The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Camden, Greater London*

Camden, Greater London Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• Cantalowes if that counts as a building and the funky Dr. Martins boot store
• the camden town tube is beautiful and in danger of being demolished and replaced with a shiny new complex you can look at this on www.thetube.com. the old lockhouse has been scandalously sold off to starbucks. they painted it white cos they wanted to cover it with huge neon signs. luckily the council will not permit it, but now it looks so naked.
• Temperance House on Arlington road...big, scary and full of freaks...
• ON HAMPSTED RD ITS THE OLD TOBBACO FACTORY VERY ART NOUVEAU
• The Hoover Building on the M25 at night!
• the shop on the high street with the huge leather jacket on it because my friends live there :)
• The Roundhouse theatre, where the trains used to turn around in the olden days.
• the new one with the cats on it opposite camden palace. Its got a stripey roof
• I like the building design of Dockland's. It dominates camden town main roundabout
• The whole darn high street. in fact the whole town. no, darn it, I adore the whole of London!!
• Dublin Castle.

Demolish It Now Building

• GAP! Who let them build a gap in Camden??? WHy???
• sainsburys in camden road is so ugly and the whole of camden lock markets leather jackets and leather boot stalls/shops should all be flattened or just banned.
• The O2 centre in te Fichley Road. aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggghhhh. and you can take all the 13 year old slappers with it!
• VH1 building (old TVAM)
• Shirley House cnr Camden Rd + Camden St. Why does this building exist??
• none really, but I wouldn't mind flattening Liam Gallagher's nose in the same way he flattened that cyclist's sun glasses.

The Best Things

• Market, random wandering junkies, Cantalowes
• the buzz of the place. it's just so beautiful. the sheer number of piercing places, each one less sanitary than the last.
• How nobody gives me strange looks because of my appearance. It's the one place in London where everyone doesn't look the same.
• The atmosphere, the pubs, the people.
• The interesting shops
• Camden is one of the few places where you see different clothes and different people in London. Everywhere else as become a uniform high street with the regulation GAP, M&S, All bar one etc... However these are slowly marching in and it can only be a matter of time before the charming markets and independant stores are wiped out....
• primrose hill is the best thing in camden, although since all the houses have been sold privately to a bunch of snobs now taken over the primrose island or vilage, a word to all the snobs in primrose hill, thanks to u lot, primrose has lost its community sprirt. u snobs all think ur living it up in primrose hill. but u aint, cos the real primrose hill died when the like of u's moved in.
• Always good to go to Camden to cheer myself up and get away from the rat race. Nice selection of shops and stalls, but rising rents means the more esoteric and interesting ones have gone, and many of the shops left tend to sell the same tacky paraphernalia. Primrose Hill and Regent's park are nice on that rare sunny Sunday afternoon, especially if you've been clubbing all night.
• The best thing about Camden is the fact that its not a carbon copy of all other high streets in London!! However this seems to be destined to change. The council are planning on building a newer, bigger and "better" underground station, which would however mean that the rows of shops either side (including the wonderful Electric Ballroom) would be demolished to make way for a new cinema and office complex!! Does Camden really need that kinda thing???? If you care make sure you're voice is heard..this IS important!!!!
• Theres always somehere to go The people are always good Its free entertainment! PRIMROSE HILL (especially in the Summer) and the heath is pretty cool too
• absolutely has to be cyberdog :) although the one in covent garden has a slightly better selection because it's larger. their website is http://www.cyberdog.co.uk
• hair salon opposite the Roundhouse theatre, called 'enry 'iggins. Open every day and a nice friendly crowd.
• Living in Camden, and the live music scene.
• Sainsbury's opening 24h on Thursday & friday nights; it's so cool to go shopping after a night out at 3 o'clock in the morning.
• Primrose Hill/Regents Park
• E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.!!!!! Do I need to spell it out? I love Camden!!!
• Atmosphere - people like me!
• Fantastic place to live mid-week. Good connections to elsewhere, excellent supermarkets. Inverness Street Market fantastic for fresh fruit and veg, and is in danger of closing. Support your local trader now!
• 'The Mack' at the Underworld - one of the best Hip Hop nights. About £4.
• The Palace! Tuesday nights are Feet First, for which one can always get cheap-entry fliers (3 quid - doesn't get much cheaper), and the music is Indie Rock and the sound system is top class. Excellent venue all-round.
• If you don't live here, well I'm sorry for you, nowhere else on earth is as cosmopolitan, happening, alive all the time and constantly evolving.
• See pubs

The Worst Things

• Camden has been excreted out for the 21st century as some nauseatingly trendy place for rich arrogant yuppie gits who work for MTV and the music industry. I thought the faux-suicidal stoned teenagers were bad enough but all these twenty something strokes fans with tight tshirts and asymmetrical haircuts costing over 50 quid really are making me wish the whole place was bombed back into the stone age. Go back to primrose hill you rich bastards.
• People tring to close cantalowes...starbucks trying to educate u about the area when all you want to do is have a frapp.
• Camden town tube (and it's environs) is the most uminently avoidable place in London. Worse even than Oxford St, Covent Garden and Soho on a Saturday afternoon in August. The walk from Camden tube up towards the lock is the most disgusting diplay of discarded gum, scanking drug-dealing pikeys and saddoes left over the the grunge days of 92-94 that can be found in the UK today. It is billed as the 'alternative centre' of London but is packed with tourists, students and simpering rich-kids in huge flares who can, ironically, find no 'alternative' to fouling up Camdens streets with their aimless banter and squawking. I reckon Camden was probably pretty cool back in the sixties and seventies but it is very far from it today. Walk up the road to Kentish Town, it's much nicer.
• the wind that howls up camden road like it hates everyone the fourteen year olds with lo-rise jeans and huge belts who turn up every saturday to spend their ridiculous amounts of money on shit. they laugh at the bongs and point at anyone who has more than one piercing.
• being asked if you want either marijuana or a minicab 12 times between the tube and my house on Camden High Street every single day.
• The lock is filthy and full of crap - i saw a dead pigeon floating down it. There are two many druggies selling drugs and trying to give drugs to good honest people. Too many sleazebags who have crashed out on the floor surrounded by syringes and other drug implements. It is too filthy. Other than that... great!!
• Having lived in Camden for 16 yrs and seen alot of changes I can no longer pop out to the shops on a saturday morning, bleary eyed, to get a pint of milk without facing HOARDS of alsorts of people.It just makes you wanna crawl back to bed!
• The Tramps and pushers ...
• Goths everywhere. The horrible Moroccan Cafe at the top of Parkway. The Odeon at the weekends.
• Bloody tourists - OK so we want you to come and waste your money - but one tip - some of us live and work here - walk quicker or get out of the f***ing way!
• somers town where the sun dont shine, the drug problems with young children and adults in kentish town - mainly queens cresent. camdem council its self for robbing the fireworks off the community centre in primrose. i remember when people from the area would go round the houses door to door shaking their buckets collecting money for that years fireworks.. it all started in auden place.
• heroin junkies and crack whores
• The tourists at the weekend- aaah! The recent loss of the Compendium bookshop. The overall yuppification of Camden as a whole. Camden as the centre of Britpop!
• People who beg off you while you're in the cashpoint queue!! Threatening girlies at midnight on a Friday cuz they wont give you a fiver isn't big or clever!!
• The bouncers at the Jazz Cafe. Truly, truly horrible!!
• The scut The delaers outside the station The drunken lads People who are up themselves and take it all too seriously
• The filthy streets and food stalls - I once saw a pigeon walking around having a peck at the pizzas in the cabinet of one such dive.
• No. The kids smashing the windows in the summer certainly isn't the worst thing. For sure, I can think of a lot worse things in Camden like people shooting up in doorways and elsewhere (why do you think they have a blue light in the toilets in Burger King?
• The trouble you get in the summer. Take out a contract with a glazzier company because you're gonna have to repair those windows at least once a year.
• the way that the market (the loch one) was bought by some company a few years back and now has twice as many stalls squeezed into the same area... and bouncers, for gods sake! it's really ruined the atmos :( oh, and loads of the old stallholders (anyone remember the guy who sold theremins in the arches?) have been pushed out because the rent's so high now...
• tourists.
• the starspotters. drink up and get out of my pub!
• Dont bring a car, they will take it away and charge over £120 to get it back !!!! you have been warned.
• Camden Palace feet first on tuesday; too young and too touristic Camden palace all the time in fact : too expensive
• Traffic
• Anything related to oasis. Oh yes, and people who pretend they hate britpop. where would we be without it? why don't you move away if you hate the tourists so much?!
• The harassment for spare change from bums! It's filthy.
• Living in a tourist trap makes it horrendous at weekends. Arlington House drunks can be a hassle - avoid the mini-supermarket on Inverness Street.
• People buying drugs in Camden - it's funny when people complain about being ripped off (all the drugs are fake). Maybe I'm just cruel, but why do people still fail to realise this?
• All the streets are covered in scum.
• 'Feet First' at Camden Palace.
• The crowds of people on a Sunday, even when there's a blizzard. And the expensive, rip-off food places dotted around the tube station. The worst thing about Camden Town is the amount of drug dealers constantly trying to sell their stuff to an unsuspecting public. Remember if a big bloke in a big puffy red jacket approaches you in any pub beware coz he ripped me of £20 quid!!!!!
• Worst thing is the traffic, so AVOID - come by tube.
• As a resident of Kentish Town and a previous Camden resident for five years I'd just like to add: "kids smash windows in summer" isn't worst thing - it's not true!
• Several rough pubs and the kids 'rioting' and smashing windows over the summer.

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Last updated: 2007-05-21