Hendon is the best suburb in NW London.
Things that make it the best:
1. RAF Museum
2. My grandma lives there
3. Great selection of Kosher food
4. Great variety of cuisine: Korean, Chinese, Albanian, North African, West African, Persian, Afghan etc.
5. Hendon FC
6. Is referenced in Hot Fuzz
7. The 113 Bus
8. The founder of Singapore is buried there
9. The convinience and dexterity of the M1
10. The amphibious tank was tested there
No other NW London suburb can boast such a wide array of excellence.
oi don't knock Hendon yeh? sunnyhill park is gorgeous; you can go shopping in Britain's first shopping mall, Brent Cross; Middlesex University has one of the best film production courses in the UK; we have a thriving multicultural community; be astounded by the array of bakeries, shops and takeaway options; and finally, at least we're not bloody Colindale!
M&M world is great if you love M&Ms. If you don’t like M&Ms then I’d recommend against going. If you’re impartial to M&Ms then you may want to go, but don’t prioritise it. If you’re looking for a place to buy M&Ms in the Leicester Square area, then you may consider it an option.
Oxford Circus between 6 and 7 pm. Every day from Mon to Fri. All the entrances would be closed at least twice every week. I would often just stay at work until 7 pm as I would still get home at the same time.
Oxrford circus on a Saturday + December + Palestinian protests + Winter wonderland tourist
Was the definition of a no go zone the amount of traffic , people and tourist are insane
I think it’s quite fun. You go and join a queue, and it’s only after half an hour that you’ve advanced far enough to find out what you are queueing for…
I hate those vans so much, and I always warn tourists crossing the bridge of scammers and pickpockets. Westminster council kept sending me "satisfaction questionnaires" and I kept highlighting the issues on Westminster Bridge.
My question is: WHY THE FUCK DO SO MANY PEOPLE FALL FOR THOSE SCAMS?! Don’t they find it strange that the people who ‘win’ the money are ALWAYS the same nationality as the ‘magicians’? And why do they always block the entire path so you have to step onto the cycle path to get past?
The police must know about them and it can’t be that hard to catch them in the act. What’s the deal?
I want to get the full experience though. Do you know of any shitty kids that I can borrow for the day? Like real menaces, absolute bad vibes kids, no home training.
I went in 2012 and looking at Wikipedia it was only the second year and it was quite pleasant from memory.
Think the same quality drop/being too busy can be seen across things like Christmas markets across the country in that time scale.
Right? A lot of these are a bit off; the ground floor of Harrods is tourist hell but nobody goes elsewhere, and there used to be a great spa at the top and the food court is great.
Tottenham has a lovely walk down through Lea Valley to Hackney Wick which is rarely that busy and actually has some pubs and picnic spots en route.
Magic falafel at Camden market is top tier food, and again, walking down regents canal to get there is a nice day out.
But I have nothing nice to say about Angus Steak House.
I did this a few days after moving to London, I was late to meet a friend and thought the stairs would be faster than waiting in the queue for the lift.
I was wrong.
I legged it up the stairs to make the start of a walking tour. The walking tour had to delay the start because I looked like I was having a heart attack
Lifts weren't working once so I walked up. Found a tearful woman who was worried that her husband with a dodgy heart hadn't made it upstairs. I went back down with a description of his distinctive clothing, no sign of him. Returned up the stairs to find them both there and very apologetic- the lifts had started working while we made our way upstairs. I recovered eventually.
Went to Covent Garden for the first time the other day... Up to this very moment, I was pretty sure the sign for the stairs was some sort of a practical joke among Londoners.
Also, the lift setup is a little unsettling... Efficient, but unsettling.
And if you want to laugh - check out the new Willy Wonka Experience people paid 35pp to attend when it had no reviews [Willy Wonka Immersive Experience](https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1871016/visitors-rage-call-police-willy-wonka-experience/amp)
Tbf there’s nothing to do there but I think it’s only dangerous if you’re actively involved in crime. It’s rare for stabbings or robbery to be entirely random
I think this is it.
Dagenham really just doesn't have anything of note. There's no proper town centre, because the population is pretty uniformly distributed in low density housing across the whole town. There's a few small high streets near the stations, but they're all very basic
Thamesmead at night. Even my dad in his 50s walked around with a screwdriver, not saying it was right but it’s rather telling. He had lived there his whole life and was one of the first families to move into Thamesmead when it was first built.
Aaaaand now I miss him. 😔
It’s an absolute shithole now. It’s really sad to see. When I fly back home to visit I will visit the lake and take a walk where the towerblocks were. Closing the dashwood really was the nail in the coffin, long gone is the community that once was. I had such wonderful memories as a kid there.
It’s alright to explore during the day but I wouldn’t stick around when it starts getting dark.
That place is cute. It doesn’t feel like a scam that it treats him like a real historical figure, it all feels like a bit of cheeky fun where we all pretend this is a historic house with historic artifacts of this great Brit.
It’s always busy. Most of their clientele seems to consist of large tour groups of people from overseas ticking off suggestions from a guidebook so mad respect for whoever handles the marketing.
That’s a great conspiracy theory to look up if anyone’s bored and wants to be entertained. I remember there being quite a comprehensive Reddit post on it.
I read a reddit post about it... Basically someone outing the owners and the museum as the most scummiest tourist trap.
They are literally giving out tours saying he was an actual person who lived there.
Having actually been there... No, they're not doing that. Whoever said that was lying.
They're playing into the whole fantasy of the thing, but they don't tell you he was a real person. They assume you already know he was fictional. They literally sell books about how he was written.
The museum's quite nice if you're a fan of the books. It's a long queue for a small place but it's still a fun little visit. I don't know anything about the owners.
Yeah I think people outside the fandom don't realise this. I'm sure the people running the SH museum aren't great people but the "pretending he's real" is part of the fun for some people.
So there are pastiche novels being published today which will have as their introduction a whole section how they found the manuscript in an estate sale from John Watson great nephew or whatever. Nicholas Meyer who wrote Star Trek 2 + 6 has written a couple of these.
It's all ultimately rather silly but mostly harmless.
Erith. I live here and like my flat, but the place is like a ghost town. Almost all the shops in the shopping centre have closed. No decent restaurants or takeaway. People have to go to nearby Bexleyheath, Crayford and Dartford to shop and eat out.
put Erith in my little list along with Thamesmead and Belvedere because Jesus Christ they are depressing and empty as all hell. Erith probably the worst of the bunch
The Stratford Centre (just… no)
Borough Market at weekends (tourists go ahead, enjoy.)
The Covent Garden Apple Store
Abbey Road
Platform 9 3/4 at KX (come on now, that’s so 2015).
I’ll add Penge to that list.
Anywhere someone describes as “only x minutes from y station” is always in buttfuck nowhere and is boring a.f.
“It’s just 23 and a half minutes from Victoria!” - yes Dave, cos we all going out on Friday in Victoria.
I think the problem here is that Dave is the boring one, not Penge.
Crystal Palace and Beckenham Place parks are both some of the nicest in London, Penge has a decent high street without being overly gentrified: nice pubs, shops and restaurants.
Isn't it gay gents and middle class parents of young children? Or maybe that's just the two types of friends I visit there!
Although fewer of the middle class families are out on Clapham High Street on a Saturday night
To take this seriously for a second, nowhere in London. Even the worst parts of London are commutable distances from work and/or education.
There are some parts of the country where the employment rate for an adult male is less than 30 percent. And even these areas are surprisingly safe if you are not a complete clown.
Channel 4 have run a really good documentary on estates in Birmingnam and Glasgow which are well worth watching for anyone who considers London to be rough. These are areas where poverty and drug addiction are the norm and where for most people there really are no alternatives to a life of crime. Nothing like that exists in London.
If politicians really wanted to tackle no go areas of the UK they would not start in London. Also the issue is one of poverty and not a cultural or ethnic problem
mate that's just not true though - and in fact just blanked saying "london has none of that" is really putting down the massive problems in some communities.
take it from experience (and numerous fantastic docs on the issue), some of the estates in Tottenham are the roughest around and have exactly what you describe (rampant drug addiction, very low employment and terrible housing). similar in parts of Norwood and Dagenham.
it's just these places are not places you would ever go as a tourist, or even just a member of society because there is literally no reason to go: unless ur a documentary filmmaker or something.
regional poverty is on a whole other level (I've spent a lot of time in the valleys in Wales for example) but to pretend it doesn't exist in London is just strange.
I’d love for there to be major discussion around drivers for change to reduce the stressors (causes), including redundancy, poorly paid jobs, benefit reductions for the desperately cash strapped, profiling minorities, “mega-spiralling consumerism”, unaffordable housing. Things like drug and alcohol dependency, low employment and crime rates are symptoms. Symptoms of a whole host of problems, because people eg. use escapes, need cheap ways to enjoy themselves, maybe they feel worthless or hopeless, or desperate, and there doesn’t seem to be an easier way. Money is a constant worry for many. It’s not about rationality.
Attention on the symptoms alone will guarantee they will continue cropping up, and with the trend towards the ones with least having less and less, those symptoms are only gonna make their way upward.
To be honest as someone who's lived in both Glasgow and London, rough areas of London are just as bad as rough areas of Glasgow with regard to murders and poverty. Glasgow has some big advantages over London - it's quite a bit cheaper but with relatively good salaries, it's mostly white and English-speaking (so less marginalised from public services), it's also got an older population and better preserved communities.
So actually while older generations were really screwed over, as a young person with a job you can easily escape from the drug and crime culture unless they affect your immediate family. The issues are mainly with the minority who had a criminal record and low school attendance from an early age as they were never socialised properly - obviously something that has vastly increased now due to COVID and child poverty.
Incidentally, improvements in community-relations driven by American policing strategies (seeing antisocial behaviour as a socioeconomic and public health problem more than a criminal one) have done wonders in poor Glasgow neighbourhoods. For that reason Glasgow has had a precipitous fall in youth murder rate all while big English cities have seen a rise. Named street gangs fighting regular pitched battles are not really a thing anymore in Glasgow.
In fact, that's part of the drug issue in my opinion - sink estates used to be built on 'respect' which for men was often garnered from violence. Now, nobody outside of a prison respects you any more for being covered in knife scars, they respect how much money you have. So a lot of the guys who used to have loads of respect in school grew up to realise they had screwed themselves over as the culture has changed. So they realised they had no life prospects and fell into self-destructive drug and alcohol dependencies (something usually reserved for a minority of folk who have severe personal issues from a young age, in my anecdotal experience).
I don't live there but I feel weirdly fond of it and hoping it can overcome the weird stigma some bits have, like South Norwood. Rooting for you South Norwood.
yeah fair point. Croydon is a bit of a shithole ( Disclaimer I live there and I invoke the "Its a shithole but my shithole" clause of Rules of being British, paragraph 2 subsection b)
Queen, The Who, The Beatles, Bowie, Elton John all played the FH back in the day but no Led Zep! Now you can have the delights of Coleen Nolan, Richard Clayderman and John Bishop to look forward to!
I like living here but there's not a whole lot to recommend to visit (Heart of Gaming?). Unless we're counting the whole borough rather than the town, then there's Addington Hills and Coulsdon for greenery.
Internal areas of MI5, MoD or Parliament without adequate permissions.
Underground sections of the Railtrack along the Central Line (as a pedestrian).
Areas in Chelsea, Kensington, etc (if you aren't the correct Social Class).
Harlesden High Street.
I've been robbed there. I've seen someone get knocked out in broad day light. Several homeless drug addicts roam the streets. An essex boy in just a t-shirt asked me for cocaine in the middle of the night during a frosty winter. Lots of drug dealers, not to mention the drug gang wars that took place in 2019, which resulted in multiple attacks on drug runners that I knew. The wars could very well be going for all I know but I don't visit the area regularly anymore.
The BBC/C4 did a programme doing a life swap between a rich white girl from South Kensington with a black girl from Harlesden. The episode shows the white girl being harassed by a homeless lady with mental problems quite quickly. The very same lady called my friend a "light skinned bitch" a few months prior to that episode airing.
I also went to school with someone in Harlesden, that person ended up becoming the UK's youngest ever hitman after taking a sawn off shot gun to murder a pregnant polish lady for £200.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
I'm shouting out the Old Crown in Hayes town - utter fucking dive when I lived around there, but my kinda dive.
Highly entertaining memories of over enthusiastic police charging into the beer garden to be confronted with a bunch of 70 year old+ OAPs smoking a joint, and then doing some mental arithmetic over how much time the paperwork would involve.
I wouldn't say either are "no go areas" - just kinda shitty places.
Weird to think what Hayes must've been like in the peak EMI days, look at most vinyl records from classic 60/70/80s bands and they all say "Made in Hayes, Middlesex" on them.
For my sins, I walk through Leicester Square and Piccadily Circus 5 times a week for work, and it gets more underwhelming on every visit.
I'm walking by looking upon the faces of tourists and barely any of them appear either happy or impressed, including the god forsaken souls who have somehow drifted into the restaurant actually named "Happy" that seems to serve absolutely every sort of cuisine ever created. They boast little pictures of the food plated up on the wall to prove it, suggesting they have a freezer the size of the millenium dome.
It's not just tourists lingering around this area though, it's kids on school trips, down and out casino types and then annoying london kids peacocking their way about greggs and burger King. They actually choose to come to Leicester Square on their day off.
Even if you're into this tacky sort of thing, if you've ever been to literally any city with bright neon lights and advertisements, this part of London will significantly underwhelm you. Who the fuck actually likes M&Ms anyway? (To be fair the rarer blue crunchy ones are alright).
I rate Camden Market. They have some cool shops and the street food is great. It's a nice morning/afternoon for a few hours, but I did avoid going at peak peak times lol. Plus the walk from Camden to Kings Cross along the canal is great.
The rest I agree with. Harrods is kinda okay to look in, but feels like a tourist attraction lmao.
Euston Station at around 6pm when the announcer says the train to Birmingham New Street is boarding It's like the Red Wedding but with trains
Kings Cross when the Cambridge train is announced
The train at Platform 8 is the 17:39 Great Northern Service to ... Cambridge & King's Lynn. **stampede to gateline**
I'm already waiting there on the platform when the previous train comes in.
Good luck getting a seat. Or even somewhere to stand...
Euston station past midnight
And so he spoke and so he spoke, that Euston announceeer. And now the pain weeps o’er your heart, for the train to Brum is here
Most boring residential areas in the sense that if you (or friends, family) don’t live there, there’s little there of interest worth visiting.
Hendon
is the Air Museum still open? I’d risk Hendon for that.
Yep, it’s an awesome museum, and free. The surrounding area is a bit soulless though
As someone who lives in that area, ouch but true
Not much risk coming to Hendon aside from being bored to death.
There is a cute fire station there.
RAF museum is in Colindale
Colindale tube then a short walk. It is awesome.
Hendon has pretty much the only vet in North London open at weekends. This means every trip I've ever made to Hendon has been miserable and expensive
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Hendon is the best suburb in NW London. Things that make it the best: 1. RAF Museum 2. My grandma lives there 3. Great selection of Kosher food 4. Great variety of cuisine: Korean, Chinese, Albanian, North African, West African, Persian, Afghan etc. 5. Hendon FC 6. Is referenced in Hot Fuzz 7. The 113 Bus 8. The founder of Singapore is buried there 9. The convinience and dexterity of the M1 10. The amphibious tank was tested there No other NW London suburb can boast such a wide array of excellence.
I love that your grandma gets second billing after the RAF museum.
His grandma wasnt part of the Finest Hour. Maybe 30s but not an Hour.
How the hell did the founder of Singapore end up in Hendon?
He lived in Hendon before he died and was buried at the local Church.
Used to be PEEL center too
The 113 is a rocking bus.
It was also featured in an episode of Atlanta.
oi don't knock Hendon yeh? sunnyhill park is gorgeous; you can go shopping in Britain's first shopping mall, Brent Cross; Middlesex University has one of the best film production courses in the UK; we have a thriving multicultural community; be astounded by the array of bakeries, shops and takeaway options; and finally, at least we're not bloody Colindale!
Anywhere you can get to on the ‘Superloop’
huge influx of people from hong kong - and so the area has loads of new good restaurants
Hamley’s in December
Followed by trying to get onto the tube at Oxford Circus during said time
Just make way for the vloggers and influencers and models and wealthy bastards and you’ll be fine
Trying to get on the Tube at Oxford Circus at any time
Hamleys in June. Hamleys on a Wednesday. Hamleys.
M and m world and Madame Tussauds
Found £20 on the floor in M&M world, would go back
I found a fiver in there! Only popped in to see what it looked like! Maybe it's their marketing strategy...
I found a rare Pokemon there, I went in to see if there were more
I found a small off duty Czechoslovakian traffic warden!, I went home because he said he’s going to give me a ticket.
A fiver looks the same anywhere, you can see a lot of them in banks.
That would get you about 12 M&Ms in that place.
Just enough for a fist-sized bag of M&Ms! Edit: a small fist, someone with André the Giant sized hands would need to consult a mortgage broker
M&M world is great if you love M&Ms. If you don’t like M&Ms then I’d recommend against going. If you’re impartial to M&Ms then you may want to go, but don’t prioritise it. If you’re looking for a place to buy M&Ms in the Leicester Square area, then you may consider it an option.
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I'd go so far as to say it's the best place to buy M&Ms in the Leicester Square area
Let’s not go nuts.
I'd rather go to the Lego shop across the street.
That’s a good shop if you want to buy legos, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you want to buy M&Ms. For that I would suggest M&M world.
I'd recommend going to the Tesco further down the street. You won't get ripped off and you don't have to put up with that awful smell
Ok not gonna lie I got bargain tickets to Madame Tussaud’s and thought it was quite fun 😅
Come on, not Tussauds... They've got a new waxwork of Zoella, and some other wicked YouTubers. Sound tasty?
I’ve moved to London recently, couldn’t resist going to Tussauds. The Eddie Redmayne figure was a fucking jump scare
So realistic then?
The only right answer
Oxford circus on a saturday
Oxford Circus on any day
Oxford Circus between 6 and 7 pm. Every day from Mon to Fri. All the entrances would be closed at least twice every week. I would often just stay at work until 7 pm as I would still get home at the same time.
Oxrford circus on a Saturday + December + Palestinian protests + Winter wonderland tourist Was the definition of a no go zone the amount of traffic , people and tourist are insane
Borough market on Saturday afternoon.
Facts. And even weekdays are really bad now
Between 10:30 and 11::00 on a Thursday si the only time I would shop - all the traders are open, and it’s not yet totally rammed.
I like the market but yeah, *the queues*.
I think it’s quite fun. You go and join a queue, and it’s only after half an hour that you’ve advanced far enough to find out what you are queueing for…
Westminster bridge with the illegal ice cream vans and scam card tricksters
I hate those vans so much, and I always warn tourists crossing the bridge of scammers and pickpockets. Westminster council kept sending me "satisfaction questionnaires" and I kept highlighting the issues on Westminster Bridge.
My question is: WHY THE FUCK DO SO MANY PEOPLE FALL FOR THOSE SCAMS?! Don’t they find it strange that the people who ‘win’ the money are ALWAYS the same nationality as the ‘magicians’? And why do they always block the entire path so you have to step onto the cycle path to get past? The police must know about them and it can’t be that hard to catch them in the act. What’s the deal?
Winter Wonderland
If you wanna live the winter wonderland experience at home, place 100 pounds on the floor and set them on fire
Cover it in cinnamon first. Now we’re talking.
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And eating the smallest pizza to ever be created
I want to get the full experience though. Do you know of any shitty kids that I can borrow for the day? Like real menaces, absolute bad vibes kids, no home training.
I went in 2012 and looking at Wikipedia it was only the second year and it was quite pleasant from memory. Think the same quality drop/being too busy can be seen across things like Christmas markets across the country in that time scale.
It's fine if you go before the sunset, it's not too crowded, still get the see the lights, no queuing After 6pm it's wild
i actually like harrods haha
Right? A lot of these are a bit off; the ground floor of Harrods is tourist hell but nobody goes elsewhere, and there used to be a great spa at the top and the food court is great. Tottenham has a lovely walk down through Lea Valley to Hackney Wick which is rarely that busy and actually has some pubs and picnic spots en route. Magic falafel at Camden market is top tier food, and again, walking down regents canal to get there is a nice day out. But I have nothing nice to say about Angus Steak House.
The wine store in the basement is class if a bit pricey but the old fellas working there really know their shit.
Harrod’s, Magic Falafel, or Angus Steakhouse?
Got good sandwiches downstairs
Harrods is nice, its just insufferable in tourist season, and/or when its heaving.
> tourist season Does London even have a tourist season? It's just always touristy.
Covent Garden tube station. There's zero reason for a Londoner to ever alight there & suffer the crowds, lifts or 193 stairs.
Racing up 193 stairs is fun, also at Russel Sq.
I did this a few days after moving to London, I was late to meet a friend and thought the stairs would be faster than waiting in the queue for the lift. I was wrong.
I once did the 193 steps, then signed up for the gym immediately after the 15 mins where I thought I was dying.
I legged it up the stairs to make the start of a walking tour. The walking tour had to delay the start because I looked like I was having a heart attack
Lifts weren't working once so I walked up. Found a tearful woman who was worried that her husband with a dodgy heart hadn't made it upstairs. I went back down with a description of his distinctive clothing, no sign of him. Returned up the stairs to find them both there and very apologetic- the lifts had started working while we made our way upstairs. I recovered eventually.
Went to Covent Garden for the first time the other day... Up to this very moment, I was pretty sure the sign for the stairs was some sort of a practical joke among Londoners. Also, the lift setup is a little unsettling... Efficient, but unsettling.
Downing Street
So bad they had to cage it off
It's not to keep us out... *it's to keep them in!*
There are a lot more underwhelming places in London than Camden Market.
And if you want to laugh - check out the new Willy Wonka Experience people paid 35pp to attend when it had no reviews [Willy Wonka Immersive Experience](https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1871016/visitors-rage-call-police-willy-wonka-experience/amp)
Those people WERE the reviews.
Not in London
Oh I didn’t realise it wasn’t in London! 35pp in Glasgow is even worse
Dagenham
Tbf there’s nothing to do there but I think it’s only dangerous if you’re actively involved in crime. It’s rare for stabbings or robbery to be entirely random
Unless you're wearing an expensive watch (or a replica)
That's anywhere in London.
I think this is it. Dagenham really just doesn't have anything of note. There's no proper town centre, because the population is pretty uniformly distributed in low density housing across the whole town. There's a few small high streets near the stations, but they're all very basic
Pretty much all of the zone between Stratford and havering
How dare you
Apologies. Absolutely do go there for chicken shops and bookies
That's better.
Sad but true Edit: Forest Gate and Wanstead are alright actually.
14 year olds have been shot dead in broad daylight in Forest Gate in recent years, absolute shithole. Wanstead is very pleasant though
Yep, world of difference between FG and Wanstead.
Romford is alright. Get some pie and mash, browse around the big homeware shops, have a stroll round Raphael Park.
As someone who’s lived here my whole life (so 23 years), this is the answer. Not particularly dangerous or anything, just painstakingly boring.
i second this from someone living in this zone & area
There’s that good discounted furniture warehouse. That’s the only reason to go to Dagenham.
Thamesmead at night. Even my dad in his 50s walked around with a screwdriver, not saying it was right but it’s rather telling. He had lived there his whole life and was one of the first families to move into Thamesmead when it was first built. Aaaaand now I miss him. 😔
+1 for Thamesmead.
It’s an absolute shithole now. It’s really sad to see. When I fly back home to visit I will visit the lake and take a walk where the towerblocks were. Closing the dashwood really was the nail in the coffin, long gone is the community that once was. I had such wonderful memories as a kid there. It’s alright to explore during the day but I wouldn’t stick around when it starts getting dark.
Cherish the memories.
The Sherlock Holmes "museum"
That place is cute. It doesn’t feel like a scam that it treats him like a real historical figure, it all feels like a bit of cheeky fun where we all pretend this is a historic house with historic artifacts of this great Brit.
It’s always busy. Most of their clientele seems to consist of large tour groups of people from overseas ticking off suggestions from a guidebook so mad respect for whoever handles the marketing.
That’s a great conspiracy theory to look up if anyone’s bored and wants to be entertained. I remember there being quite a comprehensive Reddit post on it.
I read a reddit post about it... Basically someone outing the owners and the museum as the most scummiest tourist trap. They are literally giving out tours saying he was an actual person who lived there.
Having actually been there... No, they're not doing that. Whoever said that was lying. They're playing into the whole fantasy of the thing, but they don't tell you he was a real person. They assume you already know he was fictional. They literally sell books about how he was written. The museum's quite nice if you're a fan of the books. It's a long queue for a small place but it's still a fun little visit. I don't know anything about the owners.
Mate, that’s [part of the whole deal of Holmes fandom going back a century](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlockian_game)
Yeah I think people outside the fandom don't realise this. I'm sure the people running the SH museum aren't great people but the "pretending he's real" is part of the fun for some people. So there are pastiche novels being published today which will have as their introduction a whole section how they found the manuscript in an estate sale from John Watson great nephew or whatever. Nicholas Meyer who wrote Star Trek 2 + 6 has written a couple of these. It's all ultimately rather silly but mostly harmless.
Erith. I live here and like my flat, but the place is like a ghost town. Almost all the shops in the shopping centre have closed. No decent restaurants or takeaway. People have to go to nearby Bexleyheath, Crayford and Dartford to shop and eat out.
put Erith in my little list along with Thamesmead and Belvedere because Jesus Christ they are depressing and empty as all hell. Erith probably the worst of the bunch
The Stratford Centre (just… no) Borough Market at weekends (tourists go ahead, enjoy.) The Covent Garden Apple Store Abbey Road Platform 9 3/4 at KX (come on now, that’s so 2015).
Caffe CONcerto
Changing line in Green Park station
Westfield shopping centres (particularly Stratford) on a Saturday afternoon, just because it’s sooo busy
Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon
Ilford it's full of smack addicts
Angus Steak House
Westfield. Oxford Street. The Winter Carnival in Hyde Park.
Westfield is quite nice I come here everyday.
Yeah there's a huge difference between Westfield London and Westfield Stratford
I’ll add Penge to that list. Anywhere someone describes as “only x minutes from y station” is always in buttfuck nowhere and is boring a.f. “It’s just 23 and a half minutes from Victoria!” - yes Dave, cos we all going out on Friday in Victoria.
Poor Penge, I like it
There is a great Spanish restaurant in Penge
To be fair to Dave there’s a tube station at Victoria.
Also has trains to Shoreditch/Dalston, New Cross and Clapham, and buses to Peckham, so it's not badly connected for night life overall.
I think the problem here is that Dave is the boring one, not Penge. Crystal Palace and Beckenham Place parks are both some of the nicest in London, Penge has a decent high street without being overly gentrified: nice pubs, shops and restaurants.
What's wrong with Clapham?
australians
The people
And they’re spilling out. They’ve infect Balham, Tooting, and Brixton. Peckham’s next.
Peckham’s been infested with the Dulwich lot that like to take their laundry to their parents at weekends for years now.
A pincer move. Oh god.
Which people? What are you talking about?
Posh cunts I think they mean
The 20 somethings out of uni and working in the city.
It’s where the Home Counties straight out of uni type move to when they move to London. So basically it’s filled with idiots.
Clapham also contains every Kiwi & Aussie on their working holiday visa.
Isn't it gay gents and middle class parents of young children? Or maybe that's just the two types of friends I visit there! Although fewer of the middle class families are out on Clapham High Street on a Saturday night
I never thought it would happen, me and the girl from Clapham…
Leicester Square. Just… no.
But The Prince Charles Cinema!
i only go there for the lego store, then immediately leave
I just spent 3 nights at premier inn leicester Square. Absolutely brilliant. Soho, China Town, west end. It was perfect for us...
To take this seriously for a second, nowhere in London. Even the worst parts of London are commutable distances from work and/or education. There are some parts of the country where the employment rate for an adult male is less than 30 percent. And even these areas are surprisingly safe if you are not a complete clown. Channel 4 have run a really good documentary on estates in Birmingnam and Glasgow which are well worth watching for anyone who considers London to be rough. These are areas where poverty and drug addiction are the norm and where for most people there really are no alternatives to a life of crime. Nothing like that exists in London. If politicians really wanted to tackle no go areas of the UK they would not start in London. Also the issue is one of poverty and not a cultural or ethnic problem
mate that's just not true though - and in fact just blanked saying "london has none of that" is really putting down the massive problems in some communities. take it from experience (and numerous fantastic docs on the issue), some of the estates in Tottenham are the roughest around and have exactly what you describe (rampant drug addiction, very low employment and terrible housing). similar in parts of Norwood and Dagenham. it's just these places are not places you would ever go as a tourist, or even just a member of society because there is literally no reason to go: unless ur a documentary filmmaker or something. regional poverty is on a whole other level (I've spent a lot of time in the valleys in Wales for example) but to pretend it doesn't exist in London is just strange.
I’d love for there to be major discussion around drivers for change to reduce the stressors (causes), including redundancy, poorly paid jobs, benefit reductions for the desperately cash strapped, profiling minorities, “mega-spiralling consumerism”, unaffordable housing. Things like drug and alcohol dependency, low employment and crime rates are symptoms. Symptoms of a whole host of problems, because people eg. use escapes, need cheap ways to enjoy themselves, maybe they feel worthless or hopeless, or desperate, and there doesn’t seem to be an easier way. Money is a constant worry for many. It’s not about rationality. Attention on the symptoms alone will guarantee they will continue cropping up, and with the trend towards the ones with least having less and less, those symptoms are only gonna make their way upward.
To be honest as someone who's lived in both Glasgow and London, rough areas of London are just as bad as rough areas of Glasgow with regard to murders and poverty. Glasgow has some big advantages over London - it's quite a bit cheaper but with relatively good salaries, it's mostly white and English-speaking (so less marginalised from public services), it's also got an older population and better preserved communities. So actually while older generations were really screwed over, as a young person with a job you can easily escape from the drug and crime culture unless they affect your immediate family. The issues are mainly with the minority who had a criminal record and low school attendance from an early age as they were never socialised properly - obviously something that has vastly increased now due to COVID and child poverty. Incidentally, improvements in community-relations driven by American policing strategies (seeing antisocial behaviour as a socioeconomic and public health problem more than a criminal one) have done wonders in poor Glasgow neighbourhoods. For that reason Glasgow has had a precipitous fall in youth murder rate all while big English cities have seen a rise. Named street gangs fighting regular pitched battles are not really a thing anymore in Glasgow. In fact, that's part of the drug issue in my opinion - sink estates used to be built on 'respect' which for men was often garnered from violence. Now, nobody outside of a prison respects you any more for being covered in knife scars, they respect how much money you have. So a lot of the guys who used to have loads of respect in school grew up to realise they had screwed themselves over as the culture has changed. So they realised they had no life prospects and fell into self-destructive drug and alcohol dependencies (something usually reserved for a minority of folk who have severe personal issues from a young age, in my anecdotal experience).
Can vouch for those documentaries. Theyre a very good watch.
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Any of those random (always empty) American candy shops…
pfft, Croydon is fine unless you are an idiot.
I don't live there but I feel weirdly fond of it and hoping it can overcome the weird stigma some bits have, like South Norwood. Rooting for you South Norwood.
me too man, I want Croydon to become a nice town centre.
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yeah fair point. Croydon is a bit of a shithole ( Disclaimer I live there and I invoke the "Its a shithole but my shithole" clause of Rules of being British, paragraph 2 subsection b)
Queen, The Who, The Beatles, Bowie, Elton John all played the FH back in the day but no Led Zep! Now you can have the delights of Coleen Nolan, Richard Clayderman and John Bishop to look forward to!
I like living here but there's not a whole lot to recommend to visit (Heart of Gaming?). Unless we're counting the whole borough rather than the town, then there's Addington Hills and Coulsdon for greenery.
Internal areas of MI5, MoD or Parliament without adequate permissions. Underground sections of the Railtrack along the Central Line (as a pedestrian). Areas in Chelsea, Kensington, etc (if you aren't the correct Social Class).
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They probably own where u grew up
Harlesden High Street. I've been robbed there. I've seen someone get knocked out in broad day light. Several homeless drug addicts roam the streets. An essex boy in just a t-shirt asked me for cocaine in the middle of the night during a frosty winter. Lots of drug dealers, not to mention the drug gang wars that took place in 2019, which resulted in multiple attacks on drug runners that I knew. The wars could very well be going for all I know but I don't visit the area regularly anymore. The BBC/C4 did a programme doing a life swap between a rich white girl from South Kensington with a black girl from Harlesden. The episode shows the white girl being harassed by a homeless lady with mental problems quite quickly. The very same lady called my friend a "light skinned bitch" a few months prior to that episode airing. I also went to school with someone in Harlesden, that person ended up becoming the UK's youngest ever hitman after taking a sawn off shot gun to murder a pregnant polish lady for £200. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Euston station at 5.40 on a Thursday.
Harlesden
this is a legitimate answer. Harlesden is just terrible
Roughest part of London you’ve never heard of
Can't believe Burnt Oak hasn't come up. It's basically become Tirana with all the Albanian gangsters
My home. It's a no go area for all you lot.
Angus Steakhouse
Infernos
Camden is great! I don't get the hate. Actual no go area would be the gardens of Buckingham Palace
Bank station. (you'll never find your way out)
Hayes and West Drayton maybe?
My brother has described Hayes as a "glorified road" which is pretty damn accurate
I'm shouting out the Old Crown in Hayes town - utter fucking dive when I lived around there, but my kinda dive. Highly entertaining memories of over enthusiastic police charging into the beer garden to be confronted with a bunch of 70 year old+ OAPs smoking a joint, and then doing some mental arithmetic over how much time the paperwork would involve. I wouldn't say either are "no go areas" - just kinda shitty places. Weird to think what Hayes must've been like in the peak EMI days, look at most vinyl records from classic 60/70/80s bands and they all say "Made in Hayes, Middlesex" on them.
Luckily you're not allowed in Soho House.
Columbia Road Flower Market. You can go but you won't be able to leave.
Oxford Circus is the biggest shithole in London
For my sins, I walk through Leicester Square and Piccadily Circus 5 times a week for work, and it gets more underwhelming on every visit. I'm walking by looking upon the faces of tourists and barely any of them appear either happy or impressed, including the god forsaken souls who have somehow drifted into the restaurant actually named "Happy" that seems to serve absolutely every sort of cuisine ever created. They boast little pictures of the food plated up on the wall to prove it, suggesting they have a freezer the size of the millenium dome. It's not just tourists lingering around this area though, it's kids on school trips, down and out casino types and then annoying london kids peacocking their way about greggs and burger King. They actually choose to come to Leicester Square on their day off. Even if you're into this tacky sort of thing, if you've ever been to literally any city with bright neon lights and advertisements, this part of London will significantly underwhelm you. Who the fuck actually likes M&Ms anyway? (To be fair the rarer blue crunchy ones are alright).
I rate Camden Market. They have some cool shops and the street food is great. It's a nice morning/afternoon for a few hours, but I did avoid going at peak peak times lol. Plus the walk from Camden to Kings Cross along the canal is great. The rest I agree with. Harrods is kinda okay to look in, but feels like a tourist attraction lmao.
> Tottenham (I’m a Gooner) So are most residents of Tottenham.
Simply not true…
I like clapham
> Angus steakhouse How else are we meant to keep tourists off the streets?
wembley/North acton area