Brick Lane Street Art

Preamble:  This post contains photos of graffitti and street art from the Brick Lane area in east London.  Since I don't actually start talking about that till half way through the post, I thought I'd put this preamble in to let you know what you were looking at...

(I was impressed by the detail and emotion captured...)

Hard to believe, but the Olympics are almost over, and I will be heading home next Tuesday. Friday afternoon was my last chance for a new adventure before the Closing Ceremonies, as I plan to go shopping (back to the Portobello Market) on Saturday afternoon.

(The size of some of these is incredible...)

I first went shopping at the Old Spitalfields Market in London's east end (north of my hotel).  Friday is Fashion day, so there were lots of clothing and jewellry stalls.  I have to say that there was some really interesting stuff here.

Unlike Camden Town, where there seemed to be a lot of cheap, mass produced, merchandise, many of the vendors at Old Spitalfields were selling custom made clothing and jewellry that was very cool.

I didn't take any photos at the market (I was too busy shopping), but the market is very close to an area called Brick Lane, which is also known as Banglatown for its large Bangladeshi population.

(Street sign with Bangladeshi sub-title...)

The Brick Lane area contains lots of graffitti and street art, especially on some of the side streets, so I spent a fair bit of time just ambling along looking for interesting works to photograph.

(Street view of Brick Lane...)

The artwork is diverse, from black and white to colour, and from small to very very large.  Some of these must have taken days or weeks to complete.

Some are very obviously meant to have a message, while others are just doodles, and other are tributes, or memorials to specific people.

(A peace message in the Cyanide and Happiness style?)

I did actually come across one artist who was in the middle of creating a new piece, though it looked like this might be part of a commerical street art campaign advertisement.

The Brick Lane area was also the scene of the crime for the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888.

I ended up spending a long time walking through Brick Lane, and got a little lost, but ended up finding a Overground tube station at Shoreditch High Street that took me back towards the hotel, and I ended up getting to bed at about 5pm.

So tomorrow afternoon, I'll be back out to the Portobello Market for another day of shopping, and then on Saturday night (Sunday morning) when I come in, I'll only have to work a half-day.  I'll get to go home around 6am, so that I can get some sleep and come back in for the closing ceremonies at 6pm, and my last overnight shift will be from then until 5am on Monday morning.

Not sure if I'll get out on Monday, but I'll need to make sure I am packed and ready to go for my flight home on Tuesday morning.

Even though I'm probably not going to get to do much more touristy stuff, I'll still have some posts about the Olympics, and some photos of the NBC setup here in the IBC.  Stay tuned!