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The Review - MUSIC - grooves with CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 14 February 2008

Grooves

SOMETHING strange happened while “Camden Town ain’t burning down” as Amy Winehouse put it.
All the Camden Trendies usually seen hanging out in The Hawley Arms moved on to nearby pubs the Lock Tavern or Quinns and got absolutely legless. Is this schadenfreude at its worst, or just a case of getting drunk as Rome burns?
Stranger still is the rapidity with which the Caernarvon Castle pub – once famed for its live music – has been knocked to the ground. Burnt down on Saturday, demolished on Tuesday.
Many felt it was a sad day when last year one of Camden’s iconic music venues turned into a clothes shop. Just months earlier it had been given a lick of paint, a very unpopular Pete Doherty oversized cardboard cutout, and a ridiculous name change to the Camden Rock Cafe.
It didn’t last – but it proved how horribly wrong people with bright ideas (and a predilection for neon paint) can get it.
It’s a shame the place went up in flames, and it’s a shame it’s been wrecking-balled. But it would be even worse if it was turned into a Hennes or a Gap. And sadder still if the Hawley, which went up in smoke with Amy Winehouse’s Brit award behind the bar, was left to rot, a charred relic of better times.
Don’t let the developers get their hands on more of Camden than they already have!

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