Around Shoreditch and Spitalfields

These are the gates on the Commercial Road to Petticoat Lane Market. It's supposed to be famous, and one of these posts I'll put some pictures in so you can see how tatty it really is. Those buildings in the background are the City - the Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe) and the Heron Tower. I used to think the contrast could not be greater, but now I wonder...

Although this is the tatty sight to the left of the gates, and the photograph doesn't do the grime justice, at least the people who live here, maybe some stall holders,  have places of their own, whereas many of the people who work in those fancy offices are sharing flats and houses at exorbitant rents in what sound like fancier addresses but aren't. 

This is the Crisis head office on Commercial Road, just along from that tower block. It has a cafe, which is not full of homeless people at all, but Shoreditchians - late twenty/early thirties boys and girls who would be as cool as they think they are if they worked in Soho.

Otherwise, the rest are local sights: fancy gates on Wentworth Street, painting an advert for the Horse and Groom, Curtain Road; street art on Commercial Road; the exterior and interior of The Diner, Curtain Road.

This is where I take a stroll if I take a stroll lunchtime. Not a decent bookshop in the area. Not a cinema, the nearest being believe it or not, in Islington (!) - the Rio and Hackney Picturehouse being even further away than the Everyman and Vue, Islington.