Tendai’s Tour Hackney, East London: a transcribed tour
given to and photographed by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
For Tendai and for all the wonders that I found in his city. And for you, from us both. London-New York 1999-2001
TENDAI formerly known as THOMAS Hackney, East London: a transcribed tour
Hoxton
London Fields
Mare Street
Stoke Newington
given to and photographed by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani
Victoria Park
Doesn’t that remind you of those old like Irish sort of paintings they have on the walls, Irish murals, I remember them, right. What they’re doing at the moment, right, is that they’re starting to paint over them and paint nicer murals over them. I remember when I was younger I saw that film of Hope and Glory and I remember I thought wouldn’t it be great to have lived through the war, and they had so much fun as they were kids, running around and all that. The quickest way to get to it is down this way – London Fields and then we go through here and then through to Victoria Park and then round again and back up to Dalston. I haven’t been down to where I used to live for like, since I lived there – 3 years ago, 4 years ago? It’s going to be weird because I haven’t seen it in ages. If I see the people there, who I used to hang around with it’s going to be really wrong. It’s mixture of good and bad going back there, cause haven’t been back – in a way though it wasn’t really – I mean, mind you I was only 12 or 13 whatever, right, although I had my proper friends friends who’d come and sleep over my house, right, in the area it was more like sitting on walls
Hoxton
We’ll go to Victoria Park because that’s where I lived before I moved to Dalston, and I haven’t been there in ages. So we can walk around that way in a circle – it’s going to be a big circle route.
and deciding oh, should we throw a stone at this person – you know what I mean, that kind of relationship. It wasn’t a proper friendship - just hang around on our BMX’s and that kind of stuff, and make-believing that they were motor bikes and making all the noises and like we used to put these little plastic things in the backs of our wheels, so it when it would turn round it would make the noise, and stopping by putting our foot on the back, and skidding, and we used to have all these mashed up trainers everywhere, cause we’d worn out all our trainers. It’s weird cause like when people to England or London for a holiday all they ever see are the nice parts of it, I doubt they ever come to places like, or see houses like this, all they see are the big ones – all the ritzy. I live here and I haven’t seen Buckingham palace. I can’t separate it from all the other palaces that hang around. I haven’t been to all the big things in London that I should have been to see like what is it, Tower of Magpies? That’s it, Tower of London. I haven’t been to Madame Tussauds. There’s this new ride at Trocadero. It’s about as high as that thing. You sit in it and it goes up really slowly to the top and then it falls down really quickly. And it’s six pounds it’s rubbish and you only do it once.
If we get lost then, that’s good then you’ll have something to say. One of the things, is that, I’m not really into it or nothing, but when you think about it, cause they put a lot of money into the West End to make it great and pizzazzy and whoopee, for all the tourists to see it and think London’s a wicked place to come to, but they don’t put anything into a place like this, where like, where the people of London are actually living, and it’s really shit. I mean, there’s really shitty sort of things. When I go out to Cornwall on the train, I always know when I’m back in London, because you can see all the graffiti on the walls and all sorts of horribleness. Even though the things look good; but it’s terrible, to go from where it’s all smelling nice and what, to the atmosphere of London, and everything changes once you’re in here. So I want to move. But not because, I don’t want to move because I don’t like London, I want to move because I want to go somewhere different. I want to do something that’s much more fun – go to a new place where I’ve never been before. I want to go to San Francisco, or Manhattan, I don’t know. It just seems so big and good. When I watch that thing on TV, what’s it called, The Real World, they live in a big flat in San Francisco, it looks more fun than London, how shall I say it, it just seems good. When I watch it on TV it seems good, when I watch Friends, it seems good. Obviously I know it’s not real, but you just got to expect that
and when you go there you find that it’s not and you say fine I saw it for myself, know what I mean? Like before I went to Zimbabwe I thought it was going to be full of tigers and lions crawling around the street and stuff. I used to think that that’s what Zimbabwe was like before I went there, but so when I was there I was like, where are all the tigers and lions, and I was like damn. But then I liked it anyway. My dad’s there. He comes from there, and we wanted me to go there. So I went there, and he paid for everything. It was good though, I’ll go back. I’d definitely go back if I can afford to go there. See that pub there, I was at that pub for a party, yeah, and it was the biggest pub fight I’ve ever been in in that pub. It was over a girl. I was standing there and someone got punched in the face, and then suddenly chairs were flying everywhere, it was one of those proper London-y type fights. Bottles and glasses everywhere and the stools flying over your head and everything. I wasn’t actually fighting. I was a bit scared but at the same time excited. It was weird because I’d never been in a pub brawl before – I didn’t really see it as a fight, I see it as a thing that’s in the movies – like a pub brawl, the fight was all exciting, but at the same time, I was like, shit don’t hurt me. I kind of enjoyed it, but in a weird way, cause I was trying not to get hurt.
I remember the police coming in. And when the police came in, it was even more scary then when I was actually in the fight, because when the police came in they, like, it was just when they’d got their new batons, they got this one, and it whips out – a big metal thing. And they come in and they all whipped them all out and they were just hitting people with them, they were just hitting them and I was like, they came over to us, where we were sitting, and they were like hitting people, and I got up to go out, because I didn’t like them to hit me or anything, and they grabbed me and just threw me out the door. I thought that, it’s like, you know what I mean, if they hit you, there’s nothing you can really do about it or nothing. Especially when they’ve got, when you think that they’ve got the power to hit you, and they’ll hit you, you know what I mean. I remember there were girls walking down this road crying. Ok, I have never seen this before, oh it looks wicked. I have never seen this before. Yup it’s new, from Belgium. Why would it be here, nice white wall I suppose? Looks like there was something underneath it. It looks quite good though, if it was a bit bigger, maybe. That’s the thing, there’s no graffiti around here at all – hardly any. There’s tags sprayed around but there’s not graffiti. I don’t really write. My friends do, but I just sort of you know what I mean, just muck about a little bit. If they go writing, then I’ll
London Fields
go sort of like help spray some stuff, cause I can’t be bothered to go out, like they lot, like go out on their own and do it. I can’t be bothered to do that – they spend something like 50 pounds on spray and then they go on the biggest missions, like they jump around in the train tracks and climb in these weird places and I just can’t do that all the time, so I only go sometimes when I can be bothered. I used to do it more, when I first got into it – you know when you first get into something and you’re’ like yeah, this is wicked, man, I used to be really into it but then whereas a I sort of faded away from it, only going when they go, they got more and more into it, and it was like you know what I mean? Here’s London Fields, you want to walk through it? If we walk through it we can get to where we want to go afterwards as well. Here’s where I learned to do my first dunk on a basketball net in here. And I remember when I was younger, I used to go here and play on my BMX except I never used to be able to go up it and down it, I used to fall off it all the time – that big one – I could never do it. Can I stand on top of it? I have to take my hat off though. There used to be here, there, there used to be loads here as well. Cause they never used to be red, they used to be that kind of concrete and then they put the red stuff on top of it.
Need gloves, see you don’t think about these things, but in the winter you think about yeah, I’m going to prepare for summer and get a new pair of shorts and a new pair of sandals. Used to play football sometimes in here, over there, and if you wore white or anything white, that was it. Cause if it’s not raining or whatever this is so dusty this floor, it’s like a real dusty thing, and you used to get dust all over. The one in Victoria Park I got stuck on it once, and I was trying to show off like yeah man, watch this, I was trying to show off and like it got stuck. I was too scared to come down. There used to be a swimming pool over there, which they closed down. It was all over grown and everything and like we used to go in there and make little bases and stuff inside of it – we had all these little hideouts inside it. This is weird seeing all the leaves all brown now. But even though people like say that flats like that don’t look nice, I think they look good, right, they don’t look nice, but they look good. I think it looks good where it is. I mean, the ones that are terrible to live in, yeah they should tear those down. We used to come here in the summertime – we’d come in here a lot. Especially when it’s hot we’d come in here. Sometimes we’d play football, if someone brings a football in.
See where there’s one two three them trees over there? We’d usually sit around in that space when it’s hot just around there. And there’s the pub on the park, where all the grown ups go. See and there’s the swimming pool – see they’re building it now, they’re doing it up, cause it used to have all you know, these big metal things going round it, so you couldn’t actually even see it – you’d have to climb over it and stuff, but we had a special way of climbing into it. We never used to have to climb over it that way. We used to go around the back here. It used to be wicked in there, all about jumping off stuff and getting dirty. They still haven’t painted over that – I done that ages ago. See this is where we used to climb. See we used to climb up though the corner bit – see that corner bit – it used to be much easier to come in from that bit, so we used to climb up the corner and we use to step on the bench, step up onto the pole and then jump up onto that ledge and pull ourselves over into it. Checking it our to see if someone else was in it. This is kind of shameful really, now that you see it all the time. This is my area basically, around here, this is where I know everything. That’s the bit that I used to walk through to get to places quicker and that bench is where Nell and all her friends used to sit, but they don’t sit there any more. They used to sit on that bench.
Would you like to go the route which I used to take home from school? There’s a shop over there that we used to get all the sprays from, it’s just here, because it used to be really cheap, right, like one pound fifty and it’s real easy to steal them as well. Oh there it is, the one next to the drinks cabin. So can you see a sort of faded out gun where it used to be? On its hands? You should look above the fingers and you can sort of see it. A big black sort of smudge just like, like a gun as in, I think it was more before they wiped it off – it said meat is murder or something like that. It’s always been something from when I was younger, I just thought it was a bad thing, and I still do, right. I just think it’s bad to eat them when they’re just so like, innocent, and haven’t done anything to people, when we can eat vegetables and things like that to live, we don’t have to take a life to eat something. I was vegetarian from when I was about twelve or thirteen til about 2 weeks ago, so I’m a bit, I feel a bit bad at the moment. I’m still
Mare Street
See the McDonalds sign coming up – see cause what it says is “One minute away” and then it’s got a finger pointing like that down the road and someone sprayed a gun into their hand. Like vegetarian rights or whatever and at the time I was, 6 months ago, at the time, I’m not so much anymore, but I used to be a vegetarian and so I was like, yeahhh, great stuff, but then they took it off.
going through sort of trauma. So it wasn’t like I decided to stop at any time, it was like, it wasn’t like I stopped, I just suddenly, I just ate some, one day, I ate some chicken or was it fish, I can’t remember, one or the other, and I had it and I was like oh my god, and I’d forgotten how nice it tastes, and I slapped myself, no I can’t eat no more, can’t eat no more forever. And then I was just, oh but just one more bit, I haven’t been there in years as well; we used to go there when we were kids. Our school used to take us to this library. I go to the library in Dalston now because it lends out CDs as well, so I can rent a CD, and they do quite good ones as well. When I was in the cub scouts, well not the cub scouts but scouts, I got awarded from being a cub to a scout in here. That’s Hackney Free Secondary School, and I don’t know why that ‘s a Methodist church because that used to be a post office, see this is how long in haven’t been round here for. I remember coming in here with my mum to do the postal stuff. Oh well, “All welcome, come in and worship,” it says. Hmm I don’t know. It was in that big room in there, it’s like, sports were in there. And that’s where every week we ‘d come and we’d do all the scouty things that scouts do – learn how to tie knots and stuff like that. There’s probably people in class at the moment.
I find it really weird, the way that when I was younger, when I was in nursery – I remember nursery quite well – it was in the same school as the primary school, and at playtime you could like see all the primary school people playing about cause ours was just a bit cut off from theirs, so we could actually play with them. There was one person who used to be child-minded by the same person and I used to look up to her so much, I used to think she was like the greatest person in the world, cause she was like, a big girl.
Stoke Newington
This is where she used to dress me up as Michael Jackson. She was my child minder. She used to pick me up from nursery. I can’t remember exactly which house she used to live at. She doesn’t live there no more, she lives in another place. And I remember she used to – it was one of these balconies, I think, or them balconies there. She used to dress me up like Michael Jackson and used to have these big Elvis Presley-type sunglasses you know those ones, and I used to have a big afro, so she used to put gel in it, so it would go all floppy. I always remember the weird things about my childhood. I remember coming out here with my mum, and showing my mum my muscles when I was about four, and obviously, I was just weak. Probably watching He-Man or something. I remember coming out and saying, every day I used to ask her if my muscles had grown any, any more than from the day before. I think it was that block of flats. I really do recognize just the opening.
One of my friends lives in this block of flats here, right at the top. We’re friends but he was a friend from primary school, before I went to secondary school, so I mean, we used to go round his house and play computer and eat toffees. His mum used to buy us loads of toffees and stuff. I see him sometimes just walking down the street, and I say hello to him. See where that Coca-Cola sign is, when I was younger, that used to be like, cause now I dunno, if it’s still open, it doesn’t look like it’s open, oh I’ve got to see if I, see where it’s got that green thing? I’ve got to see if I can remember the guy’s name, Des? I think it’s Des, and he used to make me sandwiches for free. I used to go in there a lot with my friend and his dad, cause his dad used to know him and he used to sit in there or whatever. But that, where the Coca-Cola sign is, it used to be this little small store with this little plump old man, used to sell us like 1p sweets. No, Dell-Boy’s that’s it! And me and my friend, remember the old fat skateboards, we used to do that all down that street there. My old primary school’s back there, when we come back, though, we can pass through it.
I used to think all the cars in this place were the best cars in the world. And I used to always wonder why it had those numbers on the sides of the things, actually I still don’t know why. And they used to have like, outside every single door, cause you could never actually walk past without crossing the road, you know them things that blowed in the wind when they spin round? And when it used to be windy they used to spin so fast, like saying “cars” or “car wash” and all that or “MOT.” That’s a toy factory, I think. I used to think it was weird the way they put stuff on the windows. That used to be a pub – it’s houses now. All from here onwards it’s like I haven’t been round here for ages so a lot of things I don’t remember. See that building, see? That building never used to be there. It used to be um, like travelers used to, like, have their caravans and things like that there. And this wall here I used to, when my mum used to pick me up from school or something, I used to um, walk along this wall, back and forth, back and forth. It’s kind of like, I used to think it was really weird, and I was so small that I couldn’t actually climb on to this. I was so small I couldn’t climb onto here. That’s social services or something I think. This is going towards Hackney Wick. Holloway’s back that way.
D’you remember Gavin? He lives just round the corner. Can’t remember which house he lives at. Cause we, I used to hang around with him when we were younger and I hadn’t seen him for ages until Drama. So, I met him again at Drama. We used to rent videos from around the corner, from this place called Ace of Spades or something like that. We used to rent all the, we were only about 10, right, we used to rent all the 18’s and stuff. Cause at that time, you could rent the 18’s, it wasn’t illegal to rent them. So we used to rent all them ones. We used to buy um, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Every time we went in there, we rented that video, yeah, and that used to be our favorite film. That’s Well Street market, along here, just up that road there, I don’t know if it’s on today, though. Me and Gavin used to play on, see that, see those roof bits there? We used to climb over and run around on that little bit there. And one of the buses that used to come up here, you know the buses where it hasn’t got any doors, well they used to come up here and now it’s just the normal ones now. Gascoyne Estate. He lives on the second from the bottom on this side. It’s so cold today. I don’t know why it’s so cold. Don’t know if that still is, but it used to be Hackney College.
I mean, the thing about Hackney is that it’s quite a big Borough. Half of it I actually know, and the other half I know, but, d’you know what I mean, I’m not as, I don’t really go there as much as I go, you know what I mean? See, I know this part. I know Victoria Park, I know Dalston, I know Stoke Newington, yeah, just around those three places, but then all of these places I’ve just said are quite big areas, are like the biggest areas in Hackney. And then I know, I probably know like, cause I don’t know the names of every single area, I don’t think every single area has actually got a name, but I probably know about half. I remember our downstairs neighbor, we used to live in a maisonette, right, there was a house downstairs and then there was a house on top, and it was one big house. They used to walk their dogs, Gunnar and Kruger, Gunnar because of Arsenal, they used to walk them here in the mornings, this is just a green, and they used to walk them in the big park at night. In the mornings, cause I never used to go to school very much and so she used to let me come and walk the dogs and then she’d take me to McDonalds for breakfast cause I used to love the McDonalds breakfasts, right. I’ve no idea why, because when I taste it now, it just tastes like rubber.
And that bit there is where they used to hold the council meetings. When you get in it’s just a big hall, and they used to hold the council meetings in there. I remember when I lived here, there was an armed squad came down, because um, like a SWAT team, and they lined themselves up – I’ll show you where. Oh my god, this is my road, basically now, where I used to live. But see the park where the park is there, they lined themselves up one behind every tree just in front of my little road, and then there was a gunshot that went off in one of the houses like about two doors away from me. So they lined themselves up and they all had their big machine guns all ready to fire and everything. It was a sixteen year old boy and his little brother who at the time was twelve and they both came out of the house with their hands on their heads or whatever, and I remember with the twelve-year-old, right, I was with him in here, cause like, I used to sometimes just play about in here or whatever, and I was with him in there and like, it was winter time
Victoria Park
Farkin and Firkin. I had my birthday party in there once in that pub. It’s got like, a little children’s bit at the back, like games, like you know that swimming pool full of balls, all that, and slides, bits like that. And I had my birthday party in there.
so it was all the leaves everywhere and we decided to try to set fire to the pub. But with the police? Oh I think they didn’t find the gun or anything so they couldn’t do nothing. No one was hurt so they couldn’t really do anything. Cause the thing was they barricaded themselves in the house, so that the police couldn’t get in unless they used force. Yeah and I think there was an adult with them, I’m not sure. So they couldn’t actually get in the house, so they had to just stand outside, because there were loads of people around so they couldn’t just start shooting around. That used to be my sitting room in there, and the one to the left that used to be my mum’s bedroom, and then the one to the right was my bedroom. God, there’s someone actually going into the house. Oh, she must live at the bottom, that’s weird.
And when they were building them houses we used to play about in the building site. We used to play in there, and we used play, um, fumble just this side of my house, like get a tennis ball and hit it into the wall and it would bounce back up, and then you carry on. And like, me and my friend Gary we were like the best at it at the time yeah, he used to better than me but he used to teach me all his tricks. He used to do this one where he’d pretend to wind his arm round and the he’d let it wind back round and then hit it and then he used to do all these like weird tricks like that. When we come back I want to try to walk down this street. Now, see where it’s all boarded up at the side, that was a little club called “Tonight’s,” and somebody got stabbed outside so they had to close it all down. Let’s go into the park here so we can have a go on the slides. This, I remember, I got chased down this path. Me and my friend got chased down this path by a pit bull terrier. Some boys were like, um, were starting on us, and they were much older than us and one of them had a dog and so we started, like, being idiots, we like swore at them and stuff like that and then decided to run and then I stopped running and turned round and he’d let the dog free and so we were running running running, we ran ran ran and
then like, you know how you just run and you stop thinking about everything else running, and so we were running as fast as I possibly could down this thing, run outside the park, got my keys, huh huh, open my door, ran inside, shut the door, forgot to let my friend back in, opened the door, come on in. Round here, I think I’ve been chased by dogs about four times. I’ve been bitten by a dog, we’ll, not bitten by it, it tried to bite my belly. Everyone used to have a dog, and like for fun, you used to set each other’s dogs onto other people, things like that, real nice friendly thing to do. Cause like they never, like, the dogs, the dogs wouldn’t actually hurt people but they’d like jump up on you and start you know what I mean. So someone set their dog on me once and it just scratched my belly. There’s a little paddling pool round the back of here, or do you want to go on the little swing things, ride things? I remember that. Oh there’s nobody here, and people on their BMXs used to ride around here. Everyone used to be standing around here like jumping up and down. They were so much fun.
The thing is you can’t come get up the slides by the stairs. I’ve got to take my coat off so we can sit on it. Oh they’ve taken all the stones away. That’s what people used to do – they used to put stones in their pockets here, and onto the seat area, and you’d sit on the stones, and it would make you go real fast down to the bottom. It’s so weird. They seem smaller. You can still see the gravel still. You put them onto it and then you slide down. But then you fall into those big boulders down there. But I think it’s nice to come back here and see everything from not seeing it for ages and to see the developments it’s made and everything that’s happened to it over the past years. Its’ like it’ll be so weird to walk down that street. I mean it feels weird here, but it’s kind of, I’m not seeing the people. But if I see, it’s like the thought of maybe someone might come out of their door that I know and everything like that. That would be weird cause in a way I do, like, if we walk down, in a way I would like someone to come out and just like to recognize me, but at the same time I don’t. Do you get me? It’s just, the most fun of it is actually not knowing if someone will. Probably won’t but… And in these bushes we used to play hide and seek.
If this is a 30, this is the first time a 30 has ever come to this bus stop the first time I get here. Oh. 26. See look, this was the type of area, see the shop owner, he still recognizes me, it’s like a proper area, everyone knew each other round here. The area I live in now is rubbish. Nobody knows each other, nobody. They stick to themselves. I feel more at home here. I’d say, if I lived back here, I’d feel much more at home here than I do in Dalston. You know what I mean, it’s like, if I knew the people as well as I knew them when I lived here, now, I’d feel much more at home here than I do in Dalston, because it is much more of a nicer place.