I’m on holiday this week, so I can’t produce my usual blog post. As such, this one’s being written at (currently) half past midnight on Tuesday morning in advance of my going away, so that I can schedule it to appear as usual even though I won’t have my laptop. Magic. Those time constraints also mean that this week’s post doesn’t have the usual range of high-quality photography showcasing my mad skillz, because that takes time and I would like to sleep eventually. Instead you’re getting a public-domain image, and a rant.
Date of trip: Many times in the past, all of them regretted
Journey time: approx. 1h10 to London Marylebone, plus ten or fifteen minutes on the Bakerloo line to Piccadilly Circus, time you’ll never get back
Fare: £20.55 (Off-Peak, with 16–25 Railcard, including Zones 1–6 Travelcard), but you’re wasting your money
With good reason, the stock image site I used for the cover image doesn’t seem to include any pictures of Coventry Street, but the street starts at Piccadilly Circus, and runs all the way to Leicester Square. And so I’m going to include Piccadilly Circus in this, because that’s at least a London landmark, and yet I’m still going to rant about it because they’ve managed to ruin that too. The famous Piccadilly lights used to be a collection of huge and distinctive neon signs, the likes of which you could basically only see there (or perhaps in Times Square). But the march of progress being what it is, they replaced more and more of them with LED screens, which could display fancy animated graphics but somehow didn’t have the same charm. And now they’ve given up and replaced the whole thing with one big screen, like you can see on advertising boards up and down the country. It’s not the same any more.
So the street to the right of the Piccadilly lights is Shaftesbury Avenue, famous for its theatres. And the next one clockwise is the street to which I dedicate this article. Between the two is the London Trocadero. If you’ve ever been to Paris as a tourist, there’s a good chance you’ve been to the Jardins du Trocadéro from which the London building takes its name; they’re the beautiful landscaped space just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. Having this image in mind will only accentuate your disappointment should you visit their London namesake. The building was built as a grand restaurant, but closed in 1965, and reopened in 1984 as a tourist-orientated development, such developments being something of a theme of this rant. But at least it was busy, with an indoor theme park, and a Sega-sponsored amusement arcade with fancy “rocket” escalator, and an IMAX cinema.
Except it all went a bit downhill; a new IMAX opened elsewhere and took the trade away; people preferred outdoor rides with more space; Sega launched the Dreamcast. So most of it has now closed, and the building now boasts tacky tourist shops of the kind you’ll find springing up in empty units across Oxford. Indeed, there seems to be a reciprocity deal going on, since, just as inappropriate London souvenirs are sold on Cornmarket, so Coventry Street sells “Oxford University” hoodies. (The Other Place makes no appearance.)
And, as I said, this is very typical for Coventry Street. I don’t mind things aimed at tourists; after all, I frequently am one myself. What pisses me off are things that are aimed at tourists and of little-to-no interest to the resident population. Take, for instance, the multitude of “Aberdeen” or “Angus” branded steakhouses that you’ll find in London (and, yep, there are one or two on Coventry Street). Does anyone who’s not a visitor to London ever go to them? Have you ever been to one? Do you know anyone who’s been to one? Are the people you see in them part of a government conspiracy?
So, yes, push past the tourist shops, and through the crowds, as much as you can. Because Coventry Street isn’t pedestrianised, you see, so the many tourists crowd into the narrow pavements. The tourist shops continue past the Trocadero, and past the theatre (one of the redeeming features of the street; I haven’t seen the musical staged inside, but I’m told that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints advertises in the programme, so I’m sold). They are many.
(You may, at this juncture, be wondering why I come here at all, if it’s so awful. The last time I came, I admit, was to find things to rant about for this blog post. But the main reason is that when I’m in London I often seem to find myself walking from Covent Garden or from Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly Circus, and this is the most obvious route. And you’ll notice I’m not ranting about Covent Garden, despite that area’s also being packed with tourists. That’s because, like I said, I don’t have a problem with things aimed at tourists or areas tourists go as a thing in and of itself, especially if those areas contain a museum about the Tube.)
After (thankfully) not too long you reach the edge of Leicester Square. But here’s what I hate the most about Coventry Street: three particular themed shops.¹
In fairness, I will give the Lego Store a bit of a pass here, because there are some genuinely cool Lego models inside, London-themed, and so this therefore feels reasonably equivalent to Berlin’s Ampelmann shops, which I adore. I have less time for TWG Tea; alright, tea is a classic souvenir from Britain, but this shop seems to market itself to tourists as a long-established British brand, whereas actually the date on its logo, 1837, refers to the foundation of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce, because obviously.² TWG Tea in fact is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.
But these outlets both pale into insignificance compared to the shop over the road: M&M’s World. This contains four—four!—whole storeys of M&M’s merchandise. I have been in. I don’t get it. There are several whole walls dedicated to different colours of M&M’s—like those pick-and-mix things for jelly beans, except, when they’re M&M’s, they all taste the same. You can print your face on an M&M, because who doesn’t want to be put in someone’s mouth and sucked off? (Actually, don’t answer that.) You can find out what colour M&M you’re feeling today, which is like those mood stones that you get in gift shops at cave systems, except more corporate and about as accurate.
And of course you can buy London M&M souvenirs, because what’s more British than a candy first produced in Newark, New Jersey?³ Why not get a t-shirt of your favourite anthropomorphised, vaguely weird sugar-and-chocolate characters posing with Big Ben? Or how about an M&M’s teapot? It’s sadly not a literal one, which would be a much more apt for this store.
I did not, you will be pleased to hear, buy any of these items; I felt sickened enough by going in. Indeed, I feel sickened enough whenever I walk past, because the distinctly American smell of what apparently passes for chocolate over there leaks through the wide doors and onto the street, meaning you can’t even give me the “if you don’t like it, just don’t go in” retort.
I don’t understand why people flock to see a glorified sports-stadium action-replay screen, except even more sponsored. I don’t understand why people flood into shops that sell souvenirs for places they’re not even in. And I don’t understand why M&M’s World exists. And, while I disagree with the mob in Beauty and the Beast when they sing, “We don’t like what we don’t understand,” I feel forced to make an exception here. Coventry Street: I hate it.
¹ The shops here aren’t technically on Coventry Street; they’re on Swiss Court, I believe (and one of the redeeming features of that is a cute Swiss clock). But that latter street is tiny, and I have a blog post to write that details like that get in the way of.
² Singapore is, admittedly, much closer to a place where tea is actually grown than Britain, a nation that just exploited the places where tea is grown and then claimed the drink as our own.
³ M&M’s were in fact designed as a copy of Rowntree’s (now Nestlé’s) Smarties, which the inventor, Forrest Mars Sr., saw British soldiers eating during the Spanish Civil War (source: Wikipedia). But if you’re going to make a British-themed shop centred around sweets that are like Smarties…
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