Down Brick Lane

Back to my student stomping ground – Whitechapel, and Brick Lane. Back in Blighty over the Spring break, I had a saunter down memory lane to the Mystic East. Quite a change. Still pretty run down, but now, nestling beside the old red brick council estates and warehouse buildings are luxury housing developments and huge office blocks. A trip down Brick Lane used to be a treat for the taste buds – a good old Ruby Murray (Cockney rhyming slang for curry) – 62 restaurants to choose from, and now just a handful. The waiters still stand in the doorways of restaurants touting for business, but now the competition is from Halal fast food joints and French Bistrots. Where there were cheap fashion houses, it’s now all designer clothes. One thing doesn’t change though, the curious Whitechapel experience of glaring poverty juxtaposed with wealth. A few photos from Wentworth street though to Brick lane. For those readers unfamiliar with this part of London, it used to be Jack The Ripper’s hunting ground and since the late 17th century it has always been that part of London where new immigrants settled – first the Huguenots, then the Jews from Eastern Europe and more recently the Bangladeshis.