Don't Wait

"Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.” 

W. E. B. Du Bois quote

London Fest

In a way, London is like this giant house party where the hosts never intended or expected for so many people to show up. You know one of those late night parties where you enter the hallway and are met by a mountain of shoes, coats and a big, tipsy crowd trying to make their way through a slightly too small apartment?

I don’t think it’s just me. London needs to man up a little bit. It needs to revamp itself, get ready and get on it. On moving here, I keep seeing situations that remind me of this.

Some things never change.

This is a huge city. It’s a city of roughly eight million people, and yet it feels like it’s only ever prepared room for about half its’ faithful inhabitants. If even. Wake up London, you’re a metropolis! This is a territory that normally comes with some responsibility. 

Whatever coffee shop you may find yourself in here in town, whatever tube car you may be riding, chances are big (read: huge) there’s just not going to be any room for you. Nothing personal.

I’m yet to walk in to one of this city's many Starbucks (just don’t ask me why) to find a table waiting or even just a chair for me, even though the place may have fifteen or twenty of them. Mac Donald’s? Forget about it. Not that that’s a place you would want to spend any considerable amount of time hanging out at anyway, but you get the picture. If I’m going to have fries, I’d like to have them sitting down.

Wishful thinking.

There’s just too much people in relation to space in this city, and London is yet to match the demand with some decent supply. If New York can do it, then so can you, London. So please stop talking about your big cousin in the west and how amazing it is and realize that your sitting on a gem here, and it’s a gem that needs your attention. Get your ass moving. It would be a shame to let this wonderfully quirky and ancient city fall behind just because some public school trained politicians who never actually stepped inside a tube car in their life wouldn’t get the big picture. Because let’s face it. It’s big. It’s huge. And it’s not going to get any smaller, so I think it’s time to do something about it.

Ideas, anyone?