Where the tourists don't look

I could have taken any number of pictures of idiosyncratic geography like this along Cowley Road, the aorta of East Oxford. It’s a world away from the guide-book buildings that most people come to Oxford to see, but I always encourage visitors to come here. 

Some of it is dilapidated; a fair bit of the street art is pretty tired; the clogged traffic, with bicycles weaving in and out or undertaking on the pavement, irritates everyone. But it’s the lively stamping ground of people from all over the world and it changes all the time. The Syrians are our most recent arrivals and behind me to the left is a fairly new Syrian restaurant where a vegetarian Indian restaurant used to be. The Lebanese Kitchen here used to be a Kurdish restaurant called Euphrates. I don’t remember what the Polish shop used to be but there’s a plaque in Arabic on the first-floor wall.
 
Just up the road an African women’s sewing group creates exuberant clothes on the top floor of the community centre. Then you get to the Asian Cultural Centre in a deconsecrated church and the huge copper-domed mosque.
 
Signs of poverty – betting shops, charity shops, grim launderettes and a place known locally as 'The Dodgy Deli' (I'll leave you to guess) – are still here but since I first worked in this street it has changed a lot socially. Then it was a mixture of claimants and indigenous bohemians producing art or working for charities. Now the wood-yard has been turned into gated student accommodation, the centre for homeless youngsters has become a Costa coffee shop, Subway and Sainsbury’s have moved in and the July Carnival, which started as a regeneration project, is in its 17th year and has a life all of its own. The wobbly seats in the independent cinema have become plush and comfortable and opposite it are an upmarket coffee shop and a sushi restaurant. The Zodiac, an independent music venue, was taken over by Carling (so became known as the Cardiac) and then by O2. But Refresh, a social enterprise café run by ex-addicts, is still here.
 
As I cycled down Cowley Road this evening I got a cheery wave from someone who sleeps in a car in a scrapyard. He was close to the bench where a few years ago I came off my bike and landed at the feet of a group of homeless drinkers (who couldn’t have been kinder and more concerned about me). A bit further down the road I passed the place where you can relax in a flotation tank, then undo all the good work in the Kazbar. It’s fabulous. It’s the beginning of the end.

Do come and visit before Waitrose arrives.