain borrowed a stall in Ridley Road Market. The sponsors of this project wanted to blow up the portraits to life size, and beyond, for exhibition on billboards. No text, no message. The hook was that the ‘project engages with ideas of communication, tolerance, identity, celebrating the cultural diversity and vibrancy of the area’. Computer‐generated versions of how the billboards will look obviate the trouble and expense of actually producing them. Dan’s original drawings would be exhibited in the Hackney Empire.

  The portraits were finely executed, sober, lacking in weight. Characters invited to impersonate themselves float like tethered socks. Without ballast of memory and regret, they are suspended in a dream of place.

  Dan’s girlfriend, Anna, is leaving the house in Shacklewell Lane as I arrive. He spent the weekend at the Homerton Hospital, a problem with his nose, breathing. Anna has something to say about the difficulty of making contact with the hospital switchboard, getting information, being left alone on the ward with no advice on post‐operative treatment. Nothing to staunch the bleeding. Everyone has their own Homerton horror story, it’s competitive. The Standard reported that the A&E department had to be shut for an hour ‘after a patient threatened to kill staff with a gun’.

  Lightly bearded, Dan has a Tudor poet/navigator look that is in keeping with Shacklewell House in the days of Sir Thomas More. He’s a plasterer as well as an artist and is lovingly restoring this property. To an alternative Provençal status. I think of my visit as a form of sketching, the equivalent of one of Dan’s ten‐minute sessions. He says that he’s never done an interview before.

  I came to Shacklewell Lane because a friend of mine was working down the road, so I started visiting here. This would have been about 1999. At the time I was looking to buy some kind of property with a studio. I found this shop in Shacklewell Lane. And ended up buying it in 2000.

  There was a barber shop downstairs. It had been derelict for probably ten years. The previous owners bought it off Lew Lessen, the actual barber. And then sat on it, doing nothing. Dripping roof, no electric, no plumbing. I spent what seemed like most of my life doing it up. Four years of work.

  I started drawing people around the area on a regular basis. I drew the Jamaican girls who lived and worked next door. The shop’s not there now, it has changed hands. It was a Jamaican café. I photographed them for an exhibition I did, four years ago. They really enjoyed it. The customers. Those young guys of seventeen or eighteen. Their egos got the better of them at the start. Then they understood why I wanted to draw them. They were willing to stand for me, half an hour here, half an hour there. They’d come round to my place. ‘Do you want to do a drawing of me?’

  I met more people on the street. And then realized that I wanted to capture a large part of the community. I don’t really like saying I’m an artist, you’re in such a majority in Hackney. Everybody’s an artist. There’s a gallery called Mafuji on Shacklewell Lane. It was here when we arrived, but operating on a sporadic basis. I knew a musician and a couple of artists in a warehouse, an old pharmaceutical factory. There are more musicians in the area than artists. I’ve drawn a cellist and a whole family of musicians in Cecilia Road.

  I tried to find people who were willing to be drawn. So I got a licence for Ridley Road Market, a stall there: £15. A lot of paperwork. I thought I’d just turn up and draw, but I needed a licence and insurance.

  I did five or six days, spread over a few weeks. I approached people. I said, ‘It’s free. You’ve got ten minutes, I’ll make a drawing of you. And in a few weeks’ time – remember that I’ve got to finish the drawing – I’ll give you a print. An A4 print, nothing fancy.’

  Initially people were very slow to approach me. As soon as I started drawing, they were, like, ‘Good. All right!’ I had a great time, real banter flew around. The drawings I made were quite quick, it’s a pressured situation. They were quite self‐conscious. I got some good drawings out of it. Five per cent were artworks, the others were just practice. It’s important to keep your hand in. A real education. I met lots of people there. They’d come with their cousins, wanting to be drawn.

  I think the people in the market felt quite flattered that I wanted to draw them. They felt a bit threatened. After I’d done a few, and chatted to them, told them about myself, they relaxed. I got pounds of cherries given to me, bits of fruit, cups of tea. The traders are down there every day, it’s not an easy job. They get stuck into each other. The abuse might be a bit racist. They call each other all sorts of names, but with humour.

  I learnt a bit about the history of Ridley Road. I knew there had been riots. I found out that the train station, Dalston‐Kingsland, is going to move into the front part of the market.

  My personal take on the regeneration is not particularly positive. I approached Hackney Council with a proposal to show my drawings. ‘Would you be able to offer support? I want to make you aware of what I’m doing with the community and community groups. Could you offer some official approval?’ I wanted to demonstrate that I wasn’t just some bloke off the street.

  They were fine about it, they wanted to make the local community feel that they were part of the regeneration process. I wanted hoardings, billboards, to show the drawings. It soon became clear that they weren’t going to help us out, financially. I got the impression that what they wanted was to make themselves look good, rather than to support the project. The Dalston that fascinates me is the Dalston that doesn’t tie in with the story they are trying to spin.

  The people I got to know best were the Jamaican community around Shacklewell Lane. The first ones were Jamaican, then several people from Guyana. And other Caribbean islands dotted about. Stories of coming here after the war. One guy, Clement, was in the navy. He talked about how society is now and about the younger generation. He said: ‘Youngsters should do military service for three years. Get them under control. Make them realize what they’ve actually got.’ He said, ‘Television and communications, digital, Sky, all that stuff makes them feel they haven’t got anything.’ He said, ‘I sympathize with them.’ He feels that the older generation have been given a bad reputation because of the colour of their skin and their origins.

  There’s a brothel next door to this house. They’ve been here since I moved in. No particular hassle. When the windows were open, one hot summer night, I heard some discipline being administered. ‘You’re late, you naughty boy!’ Slap, slap, slap. I think the police are aware. I’ve told them a few times. They know the law, those people next door. They stay inside the regulations. I had a structural problem with the party wall and had to take a look from their side, to assess what we should do. I had to go into the brothel. It took me two months to get permission.

  I would be interested in doing drawings in that place. There are ladies who end up working there who only operate on a phone‐call basis. It’s very much a knock‐on‐the‐door‐and‐somebody‐lets‐you‐in basis. As neigh‐bours go, they’re good. It saves a lot of men bouncing off the walls at home, or causing trouble in the street. People who use the service are anything from fifteen to seventy‐five years of age. All creeds, races, colours. Every single kind of person, orthodox Jews to the whitest of whites. There are all kinds of working girls in there. It’s generally very quiet. They work from ten in the morning to ten at night.

  The ladies on the street are drug addicts. They move around, touting for business. That’s what brings the road right down. I think it’s because the school was knocked down, two years ago. The zone of prostitution always extends to fill any g
ap made by demolition. When security arrives with the new grand project, the girls are pushed towards other places. Places lose their character. What I get from my drawings is diversity. I’m white, middle class. I’d be bored if everyone in the road was like me.

  I got a commission for that space on the west side of Kingsland Road, where the Jazz Vortex is, Gillett Square. A space that used to be a car park. It’s one of Ken Livingstone’s 100 spaces. He’s put money into it. A hundred spaces he wants to be cultural centres for an area. Regeneration on a specific spot. They’re opening in November. Most of the square will be a nice community space. They’re talking about putting a screen all the way down one side, to hide the car park.

  I drew a girl. She said, ‘Can you draw me with my bike?’ She works for a company that Ken Livingstone employs to promote bicycling around London. She said, ‘Hackney is the number‐one borough for bicycles.’ She’s in an office with thirty‐five people who are working, full time, towards instigating more cycle paths, making people aware of the benefits of cycle use.

  I went to the Labyrinth on Dalston Lane just once. I was fourteen, scared witless. This would have been the early 1990s. I was staying with my brother who was at college in Middlesex. He lived in Tottenham. I went with him and his flatmate. The girls they were going out with said, ‘Let’s go to the Labyrinth.’

  It was dark. It was the first time I’d been in a place with black people. It was drug‐fuelled. I was having a beer and thinking I was growing up. It rolled on until at least six in the morning. Then there would be the Ridley Road bagel shop. Pick up a cup of tea and a bagel – if you could manage it.

  I was with people who weren’t really involved with the drug scene. But afterwards somebody would have a party that would roll on until midday. It was a scene. Your weekend started at a club on Friday night and ended on Sunday morning. It was right at the start of that E culture.

  Much later, in recent times, Hackney Council spoke to me about making drawings to put on the security fence around the Labyrinth, when it was a site marked for demolition. They said, ‘Give us some idea of the visuals. What will your project involve?’ We thought. ‘Well, let’s see if we can pick six drawings and put them along the fence.’ We met them, discussed this, came away thinking, ‘Actually, we don’t know if we want to put up drawings here.’

  It’s such a conglomeration, Hackney. Car parks, mosques. Car washes, Afro hair shops. Turkish kebab places, brothels. Once the council have given you official sanction for your art, you represent them. You’re selling something. I want people to go: ‘What is it?’ My work should be a tease. I want art to be seen as art and not as a corporate advert.

  Understanding a little more clearly now that quiet streets above Ridley Road Market, fenced off for future development, will always conform to an imprinted identity, I wanted something more: chthonic visions. Psychosis. Dan was so right, so reasonable. His art was its own justification. Visible cafés, spicy and loud, go out of business: the action moves indoors. Ballard’s classic formulation about striving to position the visible to reveal the invisible comes into play: maps of derangement. I would never know it all. There were not enough years ahead of me to penetrate Hackney’s wholesale warehouses, messianic churches, people‐smuggling operations.

  Police raiding a three‐storey house in Amhurst Road (the loop of history) uncovered a stash of 3,000 pornographic DVDs. ‘The kind of material that would not even be legal to sell in licensed sex shops.’ Bestiality, man‐on‐beast action. Dogs and women with novocaine eyes. Twenty officers broke down the door and were photographed bagging lurid magazines in evidence sachets. A connection was intimated with the Chinese gang who peddled pirated DVDs from Tesco’s car park in Morning Lane. The ones rewarded with ‘some of the longest ASBOs to date imposed in the borough’.

  I wondered if my former colleague Driffield, who had a scholar’s interest in the underside of the city, had ever visited the establishment on Shacklewell Lane. I asked if I could record the call. In his pomp, the man lived on telephones.

  Sorry, no, I have never been to a brothel in England or consorted with a prostitute here. I think this has more to do with my naivety, poverty and ignorance, than reluctance.

  The lady, at the house where I lived in Ritson Road, used to do voluntary work helping women who could not read. There was a very brassy blonde who came round regularly. She managed a massage parlour somewhere in Hackney. It might have been the place you were talking about. Her stories were hilarious.

  What I do remember from those days is a petite young Indian lady, with hair shorter than mine and a beautifully clean jacket, offering to be a star witness in my case against Hackney Council: when I stepped off a bus from Liverpool Street and into an enormous pothole. The bag of books I was carrying toppled in after me.

  She was a trainee accountant but wanted to be an engineer. Her mother wouldn’t hear of it. She lived in a flat above the post office. It was around this time that I was invited to come back early on a Saturday night to be introduced to an Indian lady in Ritson Road. There was going to be a dinner party.

  I arrived home at around eight o’clock, I had forgotten about the social occasion. As I came through the front door I could hear the voice of the Indian lady. It was the one from the post office, who was with her husband. Not the girl, but the woman who ran the shop. The one I had a furious row with. She accused me of being head of the National Front in Hackney. His picture was in the Gazette and he did look a bit like me. I thought it was the young lady coming to dinner, but this one had to be at least forty. I said I would have to bathe, change my outfit and I’d be right down.

  I climbed out of the back window and across somebody’s garden and retreated to the cinema in Kingsland Road.

  This was a place never to be forgotten. Young ladies and men were going off to the toilets throughout the performance. The lady next to me tried to sell me her companion. A man brought his bike into the cinema and the manager had to persuade him it was against the rules. The audience booed every time the police came on the screen. As this was a black cop chase movie, it was impossible to even begin to ask them to shut up. Several patrons in my row were waving guns in the air.

  There was an interval but I decided to stay to the death – until I knew that the Ritson Road dinner party would have broken up and the family retired to bed. During this enforced break, those strange guys you see in Ridley Road, the ones in black suits and white shirts with red bow ties, looking like Malcolm X, came around trying to sell their newspaper. As an alien, I was not allowed to acquire a copy. Now, with the lights on, I realized that I was the only white person in the audience.

  I stayed there until about one o’clock. Next morning the lady of the house demanded to know why I had been so rude. I tried to explain, but she was having none of it. According to her, the manageress of the post office had brought her daughter, the accountant, the love of my life, just to meet me. I had been described as an antiquarian bookdealer in the City. The post‐office woman assumed that I would help her daughter’s burgeoning career in the business world. I never saw the girl again.

  I avoided the post office from then on. A fact which my customers noted with remorse. I often used to send them large parcels of books. They told me that when packages came from that particular Queensbridge Road post office the stupid buggers never franked the stamps. They would steam them off and use them again. I was saving them hundreds of pounds a year in postage. It was the only way they could afford my prices.

  Sympathy for the Devil

  They were dying, the film‐makers from the era of my early life in London, Bergman and Antonioni, within a few hours of each other, reputations to be re‐evaluated. Glib and inane provocations from media populists excusing their own inadequacies, the failure to engage with difficulty, the infantile demand for instant access. I was becoming, or had always been, a peevish malcontent, taking too much satisfaction from being wrong. Outside the mainstream.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourse
lf.’ Anna’s rejoinder. She didn’t need to sit through the programme. She knew them so intimately, those films. ‘Silent, German?’ Her code for all of it, the smug manifest of discounted seriousness.

  Our dawn circuit of Victoria Park, the unspoken conversations. How we noticed the same things but felt no obligation to mention them. The woman in the white leisure outfit with the small dog. The bearded skateboarder in winter shorts who gloried in his eccentricity. The pert jogger whose T‐shirt advertised her love of New York. We were stepping it out today, Anna wanted to be on the phone early. She dreaded that infuriating sub‐classical muzak.

  ‘We live in Albion Drive and we’re having a problem with rats. The bins for the low‐rise flats. It’s their position, tight against the shelter wall. The lids won’t close. They don’t fit.’

  The loss of the long‐established caretaker and broom‐man, Little Ben (as Pat Rain called him), was disastrous. He had walked away from an impossible and poorly rewarded job. Rubbish was being flung from the balconies in black bags that burst on the ground: the chutes were ignored. Scattered fast‐food scraps sustained a community of rodents, feral cats. A family of foxes, wintering under our shed, turned the garden into a pungent wilderness. After some loud infanticide, the adults moved on: making way for a tribe of hungry rats, who gnawed through the legs of stored but unwanted tables and chairs. Thus removing one of Anna’s recycling problems. There was only sawdust to bag.