Brick Lane

This is an adaptation of a thing I wrote at my creative writing workshop at Eastside books on Brick Lane. I was pretty happy with it off the bat--maybe its better read aloud as it was with the first draft--but now I'm feeling like it needs a lot of work. Brick Lane on a Wednesday night is a world apart and twelve senses removed from the Sunday morning experience.

Brick Lane is proof that ugly can be good. People don't love Brick Lane despite its ugliness, but because of it. They love it because it is a million contradictions crammed into a few blocks. You've got beautiful old factories that were never built to be beautiful, but they've got these old windows with a million little panes, and detailing in the pollution stained brick walls. Stick a neon sign on top of one of those walls and there you have what makes the place: something old, ugly/beautiful mixed up with something new, ugly/beautiful. Neither object is worthy of remark on its own.
The people here hold the same appeal. For kids and artists this place is a playground. They dress with a precise lack of style: big hair, bulky down coats, skinny jeans and track bikes. Throw in a mustache, here or their. Make it look easy, but know that every overpriced thrift store's been combed to come up with that perfect ensemble. These kids will catch your eye like a fluorescent stripe on a ski-vest circa 1991, they steal the show. But its the other people here, the ones who are almost invisible but not quite, that make the show. They work in shops that acquire their goods by faxing shipment orders to places that haven't yet caught on to email. They're the reason the convenience store is stocked with cardamom seeds and cinnamon sticks.