August 27, 2003

the trip Back Home

Then we cycled across town to the Aquarium Gallery to see the Situationist Internationale exhibit I also read about on the net. There was to be a video at 5pm which we were in time for. We actually got there early and had a quick look at the 'art' upstairs. There were all sorts of images, pictures of graphitti and slogans covering the walls. quite a mess! In the corner a pile of beer cans and wine bottles, used over the month of the exhibit, a tribute to Guy Debard the alcoholic founder of the magazine of the movement. We went out to grab some food before the video then returned. We were directed to the basement where the video was amidst a library of esoteric and valuable books. There were 8 people or so and on the table wine bottles, they immdiately gave us glasses and chips to eat.

Well, we finally made it back home. Here I am sitting on my dad's computer running Mozilla in Knoppix3.2 version of linux that I got in amsterdam for 2 euros... works quite well actually. [hate to say I rebooted in windows at the *** because it runs off the CD and keeps refreashing the limited memory and would move the cursor when it did that which disrupted my typing, however there was a lot of help documentation and i'm sure i could figure out how to fix the memory better]

I finally went to bed Friday night after writing the last blog in London.

Saturday we slept in a little and then went into london. We took our bikes on the train from East Croydon to London Bridge station. We rode ou bikes to near Elephant and Castle and then tried to find the 56A anarchist infoshop which I found out about on www.eroding.co.uk. it was very difficult to find because the streets in london are all crazy and not at all like a grid...we had a map but it was right at the very edge of the map. london is so enormous it is hard to have a decent map of the entire thing. eventually we found it after asking several people. we did discover that there are a lot of bike painted routes around the city and people do indeed cycle in london. it's not so bad as everybody complains thought it is a big city, too many cars etc. people cycle with helmets though it is not the law. just like everywhere that cycling is not well accomidated (amsterdam, germany, china) many non cyclists will tell you it is almost impossible and impractical. even cyclists who only do it recreationally often think this...

the 56a was very tiny and not what the description on the web had indicated though *** it was all true but the fix it yourself bike shop was closed and the seed bank was a small shelf of plants and seeds. It was supposed to be open run by a volunteer but actually was opened by someone else, coincidentally, jason just when we showed up. he kept it open for us and we browsed the books. they had lots of amazing stuff all of it very cheap, an archive which was lots of obscure anarchistic publications from all over the world... We bought 13 pounds worth of stuff but a lot of it only cost 50p each.

Then we cycled across town to the Aquarium Gallery to see the Situationist Internationale exhibit I also read about on the net. There was to be a video at 5pm which we were in time for. We actually got there early and had a quick look at the 'art' upstairs. There were all sorts of images, pictures of graphitti and slogans covering the walls. quite a mess! In the corner a pile of beer cans and wine bottles, used over the month of the exhibit, a tribute to Guy Debard the alcoholic founder of the magazine of the movement. We went out to grab some food before the video then returned. We were directed to the basement where the video was amidst a library of esoteric and valuable books. There were 8 people or so and on the table wine bottles, they immdiately gave us glasses and chips to eat.

We watched the video and it was really weird. Pictures of a landscape painting done on the inside wall of a circular tent in the middle of a field and strange noises recorded and repeated from the community. The woman talked about it first, it was related to her PhD Thesis in Archiatecture. The topic was about gentrification of housing and development to erase the existing community. It was about Somewhere around Brighton on the coast South of London which was the major coal distribution point for the British Empire in days gone by. Now there was development to destroy the poor housing that the community lived in, to displace the ethnic communities from Somolia that had lived there for 100 years, to build upscale condos instead. This sort of gentrification pattern is much more regular and understood in the UK where the population is dense and land redevelopment has happened for generations. The project was an 'intervention'... and afterwards there was a lot of political discussion.

Then another woman did a slideshow of modern graphitti in Huxley borough of London and talked about wandering around and looking at the streets as a disattached critic of the spectacle, all in the tradition of the Sitiutionist Internationale. Michelle was a man there who was a strong character who had been friends with guy debard and was loud and he told us his views on the movement...

More people came and we moved upstairs to the larger space for the next talk: Situationism, is it a boys club or can anyone join in? There was a lot of debate on this topic since it was given by lucy a woman involved in the movement and michelle was a man involved who had a lot of personal opinions on the topic, his own involvement. Jane waded into the debate. All in all it was a fun night where lot of people met and had really interesting political discussions in a lively and very passionate way, and shared some drinks. it was very loud at some points. We got 'expelled' from the SI movement when the stamped out arms with the 'expelled' stamp. this was a joke in referance to the history of guy debard 'expelling' people who he didn't agree with. After we had a drink at the pub with a bunch of the people. It was a really fun and interesting thing to bump into. They invited us to a party the next night but we couldn't make it because we had to go the airplane. We took one of the last trains back home from Victoria Station. We bought a daypass that day because it was cheaper than a return fare ticket.

sunday we went to church with marion. it was a very lively service with lots of singing and it took place in a school music room. That afternoon we did puzzles and hung around with pat and marion and packed our bags for the return airplane flight. That night we stayed up talking with marion and pat about religion and other things.

Monday we finished our packing then went into Croydon which actually has a big city centre of its own. There is supposed to be the biggest used record shop in the UK there however it was closed because it was a 'bank holiday'. They have two nameless statuatory holidays a year just called 'bank holiday'. (not very creative!) So I have to admit we went to HMV because that is all we could find open, but it was a very good record store compared to vancouver HMV. Lots of really good obscure music a better selection than almost anywhere I've seen, they had God Speed You Black Emperor AND Silver Mt. Zion from Montreal! So we spent way too much money there, the selection was great but the prices were not.

Then we went home and had lunch and said goodbye to marion and pat then rode to the east croyden train and took that to Gatwick Airport.

They were all out of bicycle bags for sale there so they said we didn't need one. We just turned the handlebars sideways. We bungeed our panniers together in pairs to make it easier but they were all 'oversize' luggage in the end. But that's ok I think because the oversized luggage get special consideration and treatment.

We went through security and they didn't tell us what gate to go to on our boarding pass. we had to look on the TV and it said 'wait in lounge'. The lounge was a 2 floor mall area where everything was 'tax-free' because of the captive market, but you had to show your boarding pass to the cashier and they barcode scanned it. There was literally a disneyland theme there. So we bought some overpriced food for the plane (but how can it not be a deal if it is 'tax free'?) Finally the TV tolfd us what gate to go to and we went there and then had to take a short 1970s era monorail to the other terminal for our plane. We arrived there and had to go through another security check. This was double annoying. Also because I forgot to put my screwdriver I used to dissasemble the bike back in the luggage so I had it as carry-on and last february when I flew to the USA they confiscated my bike tools at security check. However this time they didn't care apparently which was good, those terrorists with screwdriver weapons take note of security breech!

We managed to not have a 3rd person sit next to us in our isle seats so we were a little less cramped than it could have been. They showed X-men2 and ...romantic comedy. They had advertising pannels on the seat in front of every seat. I found it was very easy to remove the plastic holder for the advertising, take out the paper ad, flip it over, draw on the back, reinsert, put the ad back with my new anti-advertising message. Especialy with my contraband bicycle tool screwdriver.

We arrived in YVR and collected our bags which took a while. Our 'special' bags were mixed with the regular luggage in vancouver. Also we hadn't let much air out of the tyres because of the last time when Jane's bike was damaged because of that. Somebody had let all the air out of all the tyres which was annoying. Some myths are hard to beat. Also we met Gary in the airport, just returned from San Diego, by coincidence.

Our families had all shown up to meet us and my mom presented me with flowers (eek) and my grandparents and sister and jane's parents all showed up. It was very nice though we were kind of out of it. We got driven home and gave a ride to Gary and now are readjusting and unpacking.

The End.

Posted by rusl at August 27, 2003 01:20 AM
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