[HN Gopher] The Angel, Islington
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The Angel, Islington
Author : zeristor
Score : 29 points
Date : 2024-02-23 20:43 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)
| sorokod wrote:
| In Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" the place is a being: The Angel
| Islington (without a comma)
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It's what I always think about now.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| and it is _not_ to be trusted.
| sorokod wrote:
| Yea, that novel messed up Nightsbridge for me too
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| As an American reading the book for the first time, it took me
| a rather embarrassing amount of time to realize how many
| important Neverwhere people and places were London tube
| stations. The Knight's Bridge. The Earl's Court. The Black
| Friars. The Hammersmith. And of course the angel, Islington.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Bill Bryson has a bit in "Notes from a Small Island" (I think it
| was?) about how depressing it is that the British keep taking
| these older beautiful buildings, and then plonking down
| uncharacteristic, dull modern style steel and glass buildings
| right beside them, or replacing lower levels with them etc.
|
| It was always something that bugged me as a Brit to some degree,
| but, of course, as soon as I read that, I noticed just how much
| of it there was. It's ever where, on almost every high street. A
| bizarre mishmash of character and "meh".
|
| > The building, recently sold on to the New River Company, is
| repaired and refitted for use as offices and a bank. The building
| looks rather less dazzling at ground floor level as a result.
|
| The Angel, Islington is a supreme example. The same goes for the
| buildings along the road from it. The building above the ground
| floor has character. The ground floor looks exactly like what
| you'd see in almost any high street in the country.
|
| Near where I worked in London, plans went up for renovation that
| I think ended up working out reasonably well,
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/XSpdfzdyQE4DpTXr8. Where that Metro Bank
| is, they ripped out everything behind that brick facade, and
| rebuilt (it badly needed it), then worked to do up the brick,
| maintaining the original style.
|
| This kept the building in the characteristic style of the
| neighbourhood, (see https://maps.app.goo.gl/US1GvYA1fCQ9VCZi6 for
| examples of other buildings in the area that are of similar age),
| but didn't leave it stuck with the maintenance issues. Of course
| you can see just beside it where they _didn 't_ do that, and
| shoved something decidedly more modern in place, and completely
| at odds with the styles of the buildings on either side of it, or
| across the street from it.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > It was always something that bugged me as a Brit to some
| degree, but, of course, as soon as I read that, I noticed just
| how much of it there was. It's ever where, on almost every high
| street. A bizarre mishmash of character and "meh".
|
| i remember reading something somewhere that you can use this
| aesthetic to see where the blitz hit worst.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The ability to do that is what allowed London to prosper while
| older European towns turned into tourist theme parks. It is one
| of those wonderful things. You make money as an American and
| you are like a God to these Europeans, their luxuries are
| trifles.
|
| At some point people wish to become ossified and want their
| homes and cities to become tomb worlds visited by gawking
| tourists.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Many of the Victorian buildings we think of as worth preserving
| were eyesores of their times. St Pancras station is a well
| known example. Mostly, I like the variety and would prefer a
| planning regime that would allow a larger variety of designs to
| be feasible to get approval for.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| I'd argue it's almost the opposite - huge swathes of London are
| housed in shitty Victorian and Georgian homes and flat
| conversions, and we can't fix them up or replace them with
| modern homes because of extreme local conservation laws. Right
| now I'm living in the most modern home I ever have - a 700sqft
| 2-bed from the 1960s.
| turkey99 wrote:
| Just walked by for the first time in years.
|
| I was surprised to see the buildings across the road demolished
| and Jamie Oliver restaurant is now called 411 bar.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Not a mention of the Werkz just round the corner and the perfect
| opportunity to go goth spotting on a Friday night (although I now
| see that Slimes is now a monthly night rather than weekly).
| LightFog wrote:
| Nor Club de Fromage - quite the let down.
| kreek wrote:
| I was looking for a Slimelight reference in the article, too.
| The world's longest-running Goth nightclub, it used to be BYOB,
| which made it a cheap night out. I still have my membership
| card.
| vr46 wrote:
| The main stretch of Angel up to the Business Design Centre has
| always been pug-ugly, but things improve considerably the second
| you step off the main drag to pubs like The Camden Head or even
| The York, and then continuing towards the canal, where you get
| this delightful spot:
|
| https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5333306,-0.1026485,3a,75y,...
|
| The main thoroughfares of London, and likely everywhere, are
| likely tagged as "urban blight" for AI training models without a
| second thought, but twenty steps away from them and you get
| extraordinary surprises.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > rising to a weirdly phallic nipple
|
| You know, skyscrapers are always accused of being phallic in a
| Freudian way, and I think that's unfair. What other shape would
| you design for high-population density structures, in an urban
| environment, above ground? And here's an example of a building
| which is _definitely_ not phallic looking, and it 's still being
| called phallic while being compared to a body part that is not
| phallic at all, nor does the nipple-esque adornment itself look
| in any way phallic. And yet. So what does a building have to do
| to not be called phallic?
|
| Mostly joking, I liked the article.
| thriftwy wrote:
| 25-storey Russian apartment blocks (or Chinese for that
| matter?) do not look phallic at all, since they are often
| longer than they are wide[1], and have thin profile. Think a
| square with a courtyard.
|
| It's only when skyscraper meets dense city grid do phallos
| proliferate. Or in vanity projects like Burj Khalifa or Gazprom
| Corn Cob.
|
| 1. https://m.vk.com/wall-37349342_98635
| RecycledEle wrote:
| What is the author talking about when he mentions the Monopoly
| board.
|
| I have played Monopoly (the board game) many times and have never
| heard if the places he is referring to.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Monopoly is localised to the country in which it's sold. The UK
| version has London place names, including The Angel, Islington.
| It doesn't even say "UK version" or something in the box,
| that's just all that's ever been sold here. No doubt that's
| true of many other places. To be honest, I was pretty surprised
| when I found out there's a US one!
|
| This predates the modern very local ones (e.g. in the UK you
| can now get Reading monopoly).
| pavlov wrote:
| One might expect the original American "Monopoly" to be set
| in New York, but it's actually based on the streets of
| Atlantic City, New Jersey. Which is sort of like if the UK
| version were set in an Essex beach town.
| nullify88 wrote:
| I used to live above the Almeida Theatre offices on Upper Street.
| I loved living there. Many visits to Screen on the Green,
| Islington Chapel, and the various bars and restaurants there.
| Unfortunately it was also not far from gang violence from the
| Islington estates that often spilled in to the busy main streets.
| vr46 wrote:
| One of my favourite theatres ever. I sometimes rode my
| motorbike and stuck it in a bay on Napier Terrace and even
| there I'd see drug dealing going on, which made me extremely
| nervous, having been bike jacked before. I was honestly
| surprised the dealing was going on so close to the
| squillionaires around the actual Almeida theatre.
| ljm wrote:
| Working around the corner in Clerkenwell was great. I rarely
| head that way any more but still enjoy the odd walk up Upper
| Street to Highbury.
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