Mostly flyers and pictures from squats/gigs/parties/festival, mostly from the 1990's but you might get the odd ones from the 80's and the 2000's too depending on what I get my hands onto.
Currently mostly uploading pictures, after some mildly marathonic scanning session, I will add more informations in the future when I have some leisure time.
There might also be some pictures/flyers completely unrelated to the above depending on my mood.
Enjoy and feel free to leave comments.
I was at the opening night party and the RDF one. Seem to recall there were two different crews in the original pre-Cool Tan squat, one more geared towards the party end, and the other more political activist who ran what became the cafe space. I have a flyer for a meeting at the latter with some speakers from occupied social centres in Italy.
Hi this was originally squatted by 2 friends (connected to this story and this crew) in February 1992 on a Thursday night. The next morning one of them came to visit me at home asking for some support as apparently they'd have a visit during the night from someone telling them they couldn't squat this as "they"'d had their eyes on it for ages. I managed to gather one more person who was around and available and we walked over there with my dogs.
As we approached the front of the building the doors burst open and there was a crew (about 14 people) trying to physically kick out the other guy who'd squatted the building, for some reason our arrival and the presence of two (small) dogs stopped them in their tracks. We were still outnumbered 3 to 1 but a well known local person on the squat scene who seemed to be in charge of the assault came down the stairs then, I'd known them since shortly after I'd moved over to London and they said "Oh it's you..." "tell you what: we'll take the other half and you get this half of the building". They proceeded to run around getting hold of as many keys as they could and promptly started boarding up the bits that communicated between the two halves of the building while we waited for some backup to arrive after despatching one of us to spread the news with friends. By the time some people had arrived the barricading had been done by the other crew and there wasn't really that much of a desire to start a battle even despite the complete wrongness of the situation, one of the 2 guys who'd squatted the place left in disgust and some of the people there decide to get on with making use of the half we had left.
The other half was definitely more party orientated rather than political, after a while they also had some sort of weird church type services there on some nights (maybe they hired it out?)
That is well interesting. i remember Glen and Biff with the rest of the Showpan crew but i never knew there were firms battling for the space. always think of the dole house as the best large squat managed so far in London. Of course the big one in Stockwell followed and Lady Flo's and, lest we forget, Magnolia Mouldings in Stoke Newington where i spent the night getting plasterede after that wonderful day out discouraging people from paying any Poll tax in trafalgar square.Mention a coulple more quick, the Mankind club in Hackney and last but not least the place,again in Stoke Newington that had the vegan cafe,bookshop and skateboard ramp out the back(it's name escapes me now). The cafe/bookshop in Stoke Newington was the nearest i'd seen to the big communal squats in the rest of Europe.chris(RDF)
I was at the opening night party and the RDF one. Seem to recall there were two different crews in the original pre-Cool Tan squat, one more geared towards the party end, and the other more political activist who ran what became the cafe space. I have a flyer for a meeting at the latter with some speakers from occupied social centres in Italy.
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeletethis was originally squatted by 2 friends (connected to this story and this crew) in February 1992 on a Thursday night.
The next morning one of them came to visit me at home asking for some support as apparently they'd have a visit during the night from someone telling them they couldn't squat this as "they"'d had their eyes on it for ages.
I managed to gather one more person who was around and available and we walked over there with my dogs.
As we approached the front of the building the doors burst open and there was a crew (about 14 people) trying to physically kick out the other guy who'd squatted the building, for some reason our arrival and the presence of two (small) dogs stopped them in their tracks.
We were still outnumbered 3 to 1 but a well known local person on the squat scene who seemed to be in charge of the assault came down the stairs then, I'd known them since shortly after I'd moved over to London and they said "Oh it's you..." "tell you what: we'll take the other half and you get this half of the building".
They proceeded to run around getting hold of as many keys as they could and promptly started boarding up the bits that communicated between the two halves of the building while we waited for some backup to arrive after despatching one of us to spread the news with friends.
By the time some people had arrived the barricading had been done by the other crew and there wasn't really that much of a desire to start a battle even despite the complete wrongness of the situation, one of the 2 guys who'd squatted the place left in disgust and some of the people there decide to get on with making use of the half we had left.
The other half was definitely more party orientated rather than political, after a while they also had some sort of weird church type services there on some nights (maybe they hired it out?)
That is well interesting. i remember Glen and Biff with the rest of the Showpan crew but i never knew there were firms battling for the space. always think of the dole house as the best large squat managed so far in London. Of course the big one in Stockwell followed and Lady Flo's and, lest we forget, Magnolia Mouldings in Stoke Newington where i spent the night getting plasterede after that wonderful day out discouraging people from paying any Poll tax in trafalgar square.Mention a coulple more quick, the Mankind club in Hackney and last but not least the place,again in Stoke Newington that had the vegan cafe,bookshop and skateboard ramp out the back(it's name escapes me now). The cafe/bookshop in Stoke Newington was the nearest i'd seen to the big communal squats in the rest of Europe.chris(RDF)
ReplyDelete