What is a hipster? Look at this fucking hipster...

Very low class prossies plying their trade opposite the Ten Bells after dark, Brick Lane market was amazing back then, a treasure trove... Sleaze central...

It was a great place cuz it was so cheap, loads of my slacker musician/artist mates lived there... Old pubs, cheap booze, broken down venues that let you put gigs/clubs on... Good times...

My formative late teen/early twenties were spent in that neck of the woods. I lived in a flat above what is now the uke shop on Hanbury street in '98-'99. It was a fun, cool place to hang out and live but it was still also very much "just another slightly scuzzy bit of London'. As were all the other places we could afford to live such as Finsbury Park, Hackney Central, Haggerston, Dalston, Tufnell Park, Stokie etc. It's a theme park now. The new Leicester Square.