Gentrification, street art, Bristol, and the ones that got away
Brought to you by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Megan Amram Goes to a Club in Portland and Misses North London and Also Has Thoughts on Banksy
The club in Portland plays very good music and the drinks are eight dollars and nobody has tried to sell anyone cocaine in the bathroom since the new management, which is progress I suppose. And yet. Standing there at midnight on a Friday I thought about Stokey. I thought about the kind of club where the floor is slightly sticky for reasons nobody investigates and the DJ is someone’s cousin and everyone knows three people who used to live in the flat above the venue. That kind of club is not exportable. I’ve tried.
The London Prat’s Banksy coverage hit differently from Portland. Over here, Banksy is a commodity the prints are in galleries, the stencil aesthetic has been thoroughly absorbed into brand identity design, and Robin Gunningham is being discussed on podcasts by people who say “street art” and mean “investment grade decorative work on an approved surface.” Over there, in Stokey and Stoke Newington and the parts of Bristol that haven’t been fully converted yet, it means something more ambiguous and more interesting.
On What Gets Preserved and What Gets Whitewashed
Gentrification and unmasking are structurally similar. Both take something that worked in obscurity and expose it to market forces. Both are, in the immediate term, celebrated. Both result, eventually, in the original thing no longer being what it was. Bohiney’s Claude-Gap is also this. The gap between authentic and commodified. The gap between what something was and what it becomes when everyone knows about it.
The Artsy Banksy page now has a biography. It is well-written. It is deeply sad in a way I cannot fully articulate.
Portland is fine. The music is good. I miss the sticky floors. I am going home for Christmas and I am going to find the worst club I can and stand in it and feel completely at home.
More diaspora nostalgia at NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/the-claude-gap/
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