A stroll down Carnaby St is one way to ruin a decent mood. Its memetic pre-eminence amongst British thoroughfares is due to the fact that it is a street with shops on it. Apparently they’re really good shops. So good that streets of truly historical import- the Watlings, Broadwicks and Cables of this world – are relegated to the footnotes, whilst Carnaby gets those self-congratulatory signs at either end and one of those licences to print money we hear so much about.
I’m sorry, but if being a contrarian, mithering old sod whingeing about the takeover of material culture in Western society is a crime, then STICK ME IN THE DOCK AND GET A DUDE IN A WIG TO PATRONISE ME.
Luckily, ‘Carnaby London’, as the local shopkeepers association so vogueishly calls it, can only last so long, and if you hold your breath at Great Marlborough St and plug away, you’ll be spat out into the (slightly) more comforting back-streets of Soho in no time at all.
One of these side-steps takes you to Ganton St, and the jolly old boozer The Shaston Arms.
Thanks to Ewan Munro, again, from Flickr
It’s still a pub in Soho, so it’s never going to be your favourite place in the whole world, and Badger beer isn’t my favourite, but it’s nooky and boothy and woody, cramped and relaxed, a knockabout type of place. It’s probably been done extremely artfully, to pick up the detritus who fancy themselves beyond the commercial hurly-burly, so all I’m doing here is being second-guessed. I’m a patsy. But I’m a pissed patsy, with no outsized shopping bags to lug home with me. Much better.