When I Grow Rich. Say the bells of Shoreditch.

And make no mistake, the desire to grow rich in Shoreditch has never gone away. Why should it? After all, for most of its history this area contained; "... base tenements and houses of unlawful and disorderly resort' containing a 'great number of dissolute, loose, and insolent people harboured in such and the like noisome and disorderly houses".

The base tenements may have gone (why so many buildings appear to be held up by bits of wood I can't imagine) but the dissolute, loose and insolent people seem to have multiplied. In fact there are now so many of this sort that you could probably hold a music festival and fill Shoreditch Park with them. Ahem!

And did you notice how many shoe shops there are around here? Back in the day, when The 'Ditch was playing catch up with Hoxton, I delighted in calling it The Shoe District, largely because it pissed off the Hoxtonites, which is never a bad thing, after all, it'll take a long time to forgive them for The Hoxton Fin.

These days Shoreditch is known for 'creative' types. You can tell them by their silly clothes.

Actually you can't. For every 'creative' with one trouser leg rolled up sporting clogs and a fur t-shirt there are fifteen fashion students specially flown in to walk up and down Great Eastern Street pretending to send important 'creative' texts. Generally female, usually from the far east, they are known locally as Ditch Dykes. Look around, there's one right next to you.

When folks who tinker about with websites and such like became known as 'creatives' I have no idea, but in a world run by geeks I guess they can call themselves what they like. I know what I call them.

But here's the thing about Shoreditch, it's actually as dodgy as Blackpool. It's the latest destination of the chancer, the spiv, the rip-off merchants, displaced from the West End they drifted east in search of new victims. 90% of what you see is a lie, concocted by villainous cunts who 15 years ago made their money dishing dangerously cut Ecstasy to the naive, now they sell a mirage to fools. Wherever money passes from hand to hand you'll find them, passing themselves off as movers. The only thing that moves is the money, from you to them. Did I compare them to the Blaggers of the golden mile? If so I was being very unfair to the people of Blackpool, where hucksterism and ripping off the tourists is a way of life. In Shoreditch they dress up in local colour and hide themselves among the 'creatives'. It may not be as obvious, but most of Shoreditch is a baited trap for fashion fools and their parent's money. It's a front, a great steaming pile of lying shit.

And there's an awful lot of parent's money sloshing about. This is the land of the spoilt brat intern. Knock on the door of any of Shoreditch's many 'fashion' publications and the chances are the door will be opened by The Honourable Hanoria Slit who luurves working for Damaged and Cockrot magazine and has done so for two years. Without pay. Without a brain. Without a clue. They flock to offer their dumbass services to the hucksters, only too glad to have slaves to feed the big lie. And now they 'work' in fashion and PR, they tell daddy, when they go home to the family estate, that their life's dream has come true, the sad truth being that if it came to wages nobody in their right minds would pay them to sweep the street. And what is so appealing about working in PR I'll never know. PR is the ultimate huckster trade, selling crap to the crapulous, pushing knock off shit like it matters.

It doesn't. It's cold-calling from a call centre in Middlesborough, with latte.

All of which we celebrate in a festival, the work of the biggest con artist huckster wankers in The 'Ditch.

You're welcome.

Tom Artrocker