the Tesco Express where I’d wander round in a come-down haze

January 20, 2015 4:46 AM

The Dalston years were the ones that finally broke me
posted by acb (18 comments total)

I cannot help but feel the spa should have gone all the way and called itself the Nail Diamond Spa.
posted by biffa at 5:14 AM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

I knew a girl in the Balls Pond Road once who made toast by deliberately burning it and then skilfully scraping off the black bits. For me, that will always be the real Dalston experience. Burnt toast can be a madeleine.
posted by Segundus at 5:23 AM on January 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

I’m always struck by how much a particular place can assume a resonance related to a period of your life.

The suburb where I spend elementary school is still shrouded in the idyllic glow of childhood. I still remember trotting down the sidewalk in a line to head to the apple orchard, leaves crunching under my feet, air smelling of firewood and crispness. I'm certain it wasn't all sunshine and roses at the time, but damned if it doesn't feel like that now.

When I go back to visit, I'm always a little disappointed that time kept moving and change kept happening there. The little video store that never had The Adventures of American Rabbit (to my great disappointment) is gone. The hair salon with all the Patrick Nagel pictures is gone. When they tore down my old elementary school it was much more upsetting than I'd expected. Time keeps on 'slippin in the future,' I suppose.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:25 AM on January 20, 2015

No one ever says "Darling, we'll always have the Tesco Express".
posted by arcticseal at 5:40 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

...that's only because no one ever says "Darling" anymore.

Well, except John Waters.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:48 AM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Well, except John Waters." My mind wanted to read that as "John Wayne"...
posted by HuronBob at 5:51 AM on January 20, 2015

No, you're thinking of J. Edgar Hoover.
posted by ardgedee at 6:24 AM on January 20, 2015

Not the famous Haggerston Tesco Express?
posted by grahamparks at 7:08 AM on January 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh, this is like when American people read one of those 'why I left New York' essays, isn't it? Except with a Tescos. Ah, bless this author, but lots of people spend their twenties getting messy in all sorts of places, not just Dalston. Even in the UK, people have been known to live their whole lives in other places that aren't London, and that also have Tescos.
posted by The River Ivel at 8:31 AM on January 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Yes, but the people who spend their 20s getting messy in, say, Watford or Poughkeepsie or somewhere have less cool fashion sense and musical taste than those who do so in Dalston or Bushwick, and thus are less worthy of the attentions of hipster-oriented lifestyle media. If you manage to be located somewhere fashionable, your formative experiences, mistakes, friendships, consumption patterns and miscellaneous brainfarts automatically become a few orders of magnitude more relevant than they otherwise would be.
posted by acb at 8:39 AM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

Ah, bless this author, but lots of people spend their twenties getting messy in all sorts of places, not just Dalston. Even in the UK, people have been known to live their whole lives in other places that aren't London, and that also have Tescos.

And they are perfectly welcome to write their own memoirs about their own such memorable places. This particular author wrote one about the one that was relevant to her.

So what's your problem with it again?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:40 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Classism.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:38 AM on January 20, 2015

What's wrong with being classy?
posted by biffa at 11:04 AM on January 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

So what's your problem with it again?

I'm no longer in my twenties.
posted by cardboard at 11:07 AM on January 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

If it was classism, there would have been a Waitrose.
posted by arcticseal at 11:14 AM on January 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

Leith tesco express is wonderful, great staff. I'm not being wide here, they're like that Taco Bell in chicago.
posted by sgt.serenity at 5:06 PM on January 20, 2015

Can someone please turn this into a piece of modernist poetry? Thanks
posted by Erberus at 8:03 PM on January 20, 2015

This is just to say

I have lived
in Dalston
(that was in
the eighties)

and which
was really quite
shit
for ages.

Rice Krispies and marshmallows
after pills are delicious
so sweet
and so cheap in bulk
posted by forgetful snow at 9:21 AM on January 21, 2015 [2 favorites]