Brown Smears

I found this on Johnson Banks' Review of The Year, (about which I'll post more soon) and it made me laugh out loud for so long that it deserves its own post here too. I don't know if it's a real headline or not, and frankly I don't care.

DIY Branding: Apollo Home Entertainment

My local video shop is staffed by a middle-aged old school heavy metal fan (so you're pretty much guaranteed to hear Iron Maiden every time you go in there), and a guy who is so embarrassed by the state of the place that if you ask him for a particular film, her will look at his computer and pretend to type something into a non-existent data base before telling you "er, no, we don't have it". I dimly remember a time at the tale-end of the 80s when Apollo video was a contender, a worthy rival to Blockbuster, at least in the north of England. How the mighty have fallen.
Or have changing times simply heralded a shift in focus? Apollo Home Entertainment now offers internet access and cartridge refill services, as promoted by these giant yellow and purple banners. Do they also rent dvds? Well sort of, so long as you're not after anything released post-1998. I assume Apollo is a franchise (I can't image even the head office of The Little Chef allowing this kind of thing), and that the local branches are presided over by an East End entrepreneur, a little like Alan Sugar (nowadays Lord of Clapton, following the granting of his peerage last year), who, in his wisdom, has shaken-up the business model to incorporate new technologies, and remain relevant to today's switched-on consumer. Well, sorry Alan, your business model is fucked, your dvds are shit, and the only good thing about your shop is the two weirdos who run it, long may they remain to rock-out.

Diversification in 2010

It seems diversification is the key to survival in the economic climate of 2010..! Happy New Year LCC.

Clapton Is Good

While we're on the theme of local findings, here's another photo I've had on my phone's memory stick for a while. This appeared on a hoarding next to Clapton Pond. I found out recently that the author was local artist Shane Deegan, who intended it as a riff on the Clapton is God graffiti (in this case Eric Clapton) that appeared in Camden in the 60s.
A spate of murders and some creative media headlines between 2000-02 earned Clapton the nickname Murder Mile, and the area's notoriety had achieved nation-wide acknowledgement by the time it was named by Channel 4's Property Ladder as the worst place to live in Britain in 2006 (the show featured a shot of the block of council housing in which my friend Jill lived. I've never seen her so proud of anything before or since).
The Arts Council may well bang-on about inclusivity and "engaging the community", but I'd be impressived if anything inside a local gallery managed to reach half the number of people this did (the 38 is a popular bus, afterall). It's simple, funny, optimistic, and gently self-mocking.
The grafitti lasted only a week or two, but was another soon too its place (not one of Shane's, according to a local blogger known as Fat Hands), suggesting the message found sympathetic ears. Clapton is good, I might even go so far as saying it's Super Good.

Grandma Jailed For Xmas

So I've finally gotten off my lazy bee-hind and made a new blog* to house the snapshots of the Hackney Gazette headline boards that I've been collecting for the past 3 years or so. The blog is named after one of my favourites - Grandma Jailed For Xmas, and is formatted to contain a homepage that lists words taken from the featured headlines, each one a link to the related image. I've used the same yellow and black colourscheme, and stripped away any extra details, so the list itself resembles a headline. By presenting a single word from each headline I'm attempting to focus upon the source of the humour - the limited and superlative vocabulary. Sort of like listening to someone speak! With! An! Exclaimation! Mark! After! Every! Word!
*While creating the blog I found that there's already another very similar blog that reproduces the headlines in text form, without images. There are no contact details on the blog, but if anyone reading this knows who's behind it, then do please put us in touch somehow. It's always good to meet your neighbours.