Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The Hell that is Wood Green
Yesterday, I had the misfortune to find myself in the shopping mall. Walking out the big automatic doors and into the crowd of Star Wars pub extras who were smoking, spitting and squabbling on the footpath I witnessed what for me sums up the whole carbuncle on the arse of Haringey that is Wood Green High Road. One of the characters stormed through the crowd with his status dog in tow. I was reflecting on the fact that ‘status’ dogs don't seem to work (as the people who have them only ever seem to be what everyone else in society would consider low status). Everything suddenly went quiet except the ever present sirens. The status dog had stopped and released its copious bowels all over the footpath. It was like turning on the light in an HMO; the cockroaches screamed and scattered. The dog owner laughed and walked on. It was probably one of the most disgusting things I have seen or smelt in London. Eventually the crowd returned and watched the next horde trample the mess up and down the road. There was no-one to turn to, no-one to clean up and more importantly no-one with the authority to challenge and/or shoot the dog owner. Things just returned to normal.
The whole experience made me think how the council, local police and traders believe that we're all animals if they are happy for us to have to deal with this every time we go to the High Road. It's easy enough for me to hop on a bus and head off to Crouch End or Islington or even Enfield to shop but if you're older or disabled and have trouble getting around or not enough money for the bus it must be pretty grim to face it every day. Imagine how the standard little old lady dreads heading out into the crowds, litter, phlegm, smoke and anti-social behaviour of Wood Green every morning to get the milk.
Short of manning water cannons at each end of the High Road and employing some mercenaries with batons to control the crowds, I don’t know what can be done. Are there any clever ‘nudges’ or interventions that could improve Wood Green? Is it a matter of tarting the place up and hoping that the crowds respect their new surroundings? Is it signage to remind, and in many instances educate, people that spitting, littering and barging into other people is just not the done thing? Or do we just give up, bulldoze the lot and install a waterhole in the middle and let the law of the jungle and the status dog owners prevail?
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Melvyn on
-
Enjoyed this love-hate debate. For the record, my yoga teacher is 90+ years old, lives in Crouch End and loves Wood Green - especially goes to buy her leopard skin leggings too. Was recently deprived of her shopping trolley when browsing in a second hand shop in CROUCH END.
-
Permalink Reply by matt on
-
Crouch End is extremely dodgy. Always looking to rip you off ... and that's just at the tills! Can't remember the last time I went there tbh.
-
Permalink Reply by 2thfh47dr63xg on
-
Disappointed to hear people slagging off Wood Green High Road. It's a busy and successful place. The fact that the moment a shop closes another opens in its place is testimony to this. And almost all of them, thank goodness, are independent traders. There are only two [I think] betting shops and another two payday lenders, that are blighting so many other streets [including Green Lanes]. Shopping City may not be beautiful but it has lots of useful outlets and I've always found it a friendly place to shop. Also, the market behind it is fab! Those HOL members who live in an area that's rapidly becoming the white middle class ghetto that is the Ladder should realise that they live (dare they admit it or not), in a thriving and mainly working class Borough full of real people, not some sort of slightly downmarket offshoot of Crouch End.
-
-
I'm a real, working class person and I avoid WG High Road if at all possible. The shop workers might be pleasant enough, but a lot of the people who shop there are strangers to manners to say the least. I don't know why this should be so, but it is.
-
Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
-
There have been pro and con views on Wood Green High Road (that is what I was responding to, not Wood Green in general). But I do think that there are some places that have just got it wrong and the High Road is one of them. I come from Sunderland and it's a prime example of a place where most of the town is just wrong. Like the Shopping City in WG, they demolished the old network of streets in the town centre that made it a place people worked, walked and lived in. Now it has a soulless shopping arcade, about the same size as the Wood Green one. With 20 storey high rise blocks on the top. It's an area no one owns or cares about. They either get in and out as fast as they can or go straight up to their flat and don't actually live in the area. That's why I think that though Green Lanes at the N4/N8 end is demographically very similar, it feels like a fairly pleasant place to be.
-
Permalink Reply by Sharon on
-
Oh, Bless...this is what happens to the squeezed middle, they have to slope down into Wood Green for their weekly shop and see real people, it's a shock for them, they are completely unprepared.! Tip!...Pop into the indoor market for your health food, Asian condiments, Fresh veg. Swerve by Tiger for some pocket money toys or reading glasses,Heenah has all your grooming needs sorted!...4 quid for amazingly threaded brows! Buy a box of dates or avocados for a quid on the stalls near the big green bookshop, the red cross charity shop is brilliant, Wilkos too, BHS, excellent homeware sales. If you see a toddler urinating in a shop, don't judge, you have no idea what's happening there, in that family. This post and some of the comments have turned my stomach.
-
Permalink Reply by Liz on
-
Inspired by your post amongst others to collate all these suggestions into one big Wood Green Buzzfeed style celebration:
30 Awesome Things to Do in Wood Green
Anyone welcome to come on over and add their favourites if they are not on the list. But if you want to moan about dog poo...stay here
-
Permalink Reply by Finsbury Park Ranger on
-
-
" If you see a toddler urinating in a shop, don't judge, you have no idea what's happening there, in that family."
FFS, if we can't even complain about parents ignoring their child urinating on a shop floor, at what point exactly do we get to say "this is not ok?"
-
-
I've got friends who's child has got 'Angelsman's' decease. Often she appears to be very distressed but actually that's just the way a child with Angelmans condition, they are not distressed, they just look distressed. The worst thing is that the public sneer at the parents like they should be doing something about it. They say dealing with other people's expectations on the streets is the worst thing about having a disabled child ...
-
-
I think people's expectations are that the parent of a child who is urinating on a shop floor should attempt to stop the child, tidy up or apologise, and ideally all three.
Does that seem unreasonable to you? If the child did have a condition that made urinating in public more likely, would that have any bearing on the parent's ability to do at least one of those things?
-
-
Shop floor ? Sounds like something very wrong going on there.
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
