Sunday, February 10, 2008

camden town is burning down, burning down

so we made the LA times! which, like everyone else, reported that my fave pub, the Hawley is frequented by Amy Winehouse...well I dunno, but I prefer to remember Ian Dury there.

Anyhow watching the smoke and orange glare from our terrace was kind of amusing, but the complete chaos caused by closing chalk farm road last nite is and will continue to be a Big Pain in the Backwater.

One thing I don't get is the actual progress of the fire - it appears it started in the crappy garages behind the Hawley - so I don't see that it made it across to the stables (main lock/original markey/dingwalls area) since most the decent photos on news sites are _from_ there and I guess the fire peeps would have shut that down if it was in trouble....also they taled about threat to residential bits, but there aren't any on the left (west) side of chalk farm road - I suppose all will be clear in the cold light of day - time for a stroll along the canal, maybe to see!

My guess is that it aint as bad as it looks, at least not as extensive...and reports were that noone was hurt which tends to imply things didn't get too out of control.

I would take a modest bet that this was caused by a smoker going outside a pub and droppng a still lit cigarette (given it happened at peak pub arrival time...)

So the BBC managed to completely xcrew up their reporting - claimed the Hawley was a night club - this AFTER half a dozen websites had correctly shown pictures of the
pub and correctly classified it - doh - another example of Flat Earth News - indeed, people as far afield as Hong Kong and Vancouver emailed me asking if I was ok - proving that it is a Very Small World....

2 comments:

freakshed said...

The smoke seemed to start coming out of the goth and punk market entrance and that's when i think people started to realise. but i may have been a little late on the scene and it had already spread by that point.

jon crowcroft said...

goth to goth,
punk to punky
we know major tom's
a junky

ashes to ashes....

seems sort of appropriate

they've wanted to close down that bit of the market for ages - for me, the range from antique to grunge was always a plus point of camden - cyberdogs and dogherty,
siouxie sue, grabbit and run...

i hope some of the stallholders have some kind of insurance...I assume the shops and pubs will have...