Can you learn anything playing Pokémon Go?

Can you learn anything playing Pokémon Go?
Alice Bell Updated on by

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The Brixton of years ago suffered economic depression, sparking riots in the 80s from a disproportionately hard up community (and Brixton was a big player in the 2011 riots too). Brixton in 2016 is an up-and-comer. Like Hackney, Camden, Shoreditch before it, Brixton is at peak gentrification, undergoing a kind of cultural cleansing that leaves communities a sea of River Island and Doc Martens punctuated by islands of pop-up food wagons serving 21st century takes on deconstructed burritos. While for the moment there’s still a sizeable African-Caribbean community in Brixton, original residents are being pushed out by rising housing prices and asshole new media types like me who’re moving in while the borough is still just about affordable and before it stops being up-and-coming and becomes came-and-went.

So let’s play Pokémon Go in central Brixton!

My bins

There are a lot of rats around my bins (they can also get up the stairs to the flat but as yet they’ve not made it inside) a) because I live above a takeaway and b) because, I’m forced to assume from the volume of rubbish, the entire rest of Lambeth also dump their trash outside our gate and/or use it as a urinal. Anyway, I hung around my bins for a bit because I thought if I got a photo of one with a rattata in the Go overlay it would be well funny, but it didn’t happen. Sorry.

The Grave of David Bowie

Brixton bowie test

Okay, not the actual grave. The Ziggy Stardust mural, painted by a street artist called Jimmy C in 2013, became a focal point for the outpouring of grief from Bowie fans after his death in January (grief which, by the way, is showing no signs of abating, since the mural is never without some kind of offering, these including: an old Guitar Hero guitar peripheral; a miniature cricket bat and wickets; a sweet red pepper). I often imagine the person who has to make the decision as to when the tributes are collected and chucked in the bin. How soon is too soon to remove flowers laid at the foot of a beloved cultural icon?

The mural is now locally listed, and periodically repainted, so people’s messages accrue, layer upon layer and potentially, one imagines, forever, until the department store the mural appends is destroyed, and the wall is preserved in an atmospherically neutral chamber in a museum.

In Pokémon Go the mural is a gym, controlled by Team Valor at the time this picture was taken. It’s called Bowie Power. This was a surprise to me, as I’d assumed it would be a PokéStop. The gym was already fully staffed, but I caught a pidgey in the corner.

Windrush Square

Pokemon Go Brixton tate

This is a community space in front of Brixton library, and sounds like it could be an actual area in a Pokémon game – one where you’re continually being pushed back by breezes and you can’t get through until you’ve taught a pokémon HM02 Fly, that kind of bulls*** – but it’s actually named after the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought the first group of immigrants from Jamaica in 1948, which is pretty cool. Continuing the David Bowie tour of Brixton, this is where the all night impromptu party happened when the news of his death broke, but it’s usually got a smattering of people skating or drinking – Windrush Square is part of the area where Louis Theroux interviewed alcoholics in his documentary Drinking to Oblivion.

Windrush Square is home to the Black Cultural Archives’ Heritage Centre (the first one in the entire UK). The current main exhibition is about Haile Selassie and the emergence of the Rastafari movement in Britain. It’s actually pretty good for catching Pokémon, because there’s a grassy area plus a high concentration of other PokéStop’s around e.g. the bust of Henry Tate pictured. The Heritage Centre is a PokéStop but, because of the partially random nature of how they’re assigned, so is an old Bovril ghost sign on the building next door.

The Ritzy

Pokemon Go Brixton ritzy

The Ritzy Cinema is owned by Picturehouse, which is a company that people like to think of as all indie and friendly (because their cinemas are all a bit swish and they play loads of wanky arthouse films, and sell artisanal-style snacks) but they’re owned by Cineworld and Ritzy staff had to strike because they weren’t getting the London living wage. You can pay them to use their front sign to do a proposal or happy birthday message, though. That’s nice. The Ritzy is a pokémon gym, and evidently a hotly contested one, because it changed team control three different times while I was stood outside it. I just reached level 5 and I joined Team Valor, which at first seemed like a good move ‘cos they had Brixton locked down to start with – red gyms as far as the eye could see – but Instinct and Mystic gained ground on my walkabout. Bring your A game.

Basically all the pubs

Pokemon Go Brixton pow

Pretty much all the pubs are PokéStops. I’m not sure what demographic specifically Nintendo are trying to entice into bars, but to be fair if you’re a 13 year old child you don’t actually have to step inside the building to check in. Pubs around central Brixton that Pokémon Go highlights include the Prince of Wales, or POW, Dogstar (which is more famous but currently scaffolded) and The Craft Beer Co, which is a pub specialising in micro-brewed and small batch beers. I do not frequent this pub and refuse to post a photo of it. Try walking up to a bar with twenty taps, all labelled things like ‘ZODIAC KILLER’ and ‘WASABI NIGHTMARES’ and ‘ABANDON HOPS ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE’, and going “Can I have a lemonade, please?” Also it only dropped three Pokéballs as I went past, which is frankly rubbish.

The Back of Pop Brixton

Pokemon Go Brixton pop

This one makes little sense. Pop Brixton is another community space, built out of shipping crates, because, you know, reclaiming stuff is good, right next to the Rec Centre and the Lambeth Volunteer Centre. Most of Pop Brixton is small startup kitchens selling bagels/pizza/ramen/cheesecake, which are, to be fair, all f***ing delicious. There is also an ‘urban farm’. I grew up in the country and have been on actual farms; I have ridden in a real combine harvester and seen lambs being born, all that s***. My (albeit cursory) examinations so far suggest ‘urban’ transforms a farm into ‘scattered planters and a small greenhouse’. They even have signs asking people not to pour their beer into, or wee on, the plants. So I wouldn’t necessarily suggest eating the produce. The back of Pop Brixton is a carpark, and a view of what I believe are council house flats. If the PokéStop was inside Pop Brixton you’d be able to get an expensive drink and an education in pissy lettuce, if nothing else.

The public toilets on Pope’s Road

Pokemon Go Brixton toilets

I can’t tell you why exactly these are highlighted by Pokémon Go – it seems to be picking up the pears painted on the side, possibly to do with Pope’s Road being a market street with fruit and veg stalls – but I can tell you they’ve scored 3/5 on The Great British Public Toilet Map. Pope’s Road runs between Station Road and Atlantic Road, home of the Brixton Arches, a bunch of independent businesses underneath the railway arches of the Brixton overground line. They’re imminently to be evicted so Network Rail and Lambeth Council can renovate the area and then charge them triple the rent when they move back in.

I caught another rattata nearby though (the bastards are never around when I actually need them).