I love that this piece is filed under "Life & Arts"...because yea, hating London is an art form!_
"London makes a man tired of living, as Samuel Johnson almost said. Maybe, had he ever ridden the travelator between the Jubilee and Northern lines at Waterloo Station, he’d have been more concise."
This past summer, for a couple of weeks, everyone on that route had no choice but to appreciate an audio art installation. The artist, Ain Bailey, lists with urgency the names of closed bars, nightclubs and record shops in between choruses of “Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner”, sung as ghostly overdubbed operetta.
Somehow that's art, I dunno.
Like supporting a football team into middle age, ours is an allegiance once guided by excitement, then replaced over time by extremely specific enmities.
...yes, of course, because football is another British pastime and, togehter with p0rn, the only thing these former glorious isles are good at producing/exporting (#1495638, #1006594)
"London is tiring, so we complain about being tired, and about being tired of being tired."
Yeah, em, sure... why am I reading this, again??
As we grow old, our tendency is to blame the city’s renewal for our growing apart from the life it holds. Defending cultural heritage against the developers is a good and noble cause. But by eulogising places, we choose to forget that all there ever is is people.
Also, Mr. Columnist: If you don't like it, you can just leave. Everyone else is. To Dubai and Spain, but at least to Cornwall or Scotland or the Cotswolds.
_There's nothing noble or glorious about staying in a place that's broken when there's someplace better to be_
archive hating me: https://archive.li/https://www.ft.com/content/c8407fb6-6134-4b2c-a428-d3a998873383
As someone who has recently left London after over 20 years, for me, it’s still got an amazing buzz.
Being back over the summer reminded me of how great it can be - alongside all the things that everyday Londoners hate.
Doesn’t matter where you are in the world there is still problems wjth wherever you live!
I thought complaining in general was the Brits national pastime
As a guy in Port Harcourt who has never been to London, this is fascinating. We complain about PH traffic and black soot the same way Londoners complain about the Tube and rent — it's how you prove you belong.
"Hating London is an art form" — that's so real. Every city that matters has that love-hate ritual. Samuel Johnson said when a man is tired of London he's tired of life, but maybe when a Londoner complains about London, he's just saying he loves it enough to be honest.
FT filing it under Life & Arts is perfect. Complaining IS the culture.
The Ain Bailey piece is a perfect example of what the article is really about: nostalgia as an art form. Listing closed bars and record shops over a ghostly "Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner" isn't a critique of the cityit's a eulogy for a personal past. And that's fine. But calling it "art" doesn't make it immune to the obvious counter: if the city's best days are behind it, why stay?
The author almost gets there: "all there ever is is people." Exactly. Places change. The people who can adapt stay; the ones who can't, leave. And they are leaving to Dubai, to Spain, to the Cotswolds. The FT itself has covered the exodus of business owners and high-net-worth individuals. So the "complaint as national pastime" isn't just harmless venting. It's a coping mechanism for people who feel the ground shifting under their feet.
My question: is there a point where loving a place means letting it change, instead of demanding it stay frozen in your memory? Or is the complaint itself the only thing left that feels like home?