Shepherds Bush – the end of Ginglik

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Shepherds Bush Green

I’m sure somewhere there’s a society whose aim is to get time and tide to stop and wait for someone. There’s probably one dedicated to getting moss to grow on stones that are constantly being turned over.

Then there’s certainly a group called The Shepherds Bush Common Improvement Project. These people have been granted funds and rescourses to improve Shepherds Bush.

The individuals behind it have no doubt been on expensive two-day courses called ‘Buffing Excrement, It’s All in the Wrist!’ and ‘Let’s Throw that Lovely Shiny White Thing we found in that Shelled Sea Mollusk in Front of a Female Pig – To See What Happens!’

I actually saw the presentation the designers and archictects of the SBCIP gave when they first propose their Improvements. It was held in front of Peacocks in the Shepherds Bush shopping center and involved some boards with pictures on.

The pictures showed a sort of buzzing café society with elegant people sat on neat benches, chatting and relaxing, bathed in a golden West London sunlight, on a re-landscaped corner of Shepherds Bush Green; the sharp corner, opposite Argos.

Architects really (really!) think it will look like this

These pictures did not depict the three lanes of grid-locked traffic constantly in attendance on either side of that end of the Bush, nor the fug of gray, polluted air. Neither did they show any heroine users flopping about like Dali drew them. There were no police in full riot gear arresting 12-year old stabbers, no radial splat patterns of vomit or cardboard clusters of temporary shelters for the homeless.

Bad things stop when you build benches in the middle of a traffic jam.

Ginglik bar

One thing these improvements will certainly achieve, however, is the end of Ginglik, perhaps the only establishment around Shepherds Bush, besides The Polish Restaurant, that lends the area any real character.

Ginglik lies under the proposed project area and so it has to go.

Ginglik, a well-loved underground venue for live music and comedy, is basically a converted public toilet. It oozes character and is very well run. Closing it down so that concrete benches can be bolted onto the end of the Green is, in reality, an act of turning it all back into a toilet.

Local MPs and councillors - all currently trying to put new, unnecessary bus routes through quiet residential areas - are backing the project (all…except MP Andy Slaughter).

I suggest you complain.

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Filed under Landmarks, Shepherds Bush

Tags: Ginglik