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
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Permalink Reply by Pat on
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I often see dog litter on my runs around the West of the Borough (Parkland Walk, Priory Park, Ally Pally) so it is not a problem specific to Wood Green High Street. The choices in terms of shops/items are very much a reflection of the major demographics of the areas. Education through signage could change behaviour but it is a long-term game. What I find hard to stomach is the incessant need to homogenise areas because people want to live in gentrified environments. Wood Green High Street may not be to everybody's taste but it suits my needs and I've never felt threatened by its environment. My kids and I are happy to visit the library and cinema. It's not different from any high street in a relatively 'poor' town.
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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I'm not sure any of the suggestions made by people would be 'gentrification.' Wood Green isn't perfect by any means and suggestions from users as to how to make the experience better are hardly homogenisation. I agree about the shops by and large suiting the demographic me being one of them in my M&S jeans and my BHS tops but this thread suggests there may be a market they're not tapping into and most businesses are usually keen to expand into new markets.
While Wood Green is a robust shopping centre in terms of shop occupation, there are interesting deals for small businesses who take over shops that have been empty for over a year and other measures to help them cope with business rates. What truly homogenises a shopping area is when only big stores can afford to locate there and the indy shops can't compete.
I also think there is quite a bit of London-centric assumption made that Wood Green is a 'poor' high street. Compared to my home town, where boarded up shops and the proliferation of tatty pound shops (not that I've got anything against them before anyone starts but too many of them says something about a street) and money shops make it a truly depressing experience, Wood Green is thriving.
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I agree that Wood Green High a Street is thriving compared to other places, especially in similar sized towns in the North and Midlands (I've lived in Sheffield, Coventry and Brum). However, my feeling is that certain aspects of gentrification is an unspoken desire among many of the commenters on this thread, thus the references to Crouch End. I remember Crouch End before it was gentrified. Shopping City may lack in many aspects but I prefer it to the soulless hellholes of the modern mega malls. Having re-read the original comment, it seems more a rant about antisocial behaviour that veered off-track to generalise about the area and residents.
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Permalink Reply by doug on
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Yes Mags, not helped by the thread title 'The Hell that is Wood Green' rather than a more appropriate, but less snappy, 'The problems of anti-social behaviour of a minority of visitors to Wood Green High Road'
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Hmm, but people forget that a load of money was spent on WG High Rd around a decade ago. It made a big difference at the time ... for about 12 months, then it went back to being dirty and unloved. It has gone further and further downhill ever since! Who's to blame?
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Permalink Reply by SarahC on
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But is it about low status? I don't get the same feeling in Tottenham, which I would assume is of no higher status, assuming we're talking economically. It feels like a place where people live, where there's a wider community that exists beyond the commercial marketplace. Wood Green feels like everything's a transaction. (And yes, I like Noel Park, the vegetable stalls etc etc, but the high street always feels as if there's an emptiness at the centre.)
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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.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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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.
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Permalink Reply by Sharon on
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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.
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