FalconbergA recent online conversation prompted me to go digging for the text copies I retain of lon

FalconbergA recent online conversation prompted me to go digging for the text copies I retain of long-deleted online writings.  Unfortunately the pieces aren’t kept individually - I didn’t think ahead sufficiently; didn’t assume I’d be representing any of them - and instead languish in documents 200 pages long. So I’m having to spend time searching through likely candidates looking for specifics.  It’s not quick, but would be interminable if not for searchable terms.This is a piece from a LiveJournal entry dated 5th October 2010, but the primary focus, that first photograph of Centre Point from beneath, was taken 21st May 2008.Transition.This is a photograph that can’t be taken again.It’s Centre Point tower, in central London, as seen looking up from Falconberg Court. The piss-scented alleyway between what was, on the right, The Astoria and on the left the small, ancient flats behind and above various premises, including an electroclash club (latterly, The Ghetto), a tame sex-shop and some cheap takeaway joints.I took it just before the barriers went up across the entrance-way to the Court (a dingy archway just out of shot of the bottom of the picture) and the equally dingy Falconberg Mews, behind and to the right of the point of view.The alleyway and, especially, the often disinfected side-exits to The Astoria, were well known as central London’s most popular outdoor toilet and indeed the permanent aroma attested to this. But it was a shortcut I often used into Soho Square or back the other way to Tottenham Court Road tube station. Particularly when, in 1999, I worked in the building directly behind the POV and could look from my first floor window straight up the alley and would often watch the rock bands of the time arriving at the back of the Astoria with their roadcrews to unload all their kit in the Mews. In particular I remember having to hack my way with a machete through the enormous and IQ-challenged, orange-boiler-suited queue for Slipknot just to get out of the place, when I’d worked late one Friday (as usual).I recently found this [second] photo of what the area looks like now, during the construction of the new Tottenham Court Road Crossrail Station.It struck me particularly because it is, essentially, the antiposition of the first. It’s taken looking down from the top of Centre Point directly to where I was standing. For reference that was precisely where the base of the huge white construction crane is.For those unfamiliar, to the right of the yellow traffic grid is Tottenham Court Road itself, to the left, between Centre Point and what were the older buildings starts Charing Cross Road. Above the crossroads intersection is the start of Oxford Street and below New Oxford Street. Eventually on the site of all this destruction, either side of the road, at the foot of Centre Point and over the older Tube Station will lie - allegedly - a great glass and steel Crossrail Station. Twenty years late, but, there you go.It used to be, for quite a while after destruction/construction had begun, that if you went to Google maps and searched “Tottenham Court Road Tube” and then zoomed in on the result you could see what it used to look like from above. If you then selected streetview you could see the ironwork-capped archway entrance to Falconberg Court (under the Harmony banner) and the preliminary roadworks that kicked off before any property clearance started. Fortunately I kept screen grabs. -- source link

More pics about