Last weekend Hackney Wicked took place in amongst the artistic communes of Hackney Wick. Pre-Olympic development this area was a little known snapshot into a once booming industrial East London, big old warehouses and factories everywhere. As with all old abandoned spaces, this proved a prefect spot to set up artistic communities. Then the Olympics came, now it seems to be a permanent construction site/gold-mine for investors. This is a crudely loose overview to a subject which deserves an article in itself, but we’ll save that for another day.
Still clinging on and fighting their ground those creatives host an annual three day celebration of everything that is “the Wick”.
I’d be lying if I said I had been going since the start, this year was indeed my cherry popping into Hackney Wicked. Having frequented numerous warehouse parties and what-have-you up there before, I knew it would be a quirky and imaginative adventure. I wasn’t disappointed, everywhere you looked there was something, from off the cuff interpretative dance to beat-boxing and poetry readings. You can really feel the heart and spirit from everyone there.
However, through just about every conversation you could hear the words “It’s not the same as it was last year”. Granted this is a familiar sentence at most festivals, but in post-Olympic London, you know they aren’t just saying it to fit in. This was the first year that there had actually been a police presence. For the die-hards this must have been quite an off-putting site. I mean this was Hackney Wick, if ever there was a space dedicated to free love, it’s right here. So what exactly were the police doing ruining everyones fun?
As I was standing waiting for a couple of friends outside the Queen’s Yard I noticed a bit of commotion. A string of creatively colourful uses of the English language were been howled from some guy who had obviously been in a bit of a mix-up and was currently being hauled out the yard, by a security guard that was clearly way out his depth. The situation seemed to heat and a few more bodies started appearing from nowhere. The language remained as creatively colourful, now the police were involved. Standing being calmed down by the police one of the two main characters in the mix-up decided that her beverage was that tasty she wanted the girl who she was currently screaming at to try some. So, she launched it over one of the coppers shoulders and planted it straight in her face, cup n’ all. Obviously the situation slightly escalated at this point.
Being the wannabe journalist of the future that I am, I grabbed my phone and started videoing.
Before you watch the video, I guess what I’ve been trying to say throughout all this is that I’m not a fan of change like this and also, having spent a bit of time chatting with some of the officers involved afterwards, they were pretty nice people. They weren’t out to catch you blazing up or flying high, they were there to make sure that when jokers like this rock up to the party, it doesn’t have to be someone like “Keir” that tries to get them to leave.
Also, apologies for the commentary.
Twitter: @douggillen
[youtube width=”500″ height=”300″ link=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSU0me7n4_I&feature=youtu.be”]