shane’s lane.

this is starting to resemble sassy magazine, where the editors used to put photos of themselves throughout the damn thing (but here, you can barely tell who that person is). the ghastly orange building is the boogaloo, one of the silliest honky-tonk juke joints you ever did see in my old london hood (highgate). I lived just down the road from this bar, which is owned or something by the pogues’ business manager (I think), and shane macgowan may or may not live upstairs (but he did grab our pal emily bick and twirl her around the dance floor in there one time, while dickon edwards was DJing). is dickon the mayor of highgate? he is certainly a contender, along with shane, bob stanley and ray davies (word was george michael and terry gilliam lived there too but I never saw them). we quite liked going to dickon’s retro night thing here but the music was so damn loud we were unable to hear ourselves think with the volume. anyway, my little nephews are huge fans of shane macgowan and they were chuffed to bits I used to have him as a neighbor. this bar is probably more famous for having pete babysham and kate “I eat a raisin for dinner with my diet-coke and pack-a-fags” moss hanging around swooning at each other while the little rock kids would eagerly “queue up” out front. they do have some cool events here from time to time and my friends all tell me there used to be a great pub in this spot, but nowadays a velvet rope in highgate just seems silly.

photograph: lupe nunez-fernandez, 2007