"I knew well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen; but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many miles upon miles of streets in which it could, and did, have its own solitary way."
— Charles Dickens, Night Walks
Midnight. The Tube has stopped running by this hour, and everyone who still has somewhere to go spills aboveground with all the other night crawlers — the late-night drunks, the helpless homeless, the faceless travelers, all the people of London's unflattering underbelly. In his time, Charles Dickens would tour around the city at this same time of night. Insomnia drove him out, and he used his restless hours to see London in a different light, quite literally. The sun is down, and a new city surfaces — no longer the bright and glossy backdrop of those photographs of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. Leave your expectations and your wallet at home — you won't need an Oyster card for where you're going tonight.
You stumble upon the daytime shopping district, Covent Garden; decorative shops and restaurants color the district throughout the day, and in the evening, well-dressed crowds filter through some lightly stirring pubs. But as the night falls, only a few will stick around to roam about the empty garden. Nightlife here dies off sooner than later, and the most common sight to see is trash cast out on the street waiting to be picked up before the next day. Everyone, by this hour, has moved under their own roof or passed through to get there.
Passing through Leicester Square, or any pocket of the city with enough people, homeless folks post themselves along the pavements. They're stationed in plain sight of the crowds, most of the time, where one or two benevolent faces might notice them. They stagger the walkways, with a scrawled cardboard sign, a guitar or accordion to persuade your patronage, a dog to win you over with a sad pair of puppy eyes. The time will come, though, when they seem to universally agree that everybody is too busy, too tired, or too drunk to pay them mind. Then they retire, away from the nightlife, not to home but the closest thing available — sleep, their longest and most transient escape from the city. Down in empty Tube stations, under the awnings of buildings that have closed for the night, they'll make their beds and cover themselves from the cold and crowds. But for you, the allure of spending the night on the streets is what draws you out.
Mixed in with the crowds, police officers line the sides of Leicester Square. Its streets are brimming with them, and it's one of the only places and times you'll see them on duty. Here for the same reason as everyone else is, because everyone else is. Around the corner, Tottenham Court Road gets seedier as the night goes on, no matter how many people pass through it. The unkept parts of the city come to light in the night. While you won't find the tweakers and dealers that creep here, there is no prevailing sense of danger in London — only the sudden panic you feel when you momentarily find yourself in the wrong place.
Take a look around Piccadilly Circus at this hour, those blinding Times Square lights, this district barreling into the night. Nothing dims, nothing quiets, nothing sleeps by midnight; there's always something here to occupy your time. People loiter at the corners to bask in the streetlight, blowing smoke into the air and laughing together and then stumbling off. By this hour, wide-eyed tourists have drifted back home, and Londoners get drawn out like moths to the sensation of it all. Some might approach you, pelting you with questions about where you're going, what you're doing. Frontmen for clubs prowl these streets, looking more for patrons than victims. Pay no mind to the pamphlet they're pushing on you. Move along.
Clubs keep their doors open late and keep the streets pumping with nightlife. These are the prime conditions to observe the night's most common specimen, the city's worst kept secret, the drunk or the drunkard. Historically, they've littered London's streets, and they thrive at night. You'll see them magnetically attracted to one another, traveling in packs you can hear coming from a mile away. All that commotion about where they're going: What's the name of the bar? How are we all getting home? Did you call the Uber? A brash outburst here and there, which could always snowball into throwing some drunken punches, but they're mostly a benign species. Pass them by and they'll dissolve into the din of the night on their own. Still, this is the liveliest entertainment around at this hour, especially on a weekend, when the clamor extends into the early hours.
By day, London puts on a show at Trafalgar Square, acting as a bustling public theatre. Buskers sing and strum and serenade the flocks of tourists. Audiences encircle the street performers throwing knives or balancing on unicycles. But as the museums shut down, the school tours scamper away, the artists pack their bags, the theatre empties out, and all that's left is the skeleton of the square. Everyone passes through like it's any other corner. The four lions stay unlit into the night, and no one is out to patrol them and shoo away whoever tries to climb them. Scale them. Listen to every tap expose that hollow bronze. Occasionally, on the lap of the Western-most lion, a man will spend his night reading the paper by streetlight, sitting cozily with a bottle of beer. He looks too comfy there to be homeless and doesn't seem to mind onlookers either. Look around at the city stirring and lighting up from every incoming road as the square sleeps soundly. Big Ben peers out from behind the far buildings.
Since all the nightlife was left in Piccadilly, the surrounding streets here hold a more modest variety of night walkers, some of them even above the influence of alcohol. Couples can be seen either hand in hand on a long walk home or snuggled tight under the moonlight as if no one were watching. Anyone walking about on their own, however, comes with an air of ambiguity. They'll pass you with mutual suspicion, parallel on the pavement or across the empty road. With most, you couldn't tell what they're doing, where they're going. Some, more than you'd expect, spend their night hashing out angry phone calls, whether they're tucked away in a private corner or stamping down the street, shouting into a Bluetooth or maybe just to themselves. They make up most of the worrisome yelling you'll hear throughout the night.
Westminster has a grand presence at any time of day, but the night brings a haunting shade over the Abbey. It's lit from the ground up — no glitzy illumination by an unobtrusive spotlight meant to emphasize its stature. Herein lies the “best” of London's deceased, who are made into a monument like everything else. Every generation here is more and more fascinated with the ones that came before it, and echoes of those greats resonate from every corner of the city. Footsteps of famed Londoners are under yours at all times. When the hour turns, and the tower's lights shut off, listen — “the leaden circles dissolve in the air.” The clock-face hangs in the air like a dusky moon.
A walk down the Thames reveals the most barren side of the city. Londoners take time along the river all day on scenic strolls and daily runs to nowhere. They'd take the Tube if they really had somewhere to be. By night, this stretch is the first to empty out as all the boats dock and everyone moves into the inner streets. All that's left are the shiner bits of the city skyline. The Eye stands still in a purple or red or green glow (depending on the night), and fairy lights line the parks near the National Theatre. The river runs black, catching the light between the stirring waves. Looking at the dark waterway and its shadowy banks brings out a sinister side of the Thames at this hour. The glint reflections are specters, those who jumped and let the river take their lives, whose restless ghosts are still held by the waters where they went down. Every now and then a party boat will tug by carrying a crowded dance floor and a beaming spotlight in its glass cabin. Down the way, Millennium Bridge is deserted and unlit, stretching out into an abyssal, bleak blackness as if it weren't, in fact, just a bridge to the other side.
As the hours move past midnight, any logical person will feel suspicion set in and start to plan escape routes from creeps or muggers. While the main streets are perpetually lit, anywhere else will invite a sense of danger. At this hour, seeing someone unmoving in an alleyway or a congregation crowding around something behind an abandoned building will inspire fear. Looks your way feel like leers from the shadows threatening to pull you in. Past Tower Bridge, a man on the bank of the Thames peers at you from a distance as you make your way over. He wears a bright yellow vest, stationed stiffly there by the wall along the river, not breaking his eye contact until you are close enough to speak.
“Are you on the Night Walk? There's a walk going on right now. For charity. . .I suppose you're not?”
“No,” you respond.
“Well, I hope you get where you're going.”
You are houseless, wandering the dark and dank London streets, infested with the city's most unsettling sights, more a state of mind than an actual state of living. In the dead of night, the infectious starry-eyed feeling of the big city closes and refocuses. Look past all the glitz of this metropolis to its untouched parts. Regardless of its history, reputation, romanticism, or however else London got to you, you've come to it now.
— Charles Dickens, Night Walks
Midnight. The Tube has stopped running by this hour, and everyone who still has somewhere to go spills aboveground with all the other night crawlers — the late-night drunks, the helpless homeless, the faceless travelers, all the people of London's unflattering underbelly. In his time, Charles Dickens would tour around the city at this same time of night. Insomnia drove him out, and he used his restless hours to see London in a different light, quite literally. The sun is down, and a new city surfaces — no longer the bright and glossy backdrop of those photographs of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. Leave your expectations and your wallet at home — you won't need an Oyster card for where you're going tonight.
You stumble upon the daytime shopping district, Covent Garden; decorative shops and restaurants color the district throughout the day, and in the evening, well-dressed crowds filter through some lightly stirring pubs. But as the night falls, only a few will stick around to roam about the empty garden. Nightlife here dies off sooner than later, and the most common sight to see is trash cast out on the street waiting to be picked up before the next day. Everyone, by this hour, has moved under their own roof or passed through to get there.
Passing through Leicester Square, or any pocket of the city with enough people, homeless folks post themselves along the pavements. They're stationed in plain sight of the crowds, most of the time, where one or two benevolent faces might notice them. They stagger the walkways, with a scrawled cardboard sign, a guitar or accordion to persuade your patronage, a dog to win you over with a sad pair of puppy eyes. The time will come, though, when they seem to universally agree that everybody is too busy, too tired, or too drunk to pay them mind. Then they retire, away from the nightlife, not to home but the closest thing available — sleep, their longest and most transient escape from the city. Down in empty Tube stations, under the awnings of buildings that have closed for the night, they'll make their beds and cover themselves from the cold and crowds. But for you, the allure of spending the night on the streets is what draws you out.
Mixed in with the crowds, police officers line the sides of Leicester Square. Its streets are brimming with them, and it's one of the only places and times you'll see them on duty. Here for the same reason as everyone else is, because everyone else is. Around the corner, Tottenham Court Road gets seedier as the night goes on, no matter how many people pass through it. The unkept parts of the city come to light in the night. While you won't find the tweakers and dealers that creep here, there is no prevailing sense of danger in London — only the sudden panic you feel when you momentarily find yourself in the wrong place.
Take a look around Piccadilly Circus at this hour, those blinding Times Square lights, this district barreling into the night. Nothing dims, nothing quiets, nothing sleeps by midnight; there's always something here to occupy your time. People loiter at the corners to bask in the streetlight, blowing smoke into the air and laughing together and then stumbling off. By this hour, wide-eyed tourists have drifted back home, and Londoners get drawn out like moths to the sensation of it all. Some might approach you, pelting you with questions about where you're going, what you're doing. Frontmen for clubs prowl these streets, looking more for patrons than victims. Pay no mind to the pamphlet they're pushing on you. Move along.
Clubs keep their doors open late and keep the streets pumping with nightlife. These are the prime conditions to observe the night's most common specimen, the city's worst kept secret, the drunk or the drunkard. Historically, they've littered London's streets, and they thrive at night. You'll see them magnetically attracted to one another, traveling in packs you can hear coming from a mile away. All that commotion about where they're going: What's the name of the bar? How are we all getting home? Did you call the Uber? A brash outburst here and there, which could always snowball into throwing some drunken punches, but they're mostly a benign species. Pass them by and they'll dissolve into the din of the night on their own. Still, this is the liveliest entertainment around at this hour, especially on a weekend, when the clamor extends into the early hours.
By day, London puts on a show at Trafalgar Square, acting as a bustling public theatre. Buskers sing and strum and serenade the flocks of tourists. Audiences encircle the street performers throwing knives or balancing on unicycles. But as the museums shut down, the school tours scamper away, the artists pack their bags, the theatre empties out, and all that's left is the skeleton of the square. Everyone passes through like it's any other corner. The four lions stay unlit into the night, and no one is out to patrol them and shoo away whoever tries to climb them. Scale them. Listen to every tap expose that hollow bronze. Occasionally, on the lap of the Western-most lion, a man will spend his night reading the paper by streetlight, sitting cozily with a bottle of beer. He looks too comfy there to be homeless and doesn't seem to mind onlookers either. Look around at the city stirring and lighting up from every incoming road as the square sleeps soundly. Big Ben peers out from behind the far buildings.
Since all the nightlife was left in Piccadilly, the surrounding streets here hold a more modest variety of night walkers, some of them even above the influence of alcohol. Couples can be seen either hand in hand on a long walk home or snuggled tight under the moonlight as if no one were watching. Anyone walking about on their own, however, comes with an air of ambiguity. They'll pass you with mutual suspicion, parallel on the pavement or across the empty road. With most, you couldn't tell what they're doing, where they're going. Some, more than you'd expect, spend their night hashing out angry phone calls, whether they're tucked away in a private corner or stamping down the street, shouting into a Bluetooth or maybe just to themselves. They make up most of the worrisome yelling you'll hear throughout the night.
Westminster has a grand presence at any time of day, but the night brings a haunting shade over the Abbey. It's lit from the ground up — no glitzy illumination by an unobtrusive spotlight meant to emphasize its stature. Herein lies the “best” of London's deceased, who are made into a monument like everything else. Every generation here is more and more fascinated with the ones that came before it, and echoes of those greats resonate from every corner of the city. Footsteps of famed Londoners are under yours at all times. When the hour turns, and the tower's lights shut off, listen — “the leaden circles dissolve in the air.” The clock-face hangs in the air like a dusky moon.
A walk down the Thames reveals the most barren side of the city. Londoners take time along the river all day on scenic strolls and daily runs to nowhere. They'd take the Tube if they really had somewhere to be. By night, this stretch is the first to empty out as all the boats dock and everyone moves into the inner streets. All that's left are the shiner bits of the city skyline. The Eye stands still in a purple or red or green glow (depending on the night), and fairy lights line the parks near the National Theatre. The river runs black, catching the light between the stirring waves. Looking at the dark waterway and its shadowy banks brings out a sinister side of the Thames at this hour. The glint reflections are specters, those who jumped and let the river take their lives, whose restless ghosts are still held by the waters where they went down. Every now and then a party boat will tug by carrying a crowded dance floor and a beaming spotlight in its glass cabin. Down the way, Millennium Bridge is deserted and unlit, stretching out into an abyssal, bleak blackness as if it weren't, in fact, just a bridge to the other side.
As the hours move past midnight, any logical person will feel suspicion set in and start to plan escape routes from creeps or muggers. While the main streets are perpetually lit, anywhere else will invite a sense of danger. At this hour, seeing someone unmoving in an alleyway or a congregation crowding around something behind an abandoned building will inspire fear. Looks your way feel like leers from the shadows threatening to pull you in. Past Tower Bridge, a man on the bank of the Thames peers at you from a distance as you make your way over. He wears a bright yellow vest, stationed stiffly there by the wall along the river, not breaking his eye contact until you are close enough to speak.
“Are you on the Night Walk? There's a walk going on right now. For charity. . .I suppose you're not?”
“No,” you respond.
“Well, I hope you get where you're going.”
You are houseless, wandering the dark and dank London streets, infested with the city's most unsettling sights, more a state of mind than an actual state of living. In the dead of night, the infectious starry-eyed feeling of the big city closes and refocuses. Look past all the glitz of this metropolis to its untouched parts. Regardless of its history, reputation, romanticism, or however else London got to you, you've come to it now.