Deptford Job Centre, hipsters, and the right to take offence
Been down the Job Centre lately? I have and it was lovely – you can can a smoke out the back and they serve Campari. It was so nice I went twice in one week.
Photo: Andy Hall
The Job Centre I’m talking about is a new bar in Deptford, situated on the site of the old, real Job Centre. Between my trip at the start of the week and the second at the end I had however read a piece on The Guardian, about the outcry in Deptford over the bar’s insensitivity. The piece claimed the owners and its patrons were hipsters and – hello, where’s my fax machine – yuppies, openly mocking the type of people who really did go to Job Centres.
Now I was offended! I’m not a yuppie. I’m not laughing at the unemployed. I’ve lived here for ages and am just glad to have a local bar where the old blokes don’t fall silent when I walk in. So I went again. On both nights the clientele seemed to be mostly dance students from nearby Laban. The likely mix of Goldsmith’s art students and people avoiding kid’s bath time on the way home from the station seem to me a far cry from bankers Facebooking £40k bar bills.
The actual Job Centre closed four years ago, when the coalition came in, and Deptford jobseekers who can ill afford it now have to travel to Lewisham. However I don’t see how a bar named for this local institution, and frequented by another bit of society likely to be skint and left-leaning, is the problem. And why is Deptford Job Centre taking the piss, while this is fine?:
Photograph: Dan Chung/Reuters
The questions of gentrification are complicated. Believe me, I’ve been checking my privilege like mad on this one. As a white, 30-something employed (just) arts graduate am I inherently part of the problem, just for living in the only bit of zone 2 I can afford? It’s confusing and exasperating in equal measure, because as a good leftie I believe this infighting and misplaced ‘outrage’ is a distraction from the things that are really atomizing our cities and societies.
Image: Brian Smith
To finish, here is a quote from Wayne Hemingway who I had the pleasure of interviewing recently.
“You mention the word hispter and it’s negative. That’s crazy. When we started at the turn of the 80s we would have been classed as ‘hipsters’ if that word had existed. The punk generation built the creative industries into the second biggest driver of the British economy. Now we’re criticising the same people doing the same thing. And I don’t really get that. Just cos they like to wear a beard… it’s good that they’re all riding a bike. Fantastic.
Why can’t that be celebrated? Obviously the gap between rich and poor getting worse is not good, and a lot of that is to do with ownership of housing, and that’s not going to get fixed quickly. But in terms of what Britain is achieving financially, the growth is coming in the right areas – it’s coming in areas where the world sits up and listens – the arts, creativity, design.”
Read more of Wayne’s thoughts on why hipsters should be celebrated in his bracing, entertaining and intelligent blog. And if you have a minute, put your fair-trade latte down and share your thoughts on Job Centre, gentrification, and who’s to blame. Because, if you’re reading this blog, someone, somewhere is likely to have you down as a sniggering hipster too. x
I grew up in Lewisham in the 1990s and spent most my social life in chain bars like Yates and O’Neills. It’s great that Lewisham, Deptford and New Cross are seeing a little bit of money and attention. I love that my friends are moving from Clapham to Catford in search of affordable housing.
I hope the locals that have lived there and put up with decades of rubbish pubs and bars can afford to stay once we’ve all moved in.
Nothing wrong with somewhere a bit artsy to have a drink in. And the naming seems in a total art school tradition of cheeky naming – there is also an art venue in Deptford High Street still using the previous premises’ signage of ‘The Egg Shop’. Thanks for your comment x
Yeah, that whole gentrifying thing is weird. Councils are accused of allowing certain areas to rot, if they don’t do anything, or gentrifying them if they do. Look at the abuse the people trying to regenerate the East End of Glasgow around the commonwealth village get.
I used to live in a rough area. I was accused of gentrifying when I lived there and “white flight” when I moved.
A lot of the privilege checking thing and the finding offense in everything so beloved of the Guardian comments section is just passive aggression. Probably makes them feel better themselves to criticise everyone else.
PS I’d LOVE to be a hipster, but I’m too old and provincial!
Yes – I have written here before about local resistance to schemes that have in the end greatly benefitted the local area – Tate St Ives and Turner Contemporary Margate. If the regeneration is well done it’s great. Glasgow boyfriend says the East End is always done wrong, however, and replaced again within a few decades x
Interesting article and got me thinking. I live in Liverpool and have lived through the good, bad and now brilliant years of development. Communities move on and in this day and age have to be mobile places and feed the need of those of those who live in the area. Everything has to move forward or else it becomes stagnant…we cannot live in the past. It’s not always comfortable. I for one love the irony of having a decent drink in an old job centre…they did little enough to help me when they where there!
Thank you. Rose-tinted view of the Job Centre indeed! I feel so torn on this issue but ultimately, you’re right, nowhere stays the same for ever. x