last week was a blur of work and unpacking (and boat folding). sunday we got antsy and treated ourselves to something a little less holed-up by heading out to the brick lane market. the first time we went, a few weeks ago, we picked up (and then dragged/taxied home) a beautiful vintage school desk for me to write on for the year. there are crazy things scratched into the surfaces and the idea of how many people had worked at it before me was a total lure. (when we leave london i will be sure to carve in my and z's initials, middle school style, with curvature and hearts).
the market is about a thirty minute walk from our islington flat which is perched just on the edge of the infinitely hip hoxton/shoreditch area (yes we love where we live!). to save time we double-deckered to the liverpool street station and walked from there. despite being a lot of crowded jostle, brick lane (as opposed to the crazier ones like portobello road) is mostly navigable. this is important as i'm not one for intense packs of people and have been known to lose my stuff over too many absent-minded arm wingers.
we went straight to the upmarket. here there are endless stalls of every kind of deliciousness you can imagine. for those of you have read neverwhere, it is much like one would imagine the floating market. i am crushtastic for the impermanent permanency of everything. however, going on an an empty stomach is inadvisable. we skirted (with difficulty) the dangerous-amazing food section and wound our way through the craft stalls which are like rows and rows of live etsy shops. how rocktastic to see so many materialized virtual wares! we fell hard for artist peggy wolf's prints of odd ladies (check out her stuff!). i'm not in love love with her collage work, but her paintings have the good kinds of creep and beauty that i look for in art and poetry.
yesterday we specifically went with the intent of finding some chairs. the previous tenant had offered to sell us two of his, but when we arrived we found that they weren't terribly comfortable (they are fantastic looking victorian-style brocade chairs). this made it hard to want to sit in front of my computer and work all day. we made the necessity of chairs our excuse to get out of the house, even with deadlines looming. and we found them...again! we ended up buying chairs we had seen on our first trip to the market. advice for markets: if you want something, learn to haggle or to have patience--come back some other time if you are willing to see if you are meant to have the item. often you'll pay less.
we giddily purchased the chairs, and since we couldn't keep browsing (even small furniture is hard with so many people) we went to liplickers, sat our chairs in the sun behind the market, and enjoyed the most delicious donuts of our lives--just-made & dipped in sugar. then we lugged the loveliness of our danish modern chairs home over our shoulders, stopping here and there to sit in their streamlines and ogle them in open spaces: public parks, sidewalks, and the street just before our flat.
(images via ffffound, peggy wolf, and me
No comments:
Post a Comment