Not so common How Tooting became one of the world’s hippest ‘hoods’
The south London district has made it into Lonely Planet’s top 10 list of the world’s coolest neighbourhoods, to Glenda Cooper’s delight
I’d resigned myself to having a talent for living in the right place at the wrong time. I grew up in Merseyside – but in the Derek Hatton years, rather than during Beatlemania. I moved to Oxford – when Brideshead Revisited fever had ended. I even briefly rented a flat above a joke shop with a reinforced steel door in Portobello Road – before Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant transformed Notting Hill.
Yet, just when I had given up all hope of being trendy, I find myself in one of the world’s top 10 coolest neighbourhoods, according to the Lonely Planet. Alongside New York’s Sunset Park, Botafogo in Rio de Janeiro and the picturesque Borgo San Frediano in Florence, my home borough of Tooting, south London, has found itself in the spotlight.
Predictably, there has been some jealous sneering at why a place that dates back to the Domesday Book but is usually best known as the location for the BBC’S Seventies sitcom Citizen Smith or Channel 4’s 24 Hours in A&E should have received this accolade. Our most recognised piece of architecture may be a portly statue of Edward VII, but Tooting can take on better-known tourist hotspots and win any time.
To be fair, when I moved to Tooting Broadway in 2010 it was because it was the closest stop on the Northern Line where my husband and I could afford to buy (for non-londoners, there are only three stops further out). Its main selling points then appeared to be that it had the best curries in London and a cornucopia of mobile phone shops. But cool? A tourist haven? My tough-as-nails brother, visiting from Sheffield, went to the late-night Mcdonald’s by the Tube station and returned pale and muttering.
But the seeds of change were already blossoming on the Tooting commons – all 200 acres of green space of them. There started to be constant rumours of a Waitrose opening soon. An “artisan” bakery squeezed in between the Broadway Hairport hairdressing salon and the chemists, opened and began to thrive. Then in 2013, Time Out magazine dubbed Tooting “the new Shoreditch” – and the floodgates of gentrification opened.
We may still be waiting for the more eclectic start-ups (and, indeed the Waitrose), but there are plenty of beards, Brompton bikes and Birkenstocks to be spotted around the Broadway, sipping single-origin filter coffee roasted in Sweden. A place that once boasted wall-to-wall Chicken Cottages now hosts the Soho Houseowned Chicken Shop (£18 for a rotisserie chook). Grilled banana bread with wattleseed butter (£4.90) is the norm in the clutch of independent coffee shops that have sprung up. Tooting is even hosting its first vegan festival tomorrow.
For those who have been here for a decade, it’s been a radical change to see the local gin still and craft beer pop-ups nestle amid the ever-present Primark and pound shops.
“Take the pub scene,” says Nicola Houghton, one of the organisers of the popular Comedy Lounge night in Tooting – and just back from performing at the Edinburgh Fringe (that’s the sort of thing people in SW17 do now). “Dartboards have been replaced by boards advertising ‘gin of the week’. Where there was once a pool table, now there is a stack of Pilates mats. And old, worn-out pub furniture has been replaced by much older furniture in the name of shabby chic.”
That sounds all very well if you’re a twentysomething hipster, but if the thought of seeing someone skateboarding ironically along the main road fills you with loathing don’t worry, families still love Tooting. It helps that Tatler jumped on the bandwagon last year, naming the local comprehensive Graveney in its coveted best state secondaries list, while at my kids’ primary school, the PTA quiz was won by the 2010 Mastermind champion (I recruited him to my team before anyone else cottoned on).
Up by Tooting Common, if you employ judicious earplugs, the vast expanse of green all around and swan-filled lake could con you into thinking you’re living the rural dream before you jump into the glorious outdoor Tooting Bec Lido, still the largest swimming pool in the UK.
Yet Tooting retains the grit that other gentrified London neighbourhoods have sacrificed – which is partly why Lonely Planet chose it. The long-established curry houses have not been pushed out by the pop-ups. “While the area is undeniably gaining traction among London’s cool-hunters, it has retained its identity,” says Emma Sparks, deputy editor of Lonelyplanet.com and a Tooting resident. “The beauty is it’s a real community.”
Because in many parts of Tooting the affluence is still as cosmetic as the endless redesign of side returns. The number of those with mortgages went down between 2001 and 2011, and for all the headlines about Victorian terraced houses now going for seven figures, one of the most striking sights is the two homeless Somalis who have lived on the bench outside Tooting Library for three years.
Public sector workers still make up a significant amount of the population – St George’s Hospital remains one of the largest employers in the area. St George’s may also account for the popularity of MP Dr Rosena Allin-khan, who was back doing some shifts at the hospital during recess. Despite being in the middle of true-blue Wandsworth, the Labour MP managed to double the number of votes she got for her party in this year’s election. “Tooting is getting the recognition it deserves,” says Dr Allin-khan. “I was lucky to grow up in Tooting and am now raising my young family in this vibrant and diverse part of London.”
Nicola agrees: “There’s a fantastic community spirit that is hard to replicate. I love the mix of cultures and there’s something brilliant about corner shops open to the early hours selling lots of veg I neither recognise nor know the name of, even after 11 years.”
So it may not be the communist utopia that the feckless layabout Wolfie Smith envisaged – at the least it’s the yummy mummies rather than the Marxists that have brought home the revolution. But if you want to be hip, stop saving your air miles for Dubai or Denmark. Invest £3.30 on a Tube trip to Zone 3 instead.
‘It is undeniably gaining traction among London’s cool-hunters’