Oxford Street the shopping street of shopping streets and every agoraphobic’s nightmare. I once lived with a Sudanese guy who told me that when he was feeling down he would go to Oxford Street to make himself feel better. It’s not so much the buying he said as all that humanity.

The commercial bullshit on the web makes you laugh. On the front page of the oxfordstreet.co.uk website is a family enjoying a nice meal with some wine outside in the sun. Now I’m not saying this photograph isn’t a real family, having a real meal in a real location in Oxford Street. It’s just that it’s not my abiding memory of Oxford Street. And I doubt it is anyone else’s.

I don't know. I just think of Christmas Eve, when Oxford Street is gridlocked both on the pavements and on the street. I’m facing that red wall of buses farting out more pollution than a Chinese factory. And somehow I can only but think, in contrast to my Sudanese housemate, that this is humanity gone wrong.

I've never seen the attraction in Oxford Street for the tourist, its nothing more than a miles worth of dreary British high street. It’s nothing that you couldn’t find on a smaller scale in any other grey British city.

I know I know! I’m not stupid. OK it’s the more than ‘300 shops’ as oxfordstreet.co.uk likes to point out, and it’s the fact that many of them are the ‘flagship’. Wooh! Oxford Street is the high temple of consumerism.

A bit of history

Oxford Street first came to prominence as a shopping street a hundred years ago with the opening of Debenhams and Selfridges. A corporate website on the street says 'amongst the chaos and bustle, retail therapists will find an oasis of calm in the area's unrivalled collection of department stores. That is unrivalled bullshit. There's no calm to be gained from going to Selfridges. It is a hothouse of consumerism, several floors, set out almost like a market, with each floor being divided into designer brand areas, each area with its own staff and music blaring. I remember being on the menswear floor one time. I was trying to locate the exit, but couldn’t seem to find one. The vendors all looked to up themselves for me to feel comfortable asking them for directions out of there. I couldn’t escape! The music was blaring, the imagery, it was all shouting at me, telling me, 'you can be cool with us but otherwise you are a c**t'.

Back to the corporate website, which also says 'Selfridges is the department store of Londoners' but that's shit too. You won’t find many working class people in or at least making purchases in Selfridges. Maybe the children of the working classes will be in there, feeling an immense lack of self-worth as they realise that stealing is their only option of getting their hands on what’s on offer. The kids of the rich can just ask mummy or daddy. That’s the injustice.

Back outside in Oxford Street expect people to push you, bump into you, try and second guess where you’re going to move to. If you’re paranoid, as I am, you’ll be worrying about all the young people, especially the groups of black lads, trying to pinch your wallet or bag or whatever.

Oxford Street is definitely for your common man, in contrast to the pretentious Mayfair bound streets, including Messrs Regent and Bond, which tend to house jewellers and little boutiques where the vendors, stood tall proud and stunning, look you up and down, and scowl at you if you look like your daily spending money comes to less than a grand.

You can get to Oxford Street via Oxford Circus, Marble Arch, Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road tube stations. Most shops are open until seven in the evening and Sundays too.

In the really old days

Between the twelth and eighteenth century Oxford Street was known as Tyburn Road, after the River Tyburn, which ran south of it, and which today runs underground.

The street took its name not for the fact that it heads out towards Oxford, but because in the late eighteenth century the Earl of Oxford purchased a large area of land around Tyburn Road.

Address
Oxford Street, London, W1D 1AN

• Oxfordstreet.co.uk
• Oxford Street on wikipedia.
• The Unaustralian, who captures the real mood of Oxford Street perfectly.

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