The Beautiful South - Rotterdam or anywhere

Word of the week 18- 24 May 2009 DOWNTOWN / UPTOWN

Downtown is a term primarily used in North America to refer to a city's core or central business district, usually in a geographical, commercial, and community sense.

The term is thought to have been coined in New York City, where it was in use by the 1830s to refer to the original town at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan. As the town of New York grew into a city, the only direction it could grow on the island was toward the north, proceeding upriver from the original settlement (the "up" and "down" terminology in turn came from the customary map design in which up was north and down was south). Thus, anything north of the original town became known as "uptown", while the original town (which was also New York's only major center of business at the time) became known as "downtown".

During the late 19th century, the term was gradually adopted by cities across the United States and Canada to refer to the historical core of the city (which was most often the same as the commercial heart of the city).

Uptown is a residential part of town away from the central commercial district. The word uptown originated in the New York city train stations. As you leave downtown Manhattan the trains direct you to Uptown. Uptown includes Harlem, East Harlem, Washinton Heights, Inwood and (sometimes) the South Bronx.

Lily Allen - LDN

GLOSSARY

LDN Mobile phone text language for London

THE FILTH a slang term for the police

FELLA a slang term for a man

DAPPER a slang term meaning stylish, well dressed

SLAPPER a slang term for a woman who has a lot of sexual partners

PIMP a man who controls prostitutes and lives on the money that they earn

CRACK WHORE a slang term for a woman who exchanges sexual favours for drugs

FROWN to make a serious, angry or worried expression by bringing your eyebrows closer together

STRUGGLING having difficulty with

TESCO the name of a supermarket

AL FRESCO outside


EXPLANATIONS

The video opens with Allen in a record store called "Tough Grade" which is a play on Rough Trade, a record store in London at Talbot & Portobello Road. She asks the store manager for an eclectic piece of music, satirising keywords that have been used to describe her album - "punky electronica.. kind of grime....kind of like...new-wave grime...but kind of maybe like more broken beats, but kinda dubby broken beats...but a little bit kind of soulful....but kind of drum'n'bassy, but kinda more broken drum'n'bass like more broken beats. but break beat kind of broken drum'n'bass. Kind of.... ". The song playing in the background is Lily Allen's "Friend of Mine".

She receives a phone call, from someone we assume is her boyfriend, and arranges to meet him. She walks out of the store and walks through the downtown of London. While she walks through the street, she leaves a glowing trail of light behind her, in technicolor-like hues, and the town's atmosphere looks pleasant, fun and happy - however, as Allen moves forward the "reality" kicks in, as the scenery behind the hue transforms in sharp contrast in what it had been before, portraying litter, homelessness (David Beckham features in the video as the homeless man that Lily hands the pink flyer to) and violent crime in London, and the technicolour is washed out .

The video ends with Allen receiving another phone call; her boyfriend has decided not to come. Angry and unhappy, she storms away, and the vivid colour disappears to reveal the duller, more depressing reality of her surroundings.

Ralph McTell - Streets of London

Ralph McTell singing The Streets of London in the 70s

Ralph McTell in a recent interview about this song:

Ralph McTell's Streets Of London has topped a Time Out poll of the capital's 50 all-time favourite tracks, with The Kinks' Waterloo Sunset a close second.

But few know that McTell's poignant story of post-war poverty, drugs and love was first called The Streets Of Paris.

He explained: "When I was a busker in Paris in 1965 there were a lot of impoverished people sat over the hot-air gratings in the Metro and I formed this idea of writing a song about those people.

But then I thought, 'Wait a minute, these images are everywhere', so I wrote it as Streets Of London to a tune that I'd already composed."

You can read more here:

http://www.timeout.com/london/music/features/2026.html

This Is Where We Live

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

To welcome the New Year, here are some beautiful images, a stop motion short film:
Welcome to our city - to our world - of books. This is where we live.
Thank you, Rocheli ;-)