Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
71
buildings and check everyone who goes in or out, succeeding in making the chance passer-by
feel like an outsider.
I recall the feeling of solitude that I felt when I used to pass through this part of the
street, as I was not on Lower Long Street for work reasons, apart of course from being there
to ‘observe it’. On the mornings I spent on Lower Long Street I would witness everyday life
run its course: the labourers with their yellow helmets who formed an orderly queue to collect
their wages; the managers and white-collar workers, the Cape Times under their arms and
briefcases in hand, already engaged in discussions as they headed for their offices; the liveried
hotel porters who bowed their heads mechanically to acknowledge a guest’s arrival. The glass
doors on the ground floors of the offices, which opened at the swipe of a card, seemed to me
harmonious cogs in some vast output-driven machine.
When Lower Long Street is empty, it is a scene of desolation; the voices that brought it
to life during the day are replaced by a silence which is interrupted only by the mechanical
sound of the traffic lights telling pedestrians they may cross or should stop, and by the
occasional shouts of the tramps and vagrants who live in this area. This scene and these
sounds made me think of the ‘death’ of a giant who breathed his last every day at sunset only
to re-awaken the next morning. The workers who spent their days on Lower Long Street had
left the street and were on their way home. In those hours, Upper Long Street started to fill
with people who would spend their evenings there. Similar to a cinematic dissolve, when the
lower part of the street dies, the upper part starts to come to life. From Strand Street it is
already possible to see the twinkling of the lighted signs of the restaurants and bars and to
hear in the distance the music mixed with the voices of the people who are starting to crowd
the street.
Passing along Upper Long Street, the immediate sensation one has is of being
welcomed. Unlike Lower Long Street, everything on Upper Long Street seems to be designed
to attract the passer-by and the visitor. Many bars have tables on the sidewalk and sitting
there, observing and interacting with the people on the street, you feel you are an integral part
of it
.
Every evening, but particularly at the weekend, this part of the street becomes invaded
by people who come from the different areas of the city and from other parts of the world.
There are students who come from Rondebosch and Observatory and arrive by taxi or private
car.
There are young people from the townships (former black residential areas) who have
come to Long Street by minibus and will not return home before the next morning, when the
first public transport leaves for Langa, Khayelithsa or Nyanga. Some wear pins and symbols,
which extol the A.N.C. and give a clear indication of their ideological stance. Many of them
are poor, often unemployed, and others have menial jobs. The tourists who stay in Long
Street’s bed & breakfasts usually move around in groups, discussing how to spend the
evening under its porticos.
Upper Long Street is also somewhere you can find a job; many taxi drivers have found
work on Long Street. Often, they come from other African countries. Lying in wait outside
the busiest bars and clubs, Long Street’s taxi drivers study their customers and, over time, can
develop into ‘spontaneous anthropologists’, adept at spotting potential regular customers at
