Faded Glamour

"And your sunglasses stuck with sequins from the shop down at the end, where they sell unlabelled tin cans. You just guess what you're going to get. And I tell you that this faded glamour's a stupid art-school idea. And you tell me I don't know because I don't have to live here. I could move away, probably will someday ..." Animals That Swim's Faded Glamour is set in and around the borough of Hackney and the surrounding areas. It's verging on Iain Sinclair territory I guess, with the appeal of certain areas for people keen to live somewhere cheap and in a location that has a certain something no matter how well it tries to disguise it. Of course for the real locals the bone of contention is that such people are 'slumming' it by choice whereas they've really had little in the way of options. The irony is that, as in Sinclair's case, they can end up staying for considerably longer than anticipated and can have much more of a feel for the place than someone brought up there ... Interestingly Animals That Swim's lines about how we could just walk around, we could walk all over town, now seem prophetic. Photo of Iain Sinclair in one of the booths at the old Copper Grill behind Liverpool St. station circa 1999 by Phil Nichols from the excellent Classic Cafes site.