In no particular order, these are some quite bad digital photos giving an extremely sketchy account of how carnival costumes are made, and the traffic situation outside the house where I live on 31 August.
Courtesy of my good friend oilrag who is more modern and computer-literate than I am. He did it all from his hotel room in the Far East despite broadband hassles. Chapeau!
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lud1.jpg
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lud2.jpg
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lud3.jpg
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lud4.jpg
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lud5.jpg
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lud6.jpg
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lud7.jpg
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lud8.jpg
Edited by Lud on 13/09/2009 at 17:08
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Good pics Lud.
I didn't realise you lived quite so close to Ground Zero. I was there on the Monday. As I walked up from Notting Hill gate, I was surprised at the number of brave drivers who left their vehicles outside their houses. I don't remember seeing a silver Chrysler though :)
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Heh heh... sorry, the one of the fashion victim's car was taken on a normal day...
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And there was me thinking it was a fancy dress entry...
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I thought it was a London taxi. :-)
Edited by Old Navy on 13/09/2009 at 18:34
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I know you're fairly tolerant of this Lud...i'm afraid i'd be one of the ones in exile in the country....wouldn't be able to stick the noise and the extra crime
one thing i've never understood though..is why this doesn't happen in Hyde Park, which is fairly close by. They have had enough loud pop concerts etc in there...then anyone who wants to go can enjoy themselves...and those that don't enjoy it don't have to go to Hyde Park....plus no congestion of the roads.
I understand all the sound systems had to be turned off at 7 or 7.30pm this year and it disappointed many revellers....well, in the middle of the park it wouldn't be an issue
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I know you're fairly tolerant of this
I absolutely love it WP and am a trustee of one of the leading costume bands (in whose camp I photographed the sort of armatures and skeletons of big costumes, lightweight engineering done as it were freehand).
There is indeed some extra crime, just as there is when any large group of fun-lovers gathers together. Used to be worse ten or twenty years ago, and anyone who has a lot of people in their house at carnival needs to stay marginally sober and have a front door policy. Adolescent children are a particular risk because they don't know a chancer or toerag when they see one. That said, I was once rather rude on the doorstep here to a black undercover cop (I think) who was basically trying (I think) to do his job. His disguise, including his demeanour, was a bit too good and my own reactions and insight were by that time of day severely foxed. By the time I had decided to apologise, he'd gone. Silly Lud. Just like a rich idiot.
'Noise' indeed! You may not like all of it and it may be a bit loud for the old stucco on the houses, but it's music, not 'noise'!
London carnival people are attached to the streets as a venue, and so am I. It's hard to explain briefly but we have our reasons. In Trinidad they do it in a park. But the streets as well.
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That said I was once rather rude on the doorstep here to a black undercover cop
>>(I think) who was basically trying (I think) to do his job. His disguise including his >>demeanour was a bit too good and my own reactions and insight were by that time >>of day severely foxed. By the time I had decided to apologise he'd gone. Silly Lud. >>Just like a rich idiot.
Get on with you...your instincts were probably correct....he was just trying to get a free drink....and at that venue had more of an advantage than i'd have!
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Nah, it was more complicated than that. Had those sort of chancers many times, real villains some of them, and had to follow them at a sprint to the third floor and usher them firmly out. In the days when I had adolescent pretty daughters with lots of friends and friends of friends, not to mention visiting American academics trying to make sneaky transatlantic phone calls to say what fun it all was, and certain usual suspects who couldn't hold their drink and got nasty with their wives or someone, carnival was very fraught in the 80s and 90s. Hardly one went by without me losing my temper and running someone out of the house. It's a lot more peaceful these days.
My 50th birthday coincided with carnival. It was celebrated at the house of an old friend whose birthday is the day after, but being left-wing people they didn't have a door policy and assumed anyone black who arrived before me was a friend of mine. The results included thefts by some white toerags and an act of violence on an African gate-crasher by some black toerags.
That was a very fraught occasion in a very fashionable street off Ladbroke Grove. (Old Bill were impeccable by the way, and recovered some stolen jewellery deemed not valuable, but of great sentimental value to a visiting Italian lady, from a hedge down the street. But the black thugs were long gone).
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I agree with Lud as well :)
I helped out on a children's float on the Sunday before the bank holiday quite a few years ago, and there is a certain something about winding through the narrow streets, getting a bit too up close and personal with the backside of a female in front of you, and "nipping" through the side streets to get to the food stalls. It's just not carnival otherwise! I believe that there is an alternative festival which happens at Hyde Park at the same time, but I haven't been. I expect it is probably safer, but I would assume you'd lose the carnival vibe.
From a policing point of view, I can well understand that it's a major hassle. It must be like policing a military operation, what with the cars and vans and horses and megaphones etc. etc. but it is definitely safer than it was 10 years ago - although you can feel the atmosphere change slightly when you get to around 7.30pm (all day drinking, sunshine and tired feet contribute to it all I think - plus the eejits who only turn up near the end to cause trouble).
Motoring link - I saw a very nice tractor pulling one of the floats this year!
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Good man harib. You are one of us.
The thing they hold in Hyde Park is Panorama, the competition between the steel bands, of which there are fewer and fewer. It used to be held on a bit of council ground in Kensal Road, in front of a high brick building that reflected the sound forward. It was crowded, but good. Then the local authority covered the bit of ground with pointless masonry (perhaps not pointless if you live there, I don't know) and Ken Livingstone wanted to throw money at carnival and take it over for London, the carphound.
The carnival people quite like having money thrown at them so they agreed. Panorama has been in Hyde Park on the Saturday of the weekend for four years now I think. But I don't go to it any more. The sound of steel even amplified is completely lost in an open space. You need the hard acoustics of a street with tall buildings to hear it really well.
I'm afraid the thread may be censored for drifting off motoring. Perhaps I will have to post the photo with the Routemaster in it...
Edited by Lud on 13/09/2009 at 21:45
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i'm willing to bring it back into the motoring fold;
when I used to work in Central London, which was many moons ago now...it never ceased to amaze me the number of people from south of the river who'd hire a flash car and dress in all their finery and then drive up to the Carnival....but then couldn't park anywhere near it....why not get a cab if you don't want to ruin your best frock on the bus/tube?
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anyone who has a lot of people in their house at carnival needs to stay marginally sober and have a front door policy.
For your further amusement, Wp, I have remembered that for five or six years, until about four years ago, a group of quite hard Jamaican boys from Brixton used to sell shaved-ice slurries with coloured syrup and slurps of Wray and Nephew rum (63%) from our bottom doorstep on carnival Monday. They had razor-shaved hairdos and might well have been selling chunks of hash as well. They were always extremely polite and friendly to us and our friends and gave us free drinks that we didn't really need. One year a hustling young Indian woman entrepreneur forestalled them and placed her own youths on the steps, but the Brixtonians then arrived and ran them off, without violence. Anyone coming to the house had to pass through them, which kept the random-toerag-at-the-door count to an agreeably low level. Like having tame rottweilers outside your door, offputting to chancers.
Street trading at carnival has been tightened up, not for the first time, since then, and the procession now goes clockwise instead of anti-clockwise so things aren't quite as busy here as they used to be. I sort of miss it in a way.
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Pah
Had my own "Karnival" on holiday. Arrived at the hotel in Ponta du Sol to find the road to the hotel closed. Managed to negotiate with Portugese Policemen (nice chaps) to get to the hotel car park.
The entire road along the bay front (and my Hotel) was closed, and a huge stage errected in front of the road tunnel to the next village.
Loud? take the stones concert, amplify it twice, place it in a rock bowl with sides 200 feet high and play it till 6:00am.
what do you do in those circumstances? you go downstairs and you by a crate of beer at 2 euros a litre and go with the flow.
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go with the flow.
The only cool thing to do, as any fule kno.
Was the music any good though AE? The thought of Europop bubblegum writ incredibly loud is a bit worrying... I'm choosy about that sort of thing. Most of the music at carnival is all right, some of it terrific.
Edited by Lud on 25/09/2009 at 17:33
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Most of the music at carnival is all right, some of it terrific.
Quite a lot of it is terrific actually. The ingenuity of Caribbean recording engineers comes up each year with some extraordinary, very loud chirrupping and tweeting sounds that are worked into the music. The gigantic, supertanker-mooring-bollard sized woofers that used to shake plaster off the houses don't seem to be around any more, more's the pity... the new sound this year was a telephone ringtone at about 2 million decibels.... get two million people feeling for their mobiles all at once, oh yeah!
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Ah, found the thread at last.
Culturally interesting to a provincial, frogspawn and cowpat, chickens as model aircraft - bucolic local type like me. Missed a lot growing up. Thanks Lud.
(12` was the highest we ever saw one fly without sight of a fox, here in harvest moon and bats in the belfry, crickets in the cornfield Yorkshire)
;-)
Edited by oilrag on 25/09/2009 at 20:23
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