The ugly xenophobia that has cropped up in certain corners of the GOP has an unusual cousin in an unexpected place.
The progressive Mission District in San Francisco has become ground zero for a form of Lefty nativism that scorns …
The Californication of Texas
When I first moved to Texas in 2006, I spent several months living with my in-laws in Georgetown, a quiet town of about 46,000 people located 30 miles north of Austin. There was a giant house in their neighbourhood that …
Who will win the gentrification wars?
Gentrification. Are you pro or anti? Perhaps, if you’re reading this article in a small town with a dilapidated high street, this question may be far from your mind. But if you’re inside the M25, it will loom larger, and …
Is this the end of Chinatown?
Beneath the fluttering red and gold lanterns on Gerrard Street, drivers unload vats of rapeseed oil fresh from China, for cooking up batches of deep-fried pork balls and the like. In the windowless Lo’s Noodle Factory in a passageway off …
The Haçienda saved Manchester
The artist Jeremy Deller once gifted me a brick wrapped in newspaper. It was from a demolished factory building in Salford that had been co-founded in 1837 by the father of Friedrich Engels. Concerned that his son was mixing with …
Why the Left eat junk
Back in the Nineties, reading food packets for junk ingredients was a typical Left-wing hobby. It was a fairly safe bet that if you had opinions on pesticides in farming, preferred “unrefined” or “unprocessed” foodstuffs, or questioned the benefits of …