THE KING'S RIBBON

I like maps and you like maps, of course we do, otherwise we wouldn’t be such good friends.  And if you’re a regular reader with a moderately good memory you may recall this pic of me unfurling a map I bought in Tokyo, showing the whole of Japan:

I suppose it’s a kind of ribbon map, but I’m sure the Japanese have a much better word of their own for it.

And here’s an 1866 ribbon map of the Mississippi that appeared on Atlas Obscura recently, from the David Rumsey Map Collection.  It’s eleven feet long and three inches wide, totally pocket-sized, and its title is Ribbon Map of the Father of The Waters.

Now that I’m temporarily living in Chelsea, in London, every time I walk up to the tube station I pass, and in some cases walk over, this map set in the ground near to Duke of York Square:

If there’s any onsite information explaining the map I’ve yet to find it.  It’s near to the Saatchi Gallery so it might be a work of contemporary art, but I can neither confirm or deny that.

However, digging around online I did find this map on the National Archives website.  

Paper and concrete versions aren’t identical, not least in the variant spellings of Majesty’s and road, but they're close.

The paper map dates from 1830, but according to the National Archives  it shows King’s Road (nobody seems to care either way about the apostrophe) as it was in the early 18^thcentury.  Before that, King’s Road, was the road belonging to the King, in this case Charles II, for the use of the royal family, travelling between London and the out of London palaces.  I don't suppose they walked.

1830 was the year it cased to be a private road and became a public highway, but from 1720 or it had been a toll road that the public could use if they paid for the privilege.  So the map is a kind of route finder and a guide to the fare stages.

In vaguely-related matters, a few weeks back I picked up, for a quid, a copy of the Ladybird Book, Understanding Maps.  No mention of ribbon maps, but there is this totally wonderful guide to help you understand gradients:

PHOTOGRAPHS OF FANCY TRICKS

An apparently simple question: when Elvis Costello sings “I don't want to go to Chelsea” - to which Chelsea is he referring?  The one in London SW3, surely.  The appearance of a character called Elsie rather confirms the point.  But I suppose he was smart enough to know there was also a Chelsea in Manhattan, and he may have used that to give the song wider, if more oblique, appeal.

And when he sings, “Oh no it does not move me/Even though I've seen the movie” to which movie is he referring?  You might well think Warhol’s Chelsea Girls, though that doesn’t fit at all with the rest of the lyrics.

Of course all manner of movies had used Chelsea as a location, long before Costello wrote his song; swinging sixties movies, and even A Clockwork Orange  -  the record store scene was shot in the Chelsea Drugstore, a place I’m old enough to have been in. It’s now a McDonald’s, natch.

I’m also old enough to remember walking up and down the King’s Road (the apostrophe comes and goes) looking at the punks.  We were (pace Simon Reynolds) definitely in the post-punk era but a lot of people hadn’t got the memo. The pic below is dated 1980.

I was too late for Westwood and McLaren’s Sex but I was there for World’s End.  We used to go in and laugh at the clothes, and then laugh even harder at the prices.  It’s still there, kind of.

But there were plenty of other reasons to go to Chelsea: the Royal Court Theater, the Chelsea Physic Garden, the Chelsea Potter (a pub), and for Pete’s sake I got married there at Chelsea Town Hall.  And it’s a pretty decent area to walk, mostly flat, and mostly interesting once you get in the side streets.

So this whole “I don’t want to go to Chelsea” thing doesn’t really apply to me, even though I feel like an imposter as I walk around.  Not a real Chelsea guy.  But now I find myself, for the next 6 months or so, residing in Chelsea, subletting a flat that I can’t really afford – as is the way with flats in London.

But at least the universe is sending me messages to make me feel at home here.  Right across the street is a place called Footopia!  

And around the corner there’s a VW Bus with a customized front end.  I assume it moves from time to time, but it hasn’t so far.

And today I was walking to the Waitrose mini-supermarket and I saw a tall, rangy black man coming from the opposite direction, walking with some difficulty, using a stick, and I looked at him sympathetically, and he looked and me and said, “All right, captain?” Nobody has ever called me captain before.

NB - I know there are some who make great claims for Costello's lyrics - worth pointing out that the rhyme Elsie/Chelsea first appeared in Cabaret.  Maybe it was an homage.