Living in Kensington has many advantages. It’s a safe place to walk around. Kensington Gardens is absolutely beautiful. There are good restaurants and plenty of places to shop. However, Kensington is utterly conventional; it is the epitome of posh and everything that encompasses.
Which is why going out to the East End is so much fun.
During my first month or so in London, I was terrified of the East End. I thought it was where all the poverty and grime were. I thought it was definitively the underbelly of London, so it had to be dangerous. While there are parts of the East End that are probably (definitely) like that, I was so wrong to judge the entire East End so harshly. I regret it now. I now understand that Shoreditch, which is part of the East End, is an amazing place.
My first encounter with Shoreditch was in the middle of the night. Amber, a friend of mine who is usually the vague “friend” in my blog posts and yelled at me for not mentioning her by name, dragged me 40 minutes away from Kensington at night because she had a photo-journalism project that she had to do there. So, I went with her to a place I thought wasn’t super safe ever, much less at night. We went to Brick Lane, which has actually gentrified quite a bit in the last few years, but it’s still a trendy, hipstery place to go. It’s not posh like Kensington, but it’s also not super gritty like a lot of other places on the East End. So Amber and I hauled photography equipment around. People were really suspicious of us though. Amber was supposed to interview people, but like she keeps telling me, she’s “actually really shy.” I, however, am not shy at all, so I shoved her through doorways into shops so she had to talk to people. But none of them would talk to her. Probably because everyone we talked to was foreign. . . and they may have been there illegally? No idea. But that was a flop. The pictures looked good though.
The second time we went out was also at night. We went down there for some curry on our food day. It was literally the best Indian food I’ve ever had. Essentially every place on Brick Lane has some sort of award banner across its front for having the best curry in London, so there really isn’t any way to go wrong.
However, these experiences were relatively fleeting. It wasn’t until I spent an entire day in Shoreditch that I really started to appreciate it. We found the best coffee shop ever, Brick Lane Coffee. It’s so sassy, and the coffee is so good. The atmosphere is relaxed and cool, and they encourage swearing with the names of their beverages and the words on their mugs, which I can appreciate because my vocabulary is usually not fit for public exhibition. We went to a bakery called Beigel Bake that has a war with the neighboring beigel place.These two places are almost right next to each other, but Brick Lane Coffee is sandwiched between them; as a result, the barista there told us the entire history of their feud. Amber likes the other place, but I prefer Beigel Bake. There are shops and shops of vintage clothing and music. Everyone there is so fashionable that I feel shabby in comparison. I mean, I’m not the most fashionable person, but I really feel out of place walking around there. But it’s such a cool place that I don’t care.
Shoreditch is everything Kensington isn’t. It feels more real, more alive. Kensington is lovely and wonderful, but Shoreditch is vibrant. There’s so much to see and experience there, and that’s what I love about it. It’s not exactly what you’d expect. It’s much more.
go see conquer 