I wasn't just in London to walk around and notice the traffic. I was taking a few days before heading North-West to help with Zuppa Theatre's latest production, a new version of This Is Nowhere set in Morecambe, Lancashire, and called Here Now This. Other people were wrangling actors and musicians and figuring out venues, but I was handling all the software.
While we had done various spinoffs over the years, adapting the technology and re-using components, the original project was 7 years old - and 2018 is a very long time in the world of software. The original This Is Nowhere had also been my first real work done with the React JavaScript framework. The app was long overdue for an overhaul.
I had done some work on this before I left, but as always in software what seemed at first to be a simple update turned out to have lots of unexpected complexities and complications. So instead of catching the latest West End shows or exploring new museums, I instead spent a lot of my London time in my hotel room at my ad-hoc workstation:
(The extra screen is an ASUS ZenScreen portable display which I picked up just for this trip. It fits in my bag right next to my laptop and has quickly become one of my favourite work travel accessories.)
The NowHere projects have many key state changes based on very specific timing and locations, which are difficult to test without actually going out and trying it out with a real schedule in the real world. Not only that, but the Apple App Store Review people were confused about what the app actually did and wanted a video of how it worked in action. So I needed to set up some test locations that were close enough to be easy to get to but far enough apart to be able to track movement and progress.
A friend I had seen while in town is a part-time tour guide, and following up on a discussion we'd been having about Christmas Music he had recently sent me a link to a fellow guide's blog post about Christmas Music connections in Soho (the original article has been replaced with a more recent one). Fascinated, I read through more of their posts and was struck by how much history there was in this one part of London.
While my hotel made a big deal about being in Bloomsbury, it was actually right on the edge of Soho as well. So I made a copy of the HereNowThis project in the content management back-end and reassigned the Morecambe locations to Soho spots mentioned in the blog posts.
Now I had some places to visit – and a good excuse to get to know this famous part of London.
What struck me the most about Soho is how compact it is. Decades if not centuries of significant music and cultural history are crammed into a rectangle that's about 5 blocks by 3 blocks, and not very large blocks at that. Walk a bit and you're passing the jazz club where Amy Winehouse got her start, walk just a bit more and you're passing where Billy Idol and Siouxsie Sioux and the rest of the "Bromley Contingent" invented New Wave. David Bowie, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Lionel Bart, and so many more lived and played in this compact area that I could walk across in about ten minutes.
I was walking around on a grey slightly damp weekday around noon, so it wasn't quite the sparkling demimonde it may have been at other times. I did see a long queue of people waiting I think for a trendy clothing store to open, perhaps to grab a limited-time "drop" – or maybe something else next door that didn't even have a sign.
I wondered if I was making any locals curious as I zigzagged around the neighbourhood, returning to the same locations every half hour or so, frequently looking frustrated and annoyed at my phone. But then I remembered that this is Soho, and some generic middle-aged white guy looking at his phone wasn't going to make much of an impression at all.
One part of Soho I very much enjoyed was Denmark Street, once the heart of pop music publishing and then later a go-to destination for buying guitars and other rock instruments. I've been getting back into playing guitar lately and have been vaguely shopping for a new one for some time, so I had some fun browsing. I thought it would be intimidating to go into, say, Regent Sounds Studio, made famous by the Rolling Stones, but the staff were very friendly.
The shop across the street looked fun, even though it was closed.
I'd been thinking of maybe getting a Stratocaster at some point, and it would be fun to have an instrument as a memento of my time in London, so I took a closer look at what they had in the window:
£10,999 for a 1971! £29,999 for a 1957! £69,999 for a rare 1954 Stratocaster which used to belong to guitar legend Eric Johnson! Even if I could afford these, I think I'd have to be a much better player before feeling worthy of them. I don't want to become a blues lawyer!
Last but not least my research had found a notable pub among the many in Soho: The Coach and Horses. It's famous for its landlords and clientele over the 20th century, but I liked its no-frills decor and bustling crowds. For my few days in London I came to really look forward to coming back from my wanderings and grabbing a seat at the bar and having a pint of cask ale and/or Guinness to wash down some Worcester Sauce-flavoured crisps while doing some prime people-watching.
The first time I tried to return to the Coach and Horses, though, I followed my phone's directions and ended up at a very different looking place. Dark and quiet instead of bright and bustling. I stood confused in the window, wondering if the pub I remembered from the previous day had been all in my imagination, or if there had been some kind of Brigadoon situation. Then I double-checked my map and realized that there were now several pubs in Soho called "The Coach and Horses" doing sort of a real-world version of dark pattern SEO. The real one I remembered was just around the corner.
After a lot of wandering I had gotten to know Soho a bit better, and perhaps more importantly I had also recorded enough footage to make a video to show the App Review people how the app works in the real world:
The server-side tracking even gave me a fun snapshot of where I had gone:
Happy from a successful day (not to mention some pub beers) I went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening watching, of course, "Last Night in Soho":
And yes I recognized some of the locations!