Gluttony in Banglatown

Spent a gluttonous day at the Brick Lane Festival today. Brick Lane is a street in east London that is in constant cultural flux. The first community to settle there was the Huguenots in the 1700s, followed, generation on generation, by Jews, Somalis, Bangladeshis, and now middle-class "arty" yuppies whose vintage clothing and art shops cluster around the Bethnal Green end of Brick Lane. Brick Lane was the place Jack the Ripper roamed, Stalin and Trotsky shared a flat, and the suffragettes headquartered.

Bangladeshis came to the area as seamen in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and the cooking skills they practised on the boats led to the opening of Britain's first curry houses. Today, Brick Lane's alternative name is Banglatown, so named because the large Bangladeshi community continue to thrive there: sari and fabric stores, Bangladeshi mini-markets and endless traditional and fusion Bangladeshi restaurants and cafes huddle both sides of the narrow street.

The Brick Lane Festival takes place every year and is billed as "a celebration of trade and culture". As we walked down the street, we greedily stuffed ourselves with a smogasbord of Bangladeshi food from stalls that lined both sides: Bengali sweets (rosogollas, gulab jamun and chom choms), savoury snacks such as namkeen, and, of course, curries: we ate pilau rice and a very spicy lamb curry, followed by veggie samosas and shish kebabs, all washed down with Cobra beer.

A music stage was set up in Allen Park: saccharine Asian pop music that was nothing like the hard-hitting underground Asian drum & bass at the Gunnersbury Mela, but the police presence was just as strong. South Asian gang warfare is rife in London and a festival or mela is the perfect site for inter-gang sparring. The 50-odd-member Brick Lane Massive - largely teenage boys - controls the Brick Lane area. The Massive and other gangs such as the Drummond Street Boys, Cannon Street Posse and Shadwell Crew are all hangovers from the 1970s, when south Asian gangs formed among the second generation to protect themselves against the racist National Front skinheads. Today the bloody battles are more frequently between the gangs.

A good day in all. View my photos from the Festival.

Related link:
+ The real Brick Lane

Other links today:
+ Remember this (In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema)? Now read this (Paris's new slant on underground movies: Clandestine group reveals how it built its cinema beneath the city) . Just fascinating.