so shit they don’t belong in the Premiership, but they’ve had a well-respected mob called the Subway Crew for years. We had it with them in the cup last week, there were loads of blades everywhere and we were throwing bottles and bricks over the fat blue line (aka the Old Bill). Traditionally, Wolves are some of the worst dressers in the country. I had to go to court up there once, and me and my mates were approached by some oik who asked us if we were solicitors—as if they’d never seen a defendant dressed in a suit. Actually, that reminds me of one my favourite jokes: What do you call a scouser in a suit? The defendant. What do you call a scouser in a three-bedroom house? A burglar.
NORWICH CITY
The Tractor Boys have never had a proper firm, but I have had the honour of being run by their mob. Me and four mates drove up there and I had to get back early for a do. As we left the ground, about five or six nippers started mouthing off on the other side of the road. We just give ’em the “fuck off” mugs, but one ran over and kicked a mate up the arse, so we chased them up the hill, where about 50 of their mates swarmed us. There was a quick turnaround as I watched my mates in the distance. I stopped up against a wall and they came in round me so we could all discuss the merits of the 4-4-2 system. I explained as there were only four of us, we weren’t “football” or a firm, and this confused the bumpkins. Hooligan law states that you can’t lay into anybody else if they’re not up for it, so we got away.
SUITING UP, CRUSTING DOWN
YUPPIES VS PUNKS FOR A WORKING WEEK
Published June 2009
Recently London was tousled by a series of riots led by outraged anarchists who were probably just really bored. As usual, it looked like a good time. But it also made us wonder who really has the superior lifestyle: hand-to-mouth agitators or the city-boy capitalists they abhor? So we assigned one staff writer to pose as a punk and another as a plutocrat to investigate. Here’s what happened.
CITY-BOY DIARY
BY BRUNO BAILEY, PHOTOS BY JAMIE LEE CURTI S TAETE AND JUSTIN MULCAHY
MONDAY
I usually walk to work, but my new suede brogues (£150 from Men’s Traditional Shoes in Camberwell) aren’t meant for the trudging peasantry. The nearest appropriate transportation was the Underground. It was jam-packed with hundreds of stressed-out, grumpy city workers and the waft of coffee mixed with expensive colognes and rancid morning farts made me want to vomit.
Looking around at my fellow travellers I suddenly realised my beard was déclassé. When I arrived at my destination, Liverpool Street Station, the heartland of London’s bankers, I booked myself in for a wet shave.
At lunchtime I went to All Bar One, an appropriately soulless chain of gastropubs that serves sausage and mash for £10 a go and pints for £3.50. I overheard one of the suited fellows next to me refer to the waitress as a “right spastic cunt”, which was a lovely way to start my meal. Eventually I sauntered back to the office but, being disinclined to work, I went home early and puffed a cigar in the garden. So far, being a city boy was simply wonderful.
CITY-BOY CRITERIA
1 Drink champagne and brandy and smoke cigars every night
2 Dress like Charlie Sheen in Wall Street
3 Travel by tube or black cab—no walking allowed
4 Eat only sushi, dim sum, or food from gastropubs
5 Frequent central London strip clubs
6 Read the entire Financial Times every day—even the bits that look like binary code
7 Pretend to be stinking rich at all times
TUESDAY
My face was still sore from the shave. Sure, I’d taken the piss a bit with my productivity on Monday, but today I was determined to work at the computer for a few hours. My duties consisted of cruising various social-networking sites before an early lunch.
Canary Wharf is the towering hub of British and European finance. Feeling important, I headed over to have an overpriced club sandwich (£9) al fresco, right at the foot of One Canada Square, the epicentre of this glorious monument to success.
The gorgeous stench of billions of pounds wafted around me as I sat picking bacon fat from my teeth and smoking Montecristo Number Four cigars. A fellow capitalist grimaced at me for blowing fine Cuban tobacco smoke onto his eggs Benedict. I thought I was doing him a favour.
To satisfy the hunger for culture that comes with being a master of the universe, I booked a ticket to the Royal Opera House to see Wagner’s Lohengrin. I sipped on a few brandies at a nearby pub before puffing another cigar on the steps of the opera house.
My ticket came with a glass of champagne that I slurped down in the foyer. As I looked for my seat, I realised that I had booked a standing-room ticket to a production that lasted nearly five hours. This was clearly a touch of idiocy left over from my poorer days. After fidgeting for three torturous hours and being frowned at by the elderly couple in front of me, I left on the verge of tears. Pretending to be filthy rich was beginning to wear on me.
WEDNESDAY
Somehow I had neglected to secure appropriate lodging. After surveying my humble residence, I decided my windfall of make-believe success allowed for a viewing of an obscenely expensive apartment near Canary Wharf. I felt a bit guilty about leading the estate agent on, so I lied and said I was waiting for my fiancée (who worked in a renowned Spanish art gallery) to accept my marriage proposal before I could really consider buying the place. Shaking my low-class scruples was proving more difficult than I’d thought—and it was getting embarrassing. I left in shame with some paperwork.
But soon a reliable source informed me that after a hard day of wiping their bottoms with £50 notes atop platinum-plated shitters, many city boys retire to vast, vapid bars on the edges of the Square Mile, London’s old financial hub, to watch sport. So off I went to watch football at the Barracuda Bar on Houndsditch.
As I strolled purposefully, some bike couriers near Aldgate looked at me like I was off to sell shares of a company that makes tainted baby food to rich, trusting widows. And I soon learned that the Barracuda is a South African bar. By halftime it was too much to bear.
THURSDAY
Today I realised that since I’ve been dressing up like a fop, I haven’t taken the time to enjoy music—not on my iPod, not at work, not even at home. I hadn’t even noticed. My theory is that this suit is sapping my ability to feel joy.
By early afternoon I needed a good meal, and being a modern man of means I opted for the exotic and worldly delicacy
