Two types of people drive big cars in Upper Clapton, north east London: drug dealers and Hasidic Jews.While the former tend to have large, raised, black Chryslers and Cayennes, the latter can usually be found revving and clunking around the streets of north London in patched and pitted motor-whales with names like Space Wagon, Espace and Space Cruiser. Space, it would seem, is the final frontier in Jewish transport.
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North east London, you see, is not a community; it is a marble run of parallel communities, sliding alongside each other apparently unseen or, at least, unregarded. Gangs of local kids guard the turf around London Fields, while young professionals from the Home Counties play ping pong and picnic 200 metres away. West African evangelist churches gather in industrial estates, while Polish families shop at the cash and carry next door. Turkish grocers play pool in social clubs, while illegal Vietnamese immigrants sell pirated DVDs beside their vegetable racks. But of all the satellite communities orbiting around the E5 and N16 postcodes, possibly the most remote, the most insular – but most readily identifiable – are the Hasidic Jews. And their juggernaut cars.
Almost every tall, rounded, space-hogging car in Clapton is driven by a man in a white shirt, smart black coat and kippah, with ringlets and sensible black shoes. White stockings are, it seems, optional. But why do the Hasidic dads of north London love these unfashionable, unfeasible motors? Is it their inconspicuous antiquity? Is it their laughable acceleration uphill? Is it the fact that you could fit all the members of Funkadelic inside and still have room in the boot for snacks?Talking of boots, just what do Hasids keep in the back of their car? What music do they listen to on long journeys? Did they pay more for a specific colour of car? What’s in the glove box? Once these questions enter your mind, they’ll itch like a cheap wig under a polyester headscarf.
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Which is why I decided to clamber awkwardly and publically over those invisible, sliding social barriers to do that most uncommon and unrecommended thing: ask.
The row of shops on which I conducted most of my conversations gave an interesting impression of Hasid priorities; there is a balloon shop, a wine merchant, a bakers, a shoe shop selling footwear so sensible that you might mistake it for car parts, a Hasid taxi firm, a toy shop and a grocers. Taken as a whole, they point towards a life of quiet domesticity, but also apparently frequent celebration.“Of course you would wonder that,” says the owner of a dark blue Mitsubishi when I ask why I see so many Jewish men driving people carriers in Clapton. “But, the answer is simple; we have big cars because we have big families.” Of course.We all have excuses for why we don’t talk to our neighbours, and the misled belief that the Hasid community of north London is inherently unfriendly, secretive, protective and even aggressive is a common one. It is also, of course, entirely unjustified. Of all the men I approached, the majority were happy to talk – albeit briefly – and those who weren’t apologised politely, usually blaming a lack of time or the need to be somewhere else. I’m not sure I would be so polite if a stranger stopped me in the street to ask why so many short-haired women in their twenties ride drop-handled bikes.The man in the Mitsubishi – a born and bred Highbury resident – was, like my father, a builder. But whereas my father conducted his business out of a hideous white Fiesta, full of rotting apple cores, tobacco packets, sawdust and loose tools, this car was bare, but for a child’s seat in the back.
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Another man, a locksmith, explained that he needed a large car to run his business and transport the tools of his trade. As he opened the boot, I was met with a collection of boxes as neat and pleasingly-stacked as a Le Corbusier drawing. Of course, he wouldn’t let me photograph them, but more out of professional security than a squeamishness about being captured on camera. When I asked him what his car said about him, he chuckled, looked me full in the face and drawled, “It says that I can’t afford a better car.”Perhaps, however, the greatest response came from a man driving a frankly obscene lilac behemoth called a Hyundai Trajet. “A car is a hidden palace,” he explained. And just what does this king of the road listen to while he’s sitting in his hidden palace? “I listen to a lot of audiobooks with my children.” Does he, as my family did, spend hours battling against the physical agony of traffic boredom by listening to Matilda? Or George’s Marvellous Medicine? “Yes, we do listen to Roald Dahl stories. But mainly a lot of Jewish stuff.” Makes sense, I suppose.On a side street, I see one Hasidic man shuffling between a large red brick 1930s house and the passenger seat of his standard-issue, navy blue, puckered Renault Espace. He’s carrying a blue mannequin head in one hand and a fistful of wigs in the other. Both doors are, sadly, closed by the time I catch up to him.
As I wander back through the quiet, sunny streets of Clapton, stepping between Honda Shuttles, mountainous Subarus, dun-coloured Space Wagons and enough Toyota Space Cruisers to cross the Red Sea, I see middle-aged Jewish men wearing headsets, shuttling children home from school, tuning the radio, failing to indicate, eating sandwiches, crunching their gears and smoking out of the driver’s window. Acting, in short, like every other frustrated, encapsulated London driver on these clogged and narrow roads.
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