Yet Another Pretentious Asymmetric Haircut on a Brixton Gentrifier

Look at this muppet. The hipster gentrification of Brixton continues, with levels of social cleansing the BNP and EDL could only ever dream of.

Now now. I know we should be concentrating on (the often hard to find) economic and demographic figures surrounding these issues, but! Take a look at this bloody hair-do! Utter twat. He’s even had ‘stitching’ tattooed into his head. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.

I did a little research into him. He’s fucking called “Alfie”. Ha! What a name. And his parents? His mum is, “an English literature lecturer at Roehampton University” and his papa is, “a writer and artist”. Sling your hooks.

(EDIT: Oh shit. Whoops. I did a tiny bit more research, turns out this is Alfie Meadows, a young man who got twatted by a Met truncheon during a student fees protest/riot and required brainsurgery, spillmopping and all the rest of it. I feel a bit bad now. You could say he’s offset his gentrification footprint rather extremely. He’s even being tried with violent disorder at Kingston court today…

So, don’t set up a pop-up shop you twats, get roughed up instead. Erm. Does that make sense? I mean obviously, urban material reality needs units of authenticity more concrete than simple streetcred…

I’m digging a hole for myself. Again. A less stubborn man would simply delete this bloody post, but not I. Oh no!

I am willing to make tough and difficult decisions if it’s in the long term interests of my constituents. I am willing to make tough and difficult decisions if it’s in the long term interests of my constituents. I am willing to make tough and difficult decisions if it’s in the long term interests of my constituents. I am willing to make tough and difficult decisions if it’s in the long term interests of my constituents.)

The Lambeth Country Show & Cityguilt

The Lambeth Country Fair  has been deemed a triumph. Locals loved it. Lots of people came, including many from over the Thamesborder. My associates over at the Revolutionary South London Tourist Board were ready to declare it a success.

But I urged caution.

I made the unusual decision to attend the Country Show in cognito. Normally I will be seen at such events in full revolutionary uniform, meeting, greeting, pressing the flesh & recruiting youngsters to our guerilla training programs. But I was very cautious of giving any indirect support to the event.

You see, my suspicions – subsequently confirmed in Brockwell Park – were that there was something retrogressive, and indeed  counterrevolutionary, about the aims of the Country Show organisers.

I am, surely, not the only one to have noted that the South London Borough of Lambeth doesn’t have any countryside. Indeed, it is a glorious slab of granite citydom.

It is therefore highly bizarre that we should see such a celebration of the country pitching up in the heart of revolutionary South London…

The Famous Lambeth Countryside (stolen photograph)

The story of human civilisation is a tale of the process of urbanification. Those who live in cities are simply more highly evolved then their country bumpkin cousins. Sad. But true.

It is the role of the enlightened South Londoner to recognise and glorificate their urbanhood. The South Londoner wryly smiles as he breathes in the smog, views the grey, smells the grime and hears whatever the onomatopœia of urban noise is.

(Or she.)

What I have now realised – all to late to stop it via extraparliamentary methods – is that the Lambeth Country Show is a big stinking cowpat of propaganda against the very citydom of South London.

And to what purpose does such propaganda serve? To repress the revolutionary urges of our half-city. To foster a false city consciousness that South London is merely a peripheral entity, existing for the benefit of Imperialist Central London and the Hegemonically Powerful North. To cultivate the misapprehension that South London is not able to go alone, to break free from its shackles. To foment the poisoned ideology that, like the dairy farmer is to Tesco, we brave transpontinists are little more than slaves to the Central Hub. And, indeed, to make the South Londoners an even more backwards race by the promoting of a romantic anachronistic idyll (which never really existed).

It is the creation of both a transpontine and generally city shame, embarrassment, self-loathing. This is a phenomenon I will call cityguilt – the latest weapon of control.

Comrades, you must avoid the artificial shames of this multifaceted guiltfare.

Do not hate the city and consequently yourself for being a maggot within it. Embrace the city. It is the result of thousands of years of human progress. Roll around the filth with an openmouth, begging, “More! More! More!” Celebrate traffic jams with euphoric dancing. Bask in the shadows of high rise estate blocks.

Pro-actively reject the idyllic countryside lie and fight back against other encroachments they make into citylife. Avoid farmers’ markets. Boycott ITV’s Emmerdale. Make nuisance calls to the Countryside Alliance.

And, most importantly of all, stay vigilant for further hegemonic attacks from our northern enemies. As the revolutionary will surges higher, deeper and harder throughout our future-republic, their attempts to keep control will become increasingly tenuous and desperate and baffling. We left ourselves open to attack this weekend. Our fledgling national identity went out in a miniskirt and the (British) judge will say we were asking for it… Trust no-one. Except me.

Nationalistic Love,

Big Wolfie – sleeping with one eye open so you don’t have to.

PRESS RELEASE: South London declares support for DPRK

Free South London today, in a blaze of publicity and with the authentic roar of the oppressed, pledges its support for our most glorious comrades, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea national association football team in the forthcoming imperialist pig-dog showcase of postmodern hypercapitalist slag-bitchery, the FIFA World Cup.

Free South London, being the true representative voice of the transpontine proletariat, is both humbled and inspired by the bravery and skill of the People’s Footballing Representatives as they prepare to do battle with: Brazil, the samba lackeyes of imperialism, sold out to the highest bidder (Nike) and red-raw from the subsequent rape. Ivory Coast, a nation born of European colonialism and founded on the exploitation of the elephant proletariat. And Portugal, the birthplace of vile colonial expansoploition, aka mindrape.

Our stupendously splendid comrades-in-feet have not even been put off by the hideous bourgeois imperialist prejudices & cheating of Überführer Sepp Blatter, of the monolithic ideological trans-state apparatus that is FIFAcapitalism.

We will laugh, howl, delight and stamp in joyous teleological unison as these counterrevolutionist whore-tarts succumb to the modernist supremely-planned tactical brilliance of the Democratic People’s Republic Korea, powered by a new superdrink.

With this in mind, comrades, then I heartily submerge you to join myself and the SLNK South London North Korea Supporters Club on Tuesday the15 th of June at Mango Landin’ in Brixton (twinned with Pyongyang) to witness the Brazilian national team be given a beating so profound both they and all international capitalists will taste the bitter tears of defeat and suckle on the plagueridden teat of shame.

To Victory!

The Hyperreality of Coffee

War is all around, comrades. DON’T TOUCH THAT FUCKING CAPPUCCINO!!

I am delighted to have presented this landmark 1,468th edition of the groundbreaking series of re-educational short films, The War On Postmodernity.

Watch it. Take it in. Do not sprinkle chocolate powder on top of it. You shits.

Brixton is a tree & South rises above North!!

Here in my brain we Love revolution & we Love art. So, it stands to reason, we Love revolutionary art. And here’s an example:

(Click on image to see a larger version on the original website)

A map of Brixton, as a tree. It’s been cyberlooted from the Londonist blog, as I was desperate to share it directly with you, my comrades. I particularly love the counterhegemony of placing the South on top. The South Will Rise Again!

Detail

It was designed by the mysteriously named Liam Roberts, who explains thus: [Here is] Brixton, rendered as a tree, featuring a few of the great treasures of the neighbourhood – i.e. pubs and cafes that I make a habit of frequenting! You’ll notice that north is “down” and south is “up” – partly because Brixton’s roads better resemble a branching, forking tree this way, and I guess there’s also an antipodean streak in me (strange as a Canadian) that would like to see the south treated as “top” wherever possible. The tree is drawing water from London’s great giver of life, the Thames, depicted here as part of the underground watertable. Some of my favourite unique and characterful pubs and cafes are represented here either as hanging fruit, or as nests: I thought this made sense as these places can be sources of sweet sustenance, as well as temporary dwellings.

If Liam or the folk at the Londonist blog read this, get in touch. Liam deserves a revolutionary medal for his services to South London, and I should like to make him one.

Peace x

The Stockwell Question

Well, well, well. Stockwell. There’s a tremendous synchronicity to the events of the last week. A General Election has been called and establishment politicians have poured out to meet “their” people. I too am a politician. Of the soul. And that same week I commenced meeting my people. I started canvassing hearts, minds & revolutionary spoilt ballots in sunny Stockwell.

My host was community figurehead and fellow member of “the South London twitterati” (according to @est1859) Jason Cobb, who blogs at the wonderful OnionBagBlog. It is he who is responsible for photographic, video and audio truthblasts (see bottom of the post).

It was during this trip that I had one of my fairly regular profound realizations. I shall call this one The Stockwell Question. You see, Stockwell is… nice. Give me Stockwell with its cardboard-mass-reproduced iconic bus station its muralled bomb shelter over any part of North London any day of the tenday revolutionary week.

Stockwell is the kind of place that showcases the gentrification of innercity South London isn’t isolated. It’s a process sweeping through huge swathes of South London. On the most immediate level, South London is getting what she deserves after decades of toil. But on the imaginative-revolutionary level, this is the shackling of South London’s revolutionary potential into a normative hegemonic global project of postmodernity.

To burn, or to earn. That is the question. The Stockwell Question.

Artefacts Of My Tour

Ah, Stockwell is one of the few places in South London deemed worth of having a tube station by the estabLIESment. But these few crumbs brushed from the table of centralisation will forever be compromised by the tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. RIP.

The Stockwell bomb shelter, decorated with a mural featuring South London’s own French revolutionary Violette Szabo.

Outside the iconic and cardboard reproduced Stockwell Bus Garage. Once glorious. Now trashious.

When Jason told me he wanted to take me to “the Priory”, I thought he was an MI6 agent. But before you could say “Michael Foucault” I realised it was a public house, where we recorded this interview on the subject of South London independentis politics:

Listen!

And why not settledown with your loved ones, with your favourite Meantime brewery drink and perhaps a few Brixtonian herbals for the kids and watch the video of my Stockwell tour:

{{{TECHNICAL FAULT!!}}}

Why Do I Change My Location So Often?

First thing first, comrades, I never change my location in the most important of senses. I am always repwezentin South London. So glorious, and (one day) so free.

But I periodically alter my precise location. The eagle eyed amongst you will have no doubt noticed that the I have – in what I like to term an Orwellian Turn – changed the location of the Anarcho-Situationist Commune from Lewisham to Brixton. This is not the first time I’ve changed the precise part of South London I have claimed to live. Before Lewisham it was the Wandsworth Anarcho-Situationist Commune. Earlier still, the Bugsby’s Marsh Anarcho-Situationist Commune. Next it could be Streatham, Lambeth or anywhere else.

Why?

There are a number of reasons. One is security. MI6 Would love to know my exact whereabouts. The British state’s distrust of the revolutionary potential of the collective South London hivemind is one of the main reasons they set up shop in Vauxhall.

But the most important is – as alluded to earlier – Repwezentationism. I want to – indeed, have to – represent ALL of our beautiful half-city. I live in the abstract sense of a homogenous, revolutionary, united South London. The grey reality of specific location would hamper the revolutionary cause. Our unted identity should be our weapon.

Oh My Days! Brixton Zebra!

Totally nicked – or as I like to say, looted for the revolutionary cause – from How To Be A Retronaut. But COME ON PEOPLE. Just when you thought Brixton couldn’t get much cooler, much funkier, much Brixtoner, the sands of time splurge out this beauty. A tamed zebra. Pulling a cart. In Brixton. The photograph is even in black & white!

Come the revolution, mark my revolutionary truthnuggets, the zebra & carts shall return to the streets of South London. And if any wishy-washy animal rights campaigners pipe up they shall be slapped down. BY MY THRUSTING GROIN!

Viva da zebralution!