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Francis Place, writing in 1835 recalls Whitehall in the late eighteenth century:

"Immediately in front of the Horse Guards were a range of apple stalls, and at ...noon every day two very large stalls were set up for the sale of 'bow-wow' pie. This pie was made of meat, very highly seasoned....it seems almost incredible that such a street could be in the condition described."

Recently in the Evening Standard there have been articles denouncing the location of two mobile (but immobile) hot dog stalls, one outside the Royal Albert Hall; the other (to the chagrin of Lord Snowdon) outside the Royal College of Art.

Sometimes (like those old fussers) I fret at thehot dog stalls, at the fact that in Piccadilly Circus the old London Pavilion theatre should have a life-size effigy of a rock star leaning awkwardly from every balcony; (that special toppling forward stance of the waxwork.) On other days I think Ok: Bow-Wow pie in Whitehall; truss depots in Trafalgar Square, bungee jumping at Battersea, inflatable pods in Horse Guards; so why not a polystyrene effigy of David Bowie coated in pigeon dropping keeling over a balcony in Piccadilly Circus? What the hell; that is what London has always been about.

For London has no pervasive tradition of grandeur; in Paris there is a certain ripple effect, the grandeur of the centre rippling concentrically and of course in increasingly dilute form out into the suburbs. There is in New York; in the presumptions of its ground plans at least there is a certain serial grandeur; in London; yes, there are gestures of grandeur, limited largely to the trajectories of royalty. There is commercial magnificence in the City; but we have never really understood, or even wanted bourgeois grandeur.
London has a breathtaking nonchalance towards what could be its great sites; there is perhaps not much that we should expect of the conjunction of Oxford street and Tottenham Court Road; yet it is, probably the most crowded intersection in the city; this very corner may actually be one of the five most crowded places in the world. And Oxford Street is a significant axis (and will later get some of the attention it deserves); similarly Tottenham Court Road has some dignity, striking north as it does, purposefully from the busiest of junctions. What do we find here? A brief architectural flourish (the Dominion Theatre to the east showing Grease or Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast) and a dullish but decent 1900-ish office building on the other side; then to the west there is the extraordinary ignominy of the corner of Hanway Street, where a sort of plywood pub is followed by the utter bathos of a row of the merest shacks; some 20 computer and porn shops. Clearly of course they were merely fronting a major site and their leases are fast expiring. (Subsequent note: they have just been emptied and razed away within a day. Subsequent subsequent note: the site is now a presentable dull premises for an Internet Shop, a Boots and a Sainsbury's; and of course those dodgy little lean-to shops have become, in recollection, amusingly raffish!)

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