So, a new nickname for Walthamstow seems to be catching on. There I was, sitting in Chilli ’n’ Spice on Hoe St on Friday night waiting for my curry, pondering how awesome the ’Stow is, and it hit me: Awesomestow.
Some marvellous E17ers on Twitter seem to have taken a shine to the phrase, so I thought I’d share it with y’all. I embrace Walthamstow, I love its good bits and I want to make its bad bits better. It truly is Awesomestow.
A Real Ale Festival with plenty of live bands comes to Walthamstow on Friday 8 April. The festival is an all-day affair with the bands in the evening.
The festival is at the Waltham Forest Sports & Social Club, which is in the Town Hall complex on Forest Road. It’s a nice little pub and I think it’s great that they’re hosting an event such as this. The ale part of the festival features ales and cider from the south coast of the UK.
There is an impressive music line-up, with six bands booked to play. Eastroad, Corporal Machine & The Bombers, Steve White & The Protest Family, Tom Lynch & Andy Green, Sarcastic Fringehead and some regulars from Walthamstow Folk are all set to appear. More details about the bands are on the Facebook event page here.
Festivities kick off at noon, with the music starting at 8pm. Entry is £1 before 8pm, £2 after, with free entry for Club members and CAMRA members. More details can be found here.
Here’s a clip of the headliners Eastroad performing their track ‘Shy’. I think the slightly lo-fi visuals make it look quite an arty video!
Last week was the first time I’d ever been into the Forest Recycling Project (FRP) on Bakers Avenue, near the Bakers Arms. What a cracking find it was too.
FRP is situated next to the Hornbeam Cafe. On first glance it doesn’t look like much, but the place is massive inside and there are all sorts of items available from there. I popped in to see if they would take a TV cabinet which I didn’t need any more. The people who run it were really helpful and came round to pick up the cabinet there and then.
The project was set up in 1989 and I assume it must have been slightly ahead of its time. Anyway, it’s a great place to either donate some good quality items which can be reused, or to pop in and have a rummage around their store. The website is here. I think it’s a bit of a hidden gem in Walthamstow!
Fresh from their appearance at the recent Vintage Cabaraoke night, pop rockers Cheesecloth have got a couple of gigs coming up in E17. The Walthamstow-based band play The Standard this Saturday and follow it up at Ye Olde Rose & Crown in April.
Cheesecloth in action
The Standard gig this Saturday, 12 March, is an early slot as the band are supporting Not The Rolling Stones. I’d imagine this means Cheesecloth will be on around 8.30ish. Tickets for The Standard are £9 and available on the door.
The gig at Ye Olde Rose & Crown is on Saturday 2 April. I don’t have many details for that, it is listed on the band’s Myspace site so I’d check back there for further details as they become available. You can find their Myspace site, which has also got a few songs to listen to, here.
Some of you will have already seen this, but in case you missed it, Ryan Gilbey has written a feature about the EMD cinema on the New Statesman culture blog. It’s a personal tribute to the building, and well worth a read. Find it here:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/03/cinema-walthamstow-emd-film
Waltham Forest Council are currently consulting residents on ideas for how to improve three areas: Walthamstow Town Centre, Wood Street and Blackhorse Lane.
The council has something called a Local Development Framework (LDF) and consulted on this in February. An LDF is basically a plan which is supposed to set out the regeneration and planning strategy for an area over the next 20 years. So, quite important.
Within an LDF, areas which are likely to experience major changes also need an Area Action Plan (AAP). AAPs are now being prepared for Walthamstow Town Centre, Wood Street and Blackhorse Lane. There are separate consultations for each area, and the questions are things like “What do you like about this area?” and “What are your top 3 priorities for the area?”.
All three consultations close on Friday 25 March. The Walthamstow Town Centre form is here, the Wood Street one is here and the Blackhorse Road one is here. As an alternative, you can also email planning.policy@walthamforest.gov.uk with your views, but I’d structure your email along the same lines as the questions in the leaflet.
Planning policy can be quite dry but these might be a good way to influence future council thinking. More detailed technical information on the Waltham Forest LDF can be found on the council website here.
St Mary's by Hackenbush and Hackenbush
Beautiful Interiors on Orford Road currently has two exhibitions running in the shop. Hackenbush and Hackenbush are displaying an exhibition entitled “Blueprints of Walthamstow”, which started last week. This is described as “dark, funny and subversive”. More details on this are available on the Beautiful Interiors blog here.
Also on display is “Cranes” by Emma Barrett. Emma is a local artist and her blog can be found here. We went down to visit the shop last week and both works are well worth seeing!
East London Craft Guerrilla have been running events all over London for the past three years, and hold regular craft nights at Ye Olde Rose & Crown. They can also be spotted at vintage and craft events across E17 and beyond. Debbie, founder of Craft Guerrilla, gave us a rather marvellous interview, which you can read here.
Craft Guerrilla also have an event coming up to celebrate their third birthday! It is on Thursday 10 March, from 8pm at the Rose & Crown. There will be craft packs on offer, and maybe some birthday cake! More details on the 10 March event can be found here.
The 2011 Census is happening in March and the awareness campaign has been launched in Waltham Forest. The census is a survey of everyone in the UK, and it happens every ten years. The information used not only builds up a picture of social change, but it helps inform government policy.
The census will be happening around the 27 March 2011. Every household will receive a form which you’re required by law to fill in. In 2001 around 86% of people in Waltham Forest returned their forms, higher than the average in London.
Waltham Forest council have set up a website to answer questions about the census. It also has contact details if you’d like the form in a different language or an alternative format. The official government website for the census is here.
There are also various websites which provide historical census information. A profile of Waltham Forest in 2001 is available here, and it shows various statistics about the local area in comparison to the England & Wales average. If you want to go further back, this website has got a wealth of information about Waltham Forest since 1880, gathered from the census.
Look out for your census forms as they come through your door over the next few weeks.
On Friday 4 March, tribute band Guns 2 Roses play The Standard. Guns 2 Roses are arguably the biggest Guns N’ Roses tribute band around, and have been playing together since 2002. They have even played with members of the real Guns N’ Roses, including Steven Adler.
One of the rules I have set myself for this blog is that I treat every event equally, whether it’s a big name gig or a small community event. But I have to say, I am really looking forward to seeing Guns 2 Roses.
Having got into Guns N’ Roses in 1993(ish), I have been listening to Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion 1 & 2 for around seventeen years. Those three albums are probably among the eight or nine records I have listened to most often in my entire life. They might not be very ‘cool’ now but when I was a teenager, I thought Guns N’ Roses were rock ‘n’ roll outlaws of the highest order. Having said that, they are one of the few bands that I never got to see live. I’ve not even seen the shambles that is Axl and his mates these days. The closest I got was seeing Velvet Revolver play ‘It’s So Easy’, ‘My Michelle’ and ‘Use To Love Her’ at Hammersmith Apollo a few years back. It was electric.
So, Guns 2 Roses at The Standard. Tickets are £9 and available from the venue. Here’s The Standard’s website. Here’s the Guns 2 Roses Myspace page. And here’s the real thing playing ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ at the Ritz in New York in 1988. You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby.
Walthamstow Scene 