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"Shoreditch Carnival & Car Free Day" on Sunday 19th September 2004:
Phew! The dust has finally settled on another hugely successful Shoreditch Carnival & Car Free Day and all around London people are probably fiddling with cameras trying to extract their memories of the day.
My fondest memory will be the binglybongly music arena with its purple carpet, camp 'George and Mildred' style furniture, surreal fireplace with roaring fake flames and the funky summer grooves that drew in heaps of intrigued people from the passing crowds on Curtain Road.
Amongst them, I'll particularly remember a collection of suicidal children in little plastic peddle-cars. They regularly roared in between people's legs and performed spectacular 'wheelies' perilously close to the precious 'antiques' which were on loan to binglybongly for the day. Gulp.
Also, an assortment of friendly dogs sniffed the air, the furniture, the potted plants, people's bottoms and their lunches on paper plates and wondered where on earth their masters had brought them. "This place is like my living room, but it's outside and what have they done with the ceiling?", you could tell the dogs were thinking.
They weren't alone in this thought. The amused smiles on people's faces brought about by the eccentric surroundings together with the inclusive feel of this comfortable little oasis added to the relaxed party mood. Who'd have thought this place had been a dusty, slightly unkempt car park only a few hours earlier.
As dusk fell, the standard lamps with their slightly ill-fitting shades glowed in the darkness and the happy mood rose even more as the band, Kamel Nitrate, infused the evening with mystical sounds and rhythms from the Middle East - they even threw in some sensual belly dancing to add to their quirky equation.
Lots of people donated their expertise, time, equipment, money and goodwill to make the binglybongly music arena come to life, and although some avoided the limelight, their involvement should not go unrecognised, as without them the whole thing would have remained just a wierd off-beat idea.
Special thanks should also go to the intrepid persons who spirited away some of the furniture that had been left in the car park overnight. Some of it, being of, ahem, questionable taste, was going to be given away anyway, so they actually saved us the time and effort of loading it all back into a truck again - which was nice.
The rain stayed away and it turned out to be a really enjoyable day, filled with good times and good music and I, for one, am already looking forward to the next one. Let's just pray that people's cameras will be kind to them and relinquish their little gold mines of memories some time soon because, as the reality of being back at work begins to kick in, I'm starting to think that it was all just a wonderful multicoloured binglybongly dream.
binglybongly's stage at the carnival was made possible by the generosity of :
  
 
and with kind help from:
Trevor & Hugo from Shoreditch Carnival, Ian Hunter & Versatile Sound System, Adrian Lewis, sound engineer, Restore Community Project, for furniture, John Rathbone & Tom for furniture, Stirling Ackroyd (for the venue & storage), Geoff at Westland (pink marble fireplace from the Great Eastern Hotel circa 1850!), Bona Fide Studios, Living Colour (flowers), Aria, for occasional items, Blue Audio Visual, Eamon from hlw architects, Nathalie & Gary from co-lab architects, Alan Cox, Ellie for art, Opex Flooring, KopyKat, Creative Graphic Solutions, Natwest, Dom Bolongaro, Inky Blackness, Jon Hawkins, Dave Jewell, Abbi Barham, Emma T & Zena Bea, all the DJs and the band and probably a few we forgot to mention.
Here's the line up:
| 12 |
pm |
Tomasz |
| 1 |
pm |
Abbi |
| 2 |
pm |
Vicks |
| 3 |
pm |
Younglee & Jake |
| 4 |
pm |
Fluff |
| 5.30 |
pm |
Antnee |
| 7 |
pm |
Kamel Nitrate (live band) |
| 8 |
pm |
Jon bongly |
| 9 |
pm |
close |
Also around the arena there was wonderful artwork by local artists and fragrant flowers kindly provided by Living Colour. Aaah!
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It's all free. From 12pm till 9pm
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More info on all of our events can be found in the left-hand menu.
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There's only
The final preparation is under way for this year's event, which will be opening the streets of South Shoreditch to music, dancing, cycling, stalls, food and drink on Sunday 19th September.
Come along and enjoy car-free streets all day, with music and entertainment from lunchtime until 9pm, as part of European Mobility Week.
There's lots lined up for the day, including stages and sound systems, bike test tracks, stalls, children's area and more. More...
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