![[MAP of Camden Town, with the beginning of Bloomsbury at the bottom edge. Starting at the bottom right corner moving towards the top left corner are: King's Cross railway station; St. Pancras railway station; the curved road which becomes Pancras Road with St. Pancras Way and Camden Street leading off it; following Camden Street with Carol Street leading off it; Carol Street bends and meets Greenland Street; Greenland Street meets Camden Road which becomes Parkway when it intersects Camden High Street; Camden High Street becomes Chalk Farms Road after it crosses Regents Canal in the upper left corner.]](../../IMG/international/01/camden.GIF)
Camden Town today is hip in the youthful streetwise way. Its reputation has gotten around and nowadays is a bit too overblown for its own good. Here you will find clothing and craft markets, streets of open-fronted clothing shops and restaurants aimed at the young and out-of-towners, prices are therefore not especially cheap.
Bloomsbury was the literary part of town. It still has a large student population and is full of small Bed and Breakfast type hotels where the young tourists stay after a hard day's shopping up in Camden or visiting the free British Museum, also in Bloomsbury. On its northern border are three big railway stations -- King's Cross, St. Pancras, and Euston -- each built by competing railway companies in the 19th century before the system was streamlined. It's therefore the departure point for many coming into London.
Islington is more yuppish, being a fashionable address for young urban professionals. (Guess Green counted himself one!) There are therefore lots of nice restaurants and pubs, fancy shops, and theatres on the main streets. The residential part consists of numerous very nice quiet squares surrounded by expensive genteel 18th-19th century town houses with high ceilings inside. Karl Marx actually lived here for a while once upon a time. There are also a top quality produce market, a Wednesdays and Saturdays antique market, and lots of expensive antique shops.
200a Chalk Farm Road, London NW1 8AF
(in Camden Lock Building, right under the railway bridge)
tel: (44-171) 284-0403
hours: Tue-Fri 11.30am-5.00pm/Sat-Sun 10.30am-6.00pm/closed Mondays
Any place that still has a whole section devoted to Scritti gets a five shovel rating! Prices are right too -- approx 3-4 pounds range for most. Selection is quite good; 85's picture discs and 3" Boom! There She Was CD single once pass through this place. AoF got the BEF release, I Don't Know Why I Love You, on 7" just this past January. The owner hasn't really set up mail order arrangement yet, but you should enquire anyway. Send in self-address stamped envelope for list of available items. International requests: check with your post office for internation reply coupon instead of your own country's stamp, which obviously wouldn't work for mailing from the UK.
entrance from Camden High Street north of Regents Canal
hours: Sat-Sun 10.30am-6.00pm
Open only on weekends, there are a few records and magazine stalls. AoF found the magazines category more forthcoming than the records dept. Spoils revealed: Smash Hits June 82, March-April 84, July-August 84, and Record Mirror June 85. The Smash Hits had some great pictures. Hilarious really. Totally 'deconstructs' -- layman's corrupt usage of the term -- Green's picture perfect fashion forward image!
Noisy and full of shops, there are a few record shops on this street and on side streets leading off it before one gets to the Camden Town tube station. Not much wares when I checked. Price is low to mid range. AoF paid 7 pounds for an engraved copy of Songs To Remember only to find the same later for 2 pounds at Notting Hill and free at a friend's house in Ireland. Organization in these stores can be a bit chaotic, so you have to be willing to spend some time flipping through piles of dingy looking vinyls.
[Also see 1 Carol Street page.] Just past Camden Town underground railway station on Camden High Street. Scritti once (or perhaps a few times) played live here back during the early anarchic days. Inside feels a bit like a school gym, a bit worn and run down. Occassionally Saturday sees record fairs here. AoF found a few publicity photos at one stall and 91's Take Me In Your Arm CD single at Clive Fullman's stall (Clive's listed in the Methodology: Digging for Gold: UK section).
[Also see 1 Carol Street page.] Yes, the squat headquarter of Scritto's Republic, 1977-1980. The street now looks rather gentrified. But the un-named 4th Arch-Angel saw it during the critical years, and claims that the headquarter was "really disgusting" -- the photo on 4-A-Sides doesn't even begin to convey the "full squalor" -- and complete with a smelly couch. Afterwards, that is, after Scritti left, the place was fixed up and the Arch-Angel was stunned. Guess they were true Marxists and Marxists don't believe in the Final Judgement Day, do they? :-)
[Also see St. Pancras page.] The name of Scritti's own record label for their first release, it's unclear what the source is. AoF had thought it was St. Pancras railway station. There are also two streets named after St. Pancras: a Pancras Road and a St. Pancras Way. But AoF was informed a bit too late by the un-named 4th Arch-Angel that in fact there is a St. Pancras relief sculpture on Parkway in Camden Town (upper left quadron of map) and the figure on the cover of Skank Bloc Bologna is this relief sculpture. As for St. Pancras himself -- and there's certainly no guarantee the band chose, or even knew the story of, this saint for any metaphorical reasons. The saint himself was an orphan converted in Rome and martyred by beheading sometime around 300 AD.
[Also see St. Pancras page.] Where trains from Leeds now arrive. So if the service hasn't changed in the past 20 years, this could possibly be Scritti's starting point in London.
I swear it was Tom I saw on the street of Bloomsbury! Woburn Place at Tavistock Place to be precise. Woburn is the continuation of Eversholt Street off the bottom edge of the map -- told you the streets change names. The 4th Arch-Angel also spotted Tom near Kings Cross a couple of years ago, but s/he was on a bus and so couldn't stop to chat with Tom, who still had his dreadlocks. Anyone knows what Tom's been up to since the 1985 single Who Broke That Love? (Zarjazz/Virgin) which got a not so great review from the NME?