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This Olympic size cover-up in London seems bananas
By Suzanne Harrington
IT is less than 100 days before the Olympics begin. Normally they happen a long haul flight away and are of little interest to anyone but the athletes’ mothers, because watching fit people with numbers pinned to their chests running around in circles is nearly as bad as watching golf.
But these Olympics are happening in East London, around where I used to live. I lived there not because it was a great place to live, but because it was the only London address I could afford; it was not the East London of Young British Artists featured in Channel 4 documentaries, but an East London more likely to pop up on Crimewatch. If you live somewhere leafy and lovely, close your eyes and imagine endless miles of concrete studded with towerblocks, pylons, kebab shops, flyovers, cheap supermarkets, dole offices, bus stops, minicab offices, dodgy pubs and dodgy geezers.Amid this were further empty acres of toxic wasteland, abandoned factories and dead-end roads to nowhere. From the twelfth floor balcony of my friend’s towerblock, you can see the stadium, like a giant wiry meringue, emerging from the urban nothingness. Next to it is the giant Anish Kapoor sculpture which my friend says looks like a broken helter-skelter. It does.
But the weirdest thing of all is the giant shopping emporium they have built, the one you have to go through to access the Olympic site – the Exit Through The Gift Shop strategy taken to a colossal extreme. Where once there stood crumbling houses and dingy pound shops, there is now the biggest indoor shopping mall in Europe. Instead of East End barrow boys hoarsely shouting ‘pahnd a bananas’, there is now Prada.
Yes, Prada. Where what seems like five minutes ago there were uriney subways, angry beggars, scrawny smackhead prostitutes, there is now Prada. The local leisure centre — the one with the fungusy changing rooms — has been shut down, to make way for the Zaha Hadid-designed Olympic pool.
Walking through the endless space of shopping mall full of huge flagship stores selling luxuries, you wonder just what it’s all about. The place is so big it leaves you feeling seasick with disorientation; it doesn’t seem to be about fit people running around in circles as much as rich people running up big bills. The manky old shopping centre that has been there for years, with its cut-price caffs and discount shops, has been hidden behind an elaborate metal sculpture. But it’s still there. So are all the poor people. None of them are going to see any games, because the tickets cost a fortune. The neighbourhood has been given a serious make-over, but it’s like slapping loads of make-up on an ugly face — you can still see the face underneath. But at least when it’s all over, there’ll be that Zaha Hadid pool to look forward to – if it hasn’t been sold to the highest bidder.
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