Free, large-scale art in London is a good thing.

I wanted to try to take some photos at the gig, partly for Shu’s prospective website, and partly just for photo practice. It turned out to be quite a good venue for photos, as I had a decent sized seat and a little table in front to hold my bag. I found I could just about get away with a couple of shots at 200ISO, but most of the shots are at 400 or 800 ISO. I had better focus with the 50mm at f1.8 than I had had last time I had tried to shoot any shots of one of her gigs, with slightly less blur, but it still wasn’t great. I took far more shots this time though, so there was bound to be some degree of sheer quantity of shots yielding slightly more good ones. There wasn’t really room to move around when the music had actually started though, hence the similar angle for most of them. Sorry about that. There’s some more below. Click to see them bigger.

There was a story at the time, (inevitably someone’s friend’s sister – probably just an urban legend), that a girl did the same thing, and, when the floor came back up, her hair went down the gap between the floor and the wall and was caught up in the machinery under the floor. The floor and walls kept spinning but the girl was held in place by the hair until it was eventually ripped out. Could this even have been possible, or was it simply made up to give an extra authority to the ‘no handstand’ rule? It seemed worryingly reasonable at the time – the worn paint and chipped wood didn’t exactly scream safety. Even so, we all laughed as we stepped back out into the sunshine at the end of the ride, laughing as we picked the splinters from the wooden wall out of each others’ backs.

It’s no wonder it’s not there any more.

Photo taken at about 6pm, 17.04.2010. Hasselblad 500c/m, Zeiss 85mm Planar, f5.6, Fuji Astia.

As far as I have been able to find out, a family lived used to live there, in what I imagine was once a really beautiful house, but the children grew up and moved out, and the old lady that was left died a few years ago. Since then apparently, the family have been arguing over what should happen to the house. It seems some wanted to sell it, others to develop it into apartments, and others to take over it’s possession themselves. Feelings were obviously high, and the family’s dispersal around the world has meant that the process has taken several years.

As the deliberations crept forward, the house began to rot. Soon, windows were smashed, the garden became a local dump from old fridges and cookers, and the front door and corridor were the most accessible urinal for quite some distance. Realizing the suitability of the place for their needs, the local crackheads gradually moved in. You could pick them out with the bent-forward, slightly desperate way they approached the house, and the twitchy, sucked-in way they left it. Their use meant the decomposition of the house accelerated. Rats patrolled the garden and worried the cats. Strange figures lurked in the shadows around the house at night.

At about 7.00 one evening last winter, the little girl in the house between mine and the crackhouse heard noises on the roof above her. She called her Dad, who went outside to see two figures run over their roof and climb back through one of the crackhouse’s windows. In the next morning’s light, he climbed onto the roof and realized that they had been stealing the slate tiles from his roof, and, judging from the amount gone, had been doing it for sometime. I saw him sitting in his garden for a few nights after that, lit by the light coming through the window from his house, armed with a cricket bat, a mug of coffee and a torch. They didn’t come back.

Suddenly about 4 weeks ago, workmen appeared at the house and started the huge task of cleaning the detritus from inside. Displaying great community spirit and environmental sensitivity, theiy proceeded to empty the contents of the house into the garden, and then set it alight. It burnt throughout the day for 2 weeks (they were kind enough to extinguish the fire in the early evening). When they finished this task, they attached a heavy gate and lock system to the front door, boarded up the windows, and left. Looking over the garden wall every now and again, I sometimes see their van parked in the middle of the garden, but they are never around.

Inevitably, the crackheads moved on. Sometimes I see them in the early mornings waiting outside the KFC on Uxbridge Road, gloomy figures from the night, out of place in the morning sunshine.

Photo taken in the weird volcanic-ash sunset, 15.04.2010. Hasselblad 500c/m, Zeiss 85mm Planar, f.11, Fuji PRO400H.

Click to see bigger versions!

In 2009, Hammersmith and Fulham council are planning a vast redevelopment of the Shepherd’s Bush Green area to coincide with the launch of the massive £1.6bn Westfield Shopping Centre that is currently being finished off behind the shop fronts on the North side of the Green. The mall will almost certainly ring the death knell for the shopping areas in Hammersmith and most of the small shops and local businesses in Shepherd’s Bush. As part of this, Hammersmith & Fulham Council want to close Ginglik, and fill the venue with concrete. They claim that the roof of Ginglik is unsafe (which is possibly true), and that the damp problem and frequent flooding mean that the total cost of making the club fit for purpose could reach upwards of £300,000. Whether or not this price is correct, the loss of a venue like Ginglik would be tragic for the local area, meaning a lack of good independent venues from Ealing to Notting Hill. The council claim that the good of the local residents is their primary objective, and that too much money would need to be spent to save Ginglik. Of course, the council have known of the problems of the building for years and their decision to dispute the terms of occupancy now is more to do with their development of the area than any perceived advantage to the local area. Perhaps the development company should have spent some of the money they wasted on the terrible logo design for the £1.6bn Westfield Shopping Centre on saving a vital local resource.

This weekend, Tammi and Colin organized a “Save Ginglik” protest on the Green, above the venue itself. It was a show of strength for the community and proved to the council the depth of feeling of local residents. Cars hooted their support as they passed and numerous people came and joined the protest, the police walked past smiling and nodding their support.

It would be awful if the club was closed and there is a chance that if enough people sign the petition then the short-sighted, money orientated council may rethink their idiotic policy. I hope they do.