Undercover Records, 5 Sternhold Avenue, Streatham Hill

Undercover is a second vinyl record shop just round the back of Streatham Hill station. I wanted to write about it because...there's an underlying assumption behind this blog that shops are more than just shops. That is, they have a value, an intent, a power and resonance that lies beyond the merely commercial. That they aim to shape and reflect the world they sit in. That they want to tell us things. That they are ways to learn about ourselves and each other. In some, or even in many, cases that assumption relies on wishful thinking, a day dream.

But then you go into a shop like Undercover and it's right there: this place is, and is intended to be, more than just a shop. MC, the owner of Undercover set up a few years back, starting the shop to sell off pieces of his vast record collection. He'd play music in the shop and sometimes you'd hear it on the street. This isn't unusual in South London of course, and is one of the good things about living round here. But some of his neighbours in the newly built *Luxury Flats* opposite complained, and you can probably guess where this is going. The council came, seized his decks and the music stopped.

Following this MC put up the signs and posters you can see in the picture above. They're both a call for positivity and a protest against the seizure of his equipment. And this is where Undercover becomes more than just a shop. It now holds a mirror up to the deadening, totalizing effects of gentrification, and calls out the systematic racism behind it. To see the signs in the windows, or go inside and chat to MC,  is to face up to some questions. What kind of city do you want to live in? What is your relation to the people around you?Are you happy with this city is going? Do you see yourself as part of the problem? These questions cannot be ignored - they're right there in the shop window, staring out at the passing traffic and the pedestrians.

I know where I stand on these things. I know that I feel it wrong, to the point of being indecent, to move to Lambeth from - let's be real - some well-off Home Counties town and then complain because because you can hear your neighbours playing reggae in the afternoon. I know that I will never understand why people move to an area because of its "vibrancy" and then grimly squeeze the life out of the place. I know that the thought at the back of my mind will always be: why don't they just fuck off and live in Surrey?

But I also know that I don't do much about all that, and that I am part of the problem.

One of the impulses behind this blog was a morbid sense that this South London that I love may not be here for much longer. That the stormclouds are gathering and soon an acid rain of venture capital was going to melt it all down to a chrome skeleton of Pret / Starbucks / Pret / Starbucks. So, I wanted to start recording it, and celebrating it, before it disappeared. Of course, it may never disappear. The life force may always keep on trickling and pooling in the cracks and corners of the city. But Undercover, and particularly those signs in the windows, brings home to me every day how precarious it can all feel. I think  a lot about about that Billy Childish quote, that the problem with London is that it's so provincial. The dead hand of finance that rules everything in London creates a bias in favour of the bland and the corporate that is stronger than anywhere I have ever lived. Which is not to say that London is bland and corporate, but rather that the people - and the shops - that prevent it from being so are fighting, fighting, fighting against the tide. If London had its own way, it'd be one vast All Bar One.

Undercover Records - even if you've never been, and never will, you'll miss it if it's not there.