Druid Street market a "Living Hell" exaggeration

Seems to me there's two different things going on here:
* the food market, which is very recent and
* the beer outlets (Anspach & Hobday, The Bottle Shop), which have been trading for a while.

As we all know, people can get a bit loud when they've had a beer, and often a bit sweary too. Also drinkers do tend to hang around for a while, rather than moving on directly after making their purchases, so if you get a few noisy fools then you're most likely stuck with them for an hour or more. And some idiots seem to think it doesn't matter where they leave their glasses/bottles when they've finished with them. So I can understand how folk could be getting fed up with all that, and maybe it's at a level significantly greater than The Marquis of Wellington used to generate when it was trading.

The food market on the other hand seems to be a pretty orderly affair and I'm really having trouble seeing how it could cause any significant nuisance to people living nearby. It would be good if someone who actually lives on the Arnold Estate could explain what the problems are with the food market specifically. (Maybe it's explained in the Southwark News piece - haven't read it, sorry.) Also there are other food businesses (L'Emporio, O'Shea's) which have been trading there for quite a while without - as far as I know - attracting any criticism.

For context, I live around the corner pretty much on top of the much busier Ropewalk. Some of the punters are occasionally a bit annoying but so far (3 years) it's nothing I'd get aerated about.

I think it would be good if someone on the Arnold could give the forum a first-hand account of the difficulties complained of. I do know that the residents are complaining that food waste is being left on the road resulting in rats and vermin, litter and problems emanating from drinkers and noise. I think the two markets have become conflated in residents' minds to "the market". That doesn't lessen the impact though. It must be borne in mind that many residents' windows are a matter of feet away from the action.

It can be supervising how much noise people make, whether drinking or not. The street next to us has both bars and restaurants and they are all equally noisy, as lots of people just make a noise. Drunk people do carry on much later into the night and feel the need to shout a lot, but any congagrarion of people is noisy.

You would all be amazed at the noise in our block if you heard it and I'm sympathetic to anyone who suffers excessive noise from people (along with the rubbish, peeing etc).

Zoe wrote:

It can be supervising how much noise people make, whether drinking or not. The street next to us has both bars and restaurants and they are all equally noisy, as lots of people just make a noise. Drunk people do carry on much later into the night ...

I understand Zoe, but to be fair
- it's weekends only
- none of the businesses being discussed here are open late into the night
- this is central London.

Zoe wrote:

It can be supervising how much noise people make, whether drinking or not. The street next to us has both bars and restaurants and they are all equally noisy, as lots of people just make a noise. Drunk people do carry on much later into the night and feel the need to shout a lot, but any congagrarion of people is noisy.
You would all be amazed at the noise in our block if you heard it and I'm sympathetic to anyone who suffers excessive noise from people (along with the rubbish, peeing etc).

Noise I can kind of live with, I accept I live in Central London. Rubbish as well as peeing on the streets I find unjustifiable. Maybe we could ask for this to be trialled here.

Everything you say is true, but I can't hear my TV over the sound of people in the street, it's that loud (and we live next to a railway line). You need to hear it to believe it. I'm not saying the market is like that, but it's been somewhat amazing to me quite how loud people are and quite how disturbing even a small number are, which is what I think is going on here (I think we need to hold an open house in our block so you can all listen, you will be genuinely amazed, lol).

Actually, the peeing and litter are annoying, but they don't keep you awake or mean you have to constantly have your windows closed. People say it's central London, but the residents next to Hyde Park made the Royal Parks reduce the number of concerts they held, because of the noise, so obviously not all of central London is noisy.

I have to say, I struggle to understand any complaints about the recently opened food market on druid street. The trading hours are 10am to 4pm on Saturdays, so they can't be waking people up or keeping them up at night. If there is excess litter - and I haven't seen any - then the traders should get their house in order.

I used to regularly find the outdoor drinkers smoking weed at The Marquis of Wellington rather irritating, but never saw any complaints. How are the same crowd who tolerated that getting worked up about a few food stalls?

Fusionnow, the position of the Marquis is such that the people affected by noise or antisocial behaviour is few. It isn't the same "crowd" that are affected.

I can confirm that a piece in this week's Time Out says that some residents from the Arnold Estate were supportive of the market on Druid Street.

I drove down Druid Street at 4.10 pm this afternoon. The road was completely full of market "shoppers" - probably approaching 100 in number - and the noise levels were very high, certainly much higher than anything ever witnessed with the Marquis and very close to residents' homes. Many were drinking alcohol. It was necessary to sound the horn to enable sufficient space to be cleared for me to proceed through. The road was full of rubbish, though in fairness somebody was attempting to clear it.