Month: September 2024

the former Uncle Vito’s

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E street (Vito's) Davis CA 081224

Mid-August, E Street, Davis California. This was Uncle Vito’s Slice of N.Y., a pizzeria and bar that I used to come to occasionally (if you call about once a year or so ‘occasionally’) for a beer, but since the pandemic they have closed down and the spot stands empty. It’s always sad to see spaces sit empty (or stand empty, whatever the correct verb is, maybe it’s lie empty) but at least the amazing 1930s New York style mural along the E Street wall is still there in what I like to call colourful black and white. Some day another business will finally move in, a boba tea shop or a frozen yogurt shop and they will paint over this with some ugly pastel, and it will be a loss for Davis. Anyway, I needed to sketch one day, and I stood looking down E Street along the big mural down towards the contrasting colourful trees and panelling outside the Hotdogger. That violinist I don’t like much wasn’t there on the corner that day, but someone did start playing some music on the piano across the street. I listened to my football podcast, as the Premier League season was just starting later that week, though I was already bored of it even before a ball had been kicked. It’s already the international break now, England have a new interim manager, and as for Spurs already we have won, drawn and lost, not in that order, so our season will be another Spursy season. I would like to go to New York again. The last time I was there was for my 40th birthday, an increasingly long time ago now already. I want to go everywhere, but I always want to visit New York. Go back to Pete’s Tavern, I liked that place. As an urban sketcher, it’s one of the cities you can never be bored of sketching. I presume, anyway. If I lived there I’d probably be longing to go and sketch somewhere else, that is usually how it works with me. Right now, my travel itch is getting to me as I keep looking at Instagram and seeing people sketching places far away and wishing I could just get on a series of trains and explore with the sketchbook. I’d probably get tired, and need a rest. After a while sketching this, I had to go back to the office, and my legs were feeling stiff anyway, so I decided to finish it off later at home.

Bechard Calissons, Aix

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Bechard Aix-en-Provence

The last of the drawings I did when I got back from our trip was not a London one at all, but a drawing of the Béchard Patissier on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence. They make and sell ‘Calissons’, a small diamond-lozenge shaped candy made of marzipan that is a famous local delicacy of Aix. I like them, not everyone’s cup of tea, but I always make a bee-line for this place when I visit Aix. Other places do nice ones, but I think Béchard’s calissons are very tasty and well presented, usually in those big white calisson-shaped boxes. I just really like the way the store looks too, and it hasn’t changed at all in all these years. I did draw it when I visited back in 2015, but this time I just took a photo intending on a more detailed drawing later to hang on the wall, which is what I have done. It’s up on the wall now next to those London ones. You can see me there reflected in the doorway, wearing my striped Red Star Paris football shirt (I didn’t bring a Marseille one on this trip). I was going to put this drawing into the Pence’s Art Auction hut I liked looking at it too much, it reminded me of walking up Cours Mirabeau all those years ago, usually on the way to see something at the cinema, I saw the Fellowship of the Ring in there when that first came out and dive right into reading the books afterwards, so I always associate those stories with walking those cobbled streets of Aix at night. I am actually re-listening to the audiobooks of The Lord of the Rings now, and I really love the Rings of Power show. The buildings here in this part of Aix, the Quartier Mazarin, are a particularly golden ochre, especially in the sun, going back to the 17th century. The red and white displays go well against that stonework. Even though I drew this after I got back home to Davis (I have sketched this on site nine years ago already), I enjoyed drawing this and thinking back to those days and nights in Aix twenty-odd years ago.

I Camisa and Son, Soho

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I Camisa Old Compton St

Here’s the last of the London drawings I did after our trip, and this one was drawn on the very day that the shop itself closed. This is I Camisa and Son, a little deli and Italian foods store on Old Compton Street, in the heart of old Soho. I’ve got this one on my wall now and I look at it as I go up the stairs and think about that old neighbourhood, and how much it has changed, evolved, but it’s still a place full of characters and community. I’ve heard news of its expected closure for a few years, despite the reported support of the landlords, business had just not been so good since the pandemic. Closure was staved off a couple of years ago, but this summer it seemed that they just couldn’t make it. According to their website they will try to find another location. Sixty years they were here, another little bit of Italian Soho. The decline of regular workers in local offices led to a decline in the lunchtime business. I cannot say I really went there much myself, except to pop in and get a cold drink maybe, but then again I have lived in California for the past two decades so I have an excuse. When I lived in London I would come to Old Compton Street a fair bit, usually in the evenings, and this was just another place that’s always been there, a place you just take for granted. There are so many places that we took for granted that are now gone, usually replaced with The Nothing. It made me sad to hear about this though. I have sketched half of the shop before, when I sketched the Cafe Espana next door (now gone). Years ago my friend Rob lived in a flat down here (in that narrow Tisbury Court alley that leads to Berwick Street) and I spent the night quite a few times, usually after an evening at the Ship, and breakfast down Old Compton was always nice. Back in the mid-90s I used to have an Italian friend who worked in one of those really old amusement arcade places on Wardour Street, the one with the big Las Vegas sign just a stone’s throw from here, and we would meet other Italians at the Intrepid Fox (long gone) and at Bar Italia (still here). There were always lots of Italians in Soho. It was always really cosmopolitan though, London, centuries before, the French Huguenot refugees settled on Old Compton. There’s a lot of music history down here too; right next door used to be the 2is Coffee Bar, which according to the plaque was considered the birthplace of British Rock’nRoll. I’ve often thought about doing a book of sketches just from Old Compton, but with so many changes, I’m missing the boat. I don’t like drawing historical sketches, of The Way Things Used To Be, so that’s why it was important to me that I drew this on the last day of its existence, even though I wasn’t there to draw it in person. But then, whatever replaces it, a Boba Tea shop or a Frozen Yoghurt seller, maybe in sixty years time when they are still going they will be the venerable old characters of Old Compton. You never know.

The Dublin Castle

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The Dublin Castle, Camden Town

Another in the series of London drawings I did this summer after our trip, all of which have some meaning to me. This is The Dublin Castle, on Camden’s Parkway. I wrote some things about Parkway recently, but I did not stop by or sketch the Dublin Castle on that trip. I started coming here in the mid-1990s, and there were always live bands to see out the back. That famous sign on the right, with the black and white squares announcing who would be playing, is a piece of classic Camden iconography. It hasn’t changed in there, and that’s what I love about it. This is the pub that made Madness famous, giving them their first gigs and forever being associated with them afterwards. In fact, when I was in there one quiet afternoon ten years aqo I sketched the bar, and who should walk in but Suggs, the lead singer from Madness, who was chatting with the landlord. I didn’t sketch him (as I’d already finished most of the drawing) and I also didn’t go and say hello (what would I say? Would I tell him I once went to Aarhus in Denmark simply because if anyone ever asked where that was I could sing “in the middle of Aar Street”? I’d only embarrass myself). I like Madness a lot though, I never got to see them play live but I saw that they were playing in Oakland a few months ago at the same place I saw Belle and Sebastian, and I was very tempted. Lots of acts have passed through this pub, your Blurs, your Amy Winehouses, and all your up and coming Camden bands have squeezed onto that stage. I would go to the club nights there too, the beer soaked floor and sticky toilets, all my favourite music pumping those red painted walls, and you never knew what sort of conversation you’d get into with whoever you ended up being sat next to on those old pub seats, it might be some old geezer going on about John Lydon’s brother Jimmy and the four-by-twos, or it might be a conversation about Serbian poetry, to name but two things random people have started talking to me about in that pub. On our nights out in Camden in my 20s, usually with my mate Tel, this would often be the last stop, this or the Mixer, starting out at the Rat and Parrot (now gone) or the Earl of Camden (I think it was the Hogs Head) and on to the Spreadeagle (still there) or the Parkway Tavern (now gone). I’d avoid the World’s End, my mate Tel liked it there (though the Underworld was alright), and I always enjoyed sitting outside at the Edinboro Castle, though it felt a bit posh to be doing that in Camden Town. Speaking of the Edinboro Castle (not ‘Edinburgh’), that is one of the three ‘Castle’ pubs in this area, the others being the Dublin Castle and the Pembroke Castle, apocryphally to keep the railway workers from Ireland, Scotland and Wales separate in case they should start fights with each other. There used to be a Windsor Castle for the English too but that closed a long time ago, insert whatever clever comment here. Still, the Dublin Castle is the king of the old pubs around here, and holds a lot of histories.

This is the other of the drawings I have in this year’s Pence Gallery Art Auction, by the way, and bidding starts very soon on those. Get yourself a little bit of north London history for your wall, and next time you’re in NW1, pop by for a pint, and maybe some live music.

Regent Sounds Studio, Denmark Street

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Regent Sounds Denmark St

Another in the series of London drawings to hang on the wall. This is Regent Sounds Studios on Denmark Street, off Charing Cross Road. I’ve already posted about the state of Denmark Street in a recent post. So I won’t here again. I have drawn this before, a couple of years ago it was, in a panorama that included Wunjo next door. This was the actual place the Rolling Stones recorded their first album in 1964. This is what I love about London, you can just drop things like that. They recorded more music there, and so did many other famous acts. I like the guitars they have in stock, I never bought one from there though. If I had a big house, and a lot more money, I am sure I would be picking up guitars all over the place. My Instagram algorithm certainly things I should be, every other post is advertising this Fender Acoustasonic, that Danelectro 12-string, this Luna classical, that Meteora bass. They really want me to have loads of guitars. I probably need to get better at playing them, but I am ok, I like playing what I play. I can’t sing for Jaffa Cakes, but I don’t care, I grew up in a family where having a singalong in the back yard is totally normal. When we were back in London we took my Mum on one of them double-decker bus Afternoon Tea tours, it was nice, a lot of fun. They mostly played Abba while driving us around, but I had the idea (which I didn’t start doing by the way) that there should be a Cockney Singalong bus tour of London. That would be brilliant. Go round London for an hour or so, cup of tea and a few slices of cake, and everyone sings the old Cockney songs, “Let’s all go down the Straaaand, ‘ave a banana”. Interspersed with a bit of ‘istory of course, black cabbie knowledge really. I know a lot of people who drive the black cabs and they know a lot of the history. Seriously though it would be a good laugh and very popular. I don’t live there no more though, so someone else can have the idea. Even rig up a little piano, an ol’ Joanna. I’d have to play my guitar though, or my ukulele, I never learnt tinkling the ivories beyond what I taught myself on my keyboard as a teenager. Anyway. I wanted to draw this as another slice of London that meant something to me, and in fact I’ve put this one up for sale in the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction which will held be later this month if you are interested in bidding. Visit the Pence Gallery website for more information.

Primrose Hill Books

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Primrose Hill Books

Here is another drawing from the series I made after getting back from London. That afternoon when I went to Primrose Hill, climbed up the hill to look over the view I had not seen in many years, remembering my days struggling at A-Level Art, then drew the Pembroke Castle and remembered my stag night twenty years ago, well I also had a stroll through Primrose Hill itself, another of those villages within London, the sort of place the American lead might end up in a romantic comedy set in a version of London where people say “fuck” and “wanker” a lot more than we actually do (and we do say those words a lot). I remember coming down here years ago and going to a really nice pub, and my friend pointing out Chris Martin from Coldplay and referring to him as “Travis out of Travis”, and I’ve called him that ever since. The road curves around and there are some nice little shops, as you’d expect in this romantic comedy part of town, and of course there was a nice little bookshop too called Primrose Hill Books. As a small bookshop lover, I was drawn here like a magnet. It’s very small, smaller than the one I worked at in Finchley (the now sadly long-vanished Finchley Books, where I was the book-keeper in the office downstairs before moving to America). I recognized that small independent bookshop smell, very warm and snug, and got flashbacks of trying to pay invoices to Bertrams or Taylor and Francis. A lot of small bookshops, a lot of small shops in general, just never made it in the end, so it’s always nice to see a real bookshop out there. I knew I would have to draw the place, and when I passed by again across the street I started to, but decided to just take some photos instead and draw back in California, as I needed to draw the Pembroke Castle and get off to Hampstead to pick up some photos I had developed at Snappy Snaps (like it was 2003 or something). This one isn’t on the stairs yet, I need another frame. I used a gold pen for the signage, which you can’t tell here but in the flesh it does shine. I am thinking about all the other bookshops in London, and elsewhere, I want to draw. Daunt Books in Marylebone for example, that’s long been on my sketching list. Finchley Books is long gone, of course, having closed in about 2006 or 2007, I can’t remember now, I still think about them.

the Highgate Pantry

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Highgate Pantry, London

When I got back from London, I was filled with that usual longing for the old place, faced with the long hot Davis summer. I wanted to be back wandering the streets and looking for cool things to draw. So I went back into the photos I took and started drawing some places on 8×10″ watercolour sheets with the intention of framing them and putting them on wall up the stairs. It’s not the same as being there, but then again I get to sit at my table and watch YouTube videos about London and take as long as I want, unperturbed by traffic, weather, an aching back and the need to get home for dinner. Still, give me urban sketching any day, I love to explore the real world. While we were back, we visited our old neighbourhood of Highgate. I didn’t sketch down there (except on that one other day when we visited the Cemetery) but we looked around the place we used to live, up the village and Pond Square, down to Waterlow Park and over the bridge along our old street Hornsey Lane, taking a picture outside the house where we lived before moving to America, before realizing it was actually the house next door, memory not being the most reliable thing in the world. I joked with my son that this is where he would have grown up if we had not moved to California, and it’s probably true, though not in that little flat on Hornsey Lane, and we’d have probably had to move somewhere else that we might not have liked as much as Highgate and Crouch End, and just ended up moving to America anyway. The weather’s better here anyway. I do miss the cute little shops around there. We stopped into this cafe for some pastries, the Highgate Pantry, and I knew I would have to draw it, either something back and standing across the street or like I’ve ended up doing, from a photo with a cup of tea. The pastries were lovely, we ate them while walking through Waterlow Park, as the north London rain kept trying to make its mind up about falling. That whole area, the bricks and leaves, it’s what I loved most about London. I remember on Sundays after having a roast dinner I would sometimes walk up this hill to exercise off the food. I was a lot skinnier then, twenty years ago. Twenty years, where does the time go. I don’t even remember now if the Highgate Pantry was there then, I assume it was, but I would usually get my pastries and cakes from Dunn’s down in Crouch End so probably didn’t come in here much. It definitely wasn’t always pink, but I like it pink, and it looks nice on the wall as I go up the stairs. I have some more of these drawings done after our trip to show, but will post them separately.