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Fuck what the Oxford Dictionary says; the word of the year is not "vape." Nobody calls it that, it's a word that means nothing and is said by nobody. No, the word of the year is surely "gentrification." A term that has groaned out of the Guardian comment pages to become almost completely inescapable; utterly integral to London's narrative, as the battle between natives and developers gets fiercer, and as the stakes become higher for both sides.
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Alongside the gentrification of housing and lifestyle comes what is perhaps for those beyond London's physical boundaries an even more worrying threat. The gentrification of our nightlife culture; the eradication and sterilization of establishments that are somehow seen as unviable, or distasteful in Evgeny Lebedev's nu-feudalist vision of London. In hindsight, it's clear to see that 2014 was the year of the long knives for pubs, clubs, gay bars, and anywhere that won't sell you a ham and cheese croissant via a man with a funny hat. What happens when arguably the world's most important cultural city starts killing off its culture?
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Luckily, the music scene is fighting back against this onslaught, and perversely London has become a more dynamic, playful city at night. The rigid tyranny of deep house and snapback techno, with all their attendant RA message board dust-ups, advance sell-outs and muscle dancers, has started to fade. The previous glut of DJs and producers who called the city home seem to have headed off into the monied Croatian sunset, banging out their hits to blonde kids in ASOS sunglasses, and a new breed has sprung up to replace them. The vibe is artier, yet nastier; more conceptual, yet more authentic; rowdier, yet more sexualized and camp. More Paradise Garage than new media Christmas party.
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Boris "Upper Street Noriega" Johnson is not a man who believes that the rate of rent rising in London should be controlled. He believes it should be left in the trustworthy hands of the landlords. Don't mistake him for a man who doesn't care; he cares about lots of things, from the teaching of classics in schools, to buskers' rights—but to impose a system of rent control, he says, would be " devastating."Which is odd, because that's how every single person who lives in London apart from him feels. This is of course not providing any kind of new insight; sadly, it's just a fact of life in London right now. And in 2014, what we learned was not the fact that it's expensive, but that there is no end in sight to just how expensive it can get. The "less than 500 a month room" has become the "less than 700 a month room" in a year, and as it stands there is literally nothing to stop that other than the vague hope of David Lammy getting in and actually managing to pass the anti-rip-off rent legislation that Boris claims he doesn't even have the right to pass.
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But, if you don't like it—and who apart from landlords does?—there are plenty of other options for you. Like Birmingham. Or Berkshire. Places with entirely different identities, accents, neighborhoods, and values; places that are further away than Manchester is from Liverpool, yet are destined to become our new Hitchins and Guilfords as commutability is pushed further and further away from Charing Cross.As Crossrail errs towards its evil finish line from West to East, crushing the odd nightclub in its path, another operation from North to South kicks up. One that will fuck you off to another part of the country in half an hour, cementing the idea that London is slowly becoming Paris without the all the Haussman charm and strange indifference towards homelessness. We're further becoming a city of concentric circles of wealth, with an inner citadel of money and an endless sprawl of near-poverty; oddly, the exact opposite of the Metroland dream. Suburbs originally designed for middle-class families—Edmonton, Hayes, Thornton Heath—have become all-but ghettoes as Hackney and Peckham overflow with first-time buyers. Why? Because living in a city is cool, and living in the suburbs isn't.
But for all the chaos going on in London, there seems to be one group that will forever be relatively unaffected: the "celebs," those evergreen, ever-up-for-a-party demigods and demagogues who sit at the stop of the ES Magazine Mount Olympus, chowing down smoked salmon starters and tequila cocktails at TopShop launch parties, walking round Primrose Hill in expensive leather jackets, laughing at the rest of us for going to places where they don't have ice in the urinals.
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Yep, that still happens.
2014 was the year when fancy beer finally defeated the humble session lagers at the taps. For years it was just those and a few ales. Ask for a Kronenbourg in most East London pubs these days and you might as well be asking if they've got the fucking Dead Sea Scrolls to browse along with the Observer supplements.So lucrative have these beers become, that even tax-dodging former coke barons have gotten in on the act, perhaps realizing that in terms of the quality:sale price ratio, craft beer might be the one thing that's more of a rip-off than cocaine.
Perhaps as a reaction to the legions who seem to think that mid-length beards, slightly too-tight chore jackets, and Rough Trade tote bags are acceptable things to wear in a European city, many young Londoners have adopted a more wearable, looser silhouetted style. Clubs have had to re-evaluate their "no sportswear" policies as Adidas trackies, Nike sliders, Reebok Classics, and all sorts of other JJB Classics (as well as more high-fashion offerings from the likes of Cottweiler and the ever-present Nasir Mahzar) have come back into fashion. It's a look that is resolutely urban, clothing that's designed to be worn and lived in, clothes for the club and for the roads, clothes that make sense in a city like London.
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For all the tragedy and the madness, London remains a vital, fascinating place that's at the apex of modern culture. Most of the interesting things that are happening in the world today are happening in London, and no matter how much the bastards try to co-opt those, it's still hard to fathom living anywhere else for most of its residents. If there's one thing that those who are fighting to remain here prove beyond the power of money, it's that London gets into your bones.Follow Clive Martin on Twitter.More from VICE:What We Learned About Drugs in 2014A Bittersweet Love Letter to the London SuburbsReasons Why London Is the Worst Place Ever