London's Eros Statue in Piccadilly Circus used to mark the demarcation between the West End at large and the specific sex district of Soho. Nowadays the neon has been allowed to remain on only one last corner, the 600 sex businesses have closed, as has much of the media village, though Chinatown and the Gay village are still going strong, despite a shadow of what was once the largest nightlife district in the West (24-7 with 500,000 punters a night and doubling on weekends).
From streets away you'd hear the sound of distant drums echoing off the buildings - an army of African drummers who'd improvise near the statue, under an awning that became the Japan Centre, the sound deafening close up, but rising and falling in different crescendoes. The area very much embodied the city for me then, as a runaway from the shitsville suburbs - old and new, rich and poor, classy and seedy, where all walks of life rubbed shoulders. It was edgy, often dangerous, glamourous, but also very free and atmospheric, you really felt you were in a circus of humanity.
Of course nowadays it's been sanitised, with the neon taken down to reveal the beautiful buildings beneath -but these pics still hold the 'feel' for me. Imagine the people under the statue -now a preserve of tourists - were once exhausted punks, club kids, models, rent boys, buskers, drummers, new migrants, runaways, millionaires and criminals, jettisoned from the nightlife areas next door:
I'm probably romanticising my memories, but it was a bit like Bladerunner in a historic setting, populated by freaks. Every now and then the batshit crazy Hare Krishnas would dance through, or cavalcades of revving Hells Angels, break dancers, the rickshaw army (before they became a scam) or techno buses that would totally hijack the space for a few mins. London doesn't really do that any more, it's all been priced out
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