What the world has learned recently is that old stuff is cool. Modernity arrived around 1988, the beginning of our current age of digital technology. Life now, technologically-speaking, has to be described as not bad at all.
Back then we had the compact disc, the Atari 2600 console, word processors, MS DOS, fax machines, pagers, the artificial soaked-whiteness of the cover of Michael Jackson's Bad LP, bleached and chiselled like no other pop star: the surgery technologies simply weren't available before. Synthesisers, bass guitars with cut-off ends, ecstasy tablets, Concorde planes signifying the height of luxury, the rise of the McDonalds brand, the death throes of an era of creative advertising where depictions of unashamed capitalist consumerism still went unquestioned by a bedazzled public.
The 80s were about imagining a futuristic progression. Now that we have progressed, with our iPads, mobiles and apps, we want more than anything to look to a pre-modern past. We spend ages on modern devices looking at things from the past. Futuristic progress has allowed us greater access to the past's images; millions of things we never saw in the analogue world. Instagram even allows us to emulate pre-digital photography.
Buildings and landscapes fascinate history geeks like me–crumbling beauty, faded glamour, archaism, opulent postcolonial ambassadors' residences, quiet residential streets with Spanishstyle wooden houses, French-style squares with fountains, vintage Japanese and British cars, Volkswagens, dry rivers, enormous flood drains, centuries- old trees, dry sports fields, hallowed Oval turf with hotchpotch stands cobbled together, Lara's house nestled in the trees, the Savannah stage comforting and focal like an emblem of what developing nations cherish, an outdoor venue of revelry, an icon of freedom, a place to foster collective national identity and facilitate social memory.
The crumbling old public library, the already wonderfully dated grotesque Hall of Justice (is there a rule that all judicial buildings must look Orwellianly oppressive?), Lord Harris Square, the giant silos of the National Flour Mills, Lapeyrouse Cemetery, the hills of Fort George, the houses, churches and rum shops of Belmont. Our Lady of Fatima perched on top of the delicate hillside sprawl of Laventille hills.
Port-of-Spain, in this vintage-loving age, ought to be seen as one of the coolest cities in the world. Not least because of the beautiful people of all types walking down its streets like peacocks. It probably would be if people weren't getting killed all the time.
Vice News' undercover video reportage by Danny Gold caught on camera glimpses of neighbourhoods which 95 per cent of the population will never see. The content of the piece, not a great advert for the country, was surreal, bleak and for most of us unplaceable. Gold was given access by dint of his TV crew, police protection and because he was from outside.
Interviewed by Samantha John, he said crime and killing in East PoS happens daily and unchecked behind doors the rest of us prefer to keep locked.
Hal Greaves shuffled through the ghetto with Gold uttering words like "diseased kidney...cancerous... dying." In the hollowed-out shells of HDC housing blocks, the hopelessness of dereliction was evident. Gold talked of how friendly Trinidad was and how safe he felt, unlike in South Africa and Colombia, where he also filmed gangs.
The gang activity that takes place is openly talked about yet virtually invisible to 99 per cent of the population. It's confusing trying to understand what's really going on. And the murder rate is in the top ten in the world.
The dereliction of London carries less anarchy and more sadness–all over Battersea in south London, some hope and some despair. On the Derelict London Web site the creator has photographed and sourced images of thousands of sites that were once public buildings, places of recreation or transport all now disused, some boarded up, some now demolished, some simply rotting. Former lidos, swimming pools, pubs, cinemas, theatres, "ghost" tube stations, hospitals, cemeteries.
But nobody lives there amongst the dereliction. Along Queen's Park West more buildings lie derelict. The crumpled facade of Mille Fleurs looks like a squat party took place there 20 years ago and nobody ever bothered to clean up. Roomor looks abandoned, haunted. The moral question, one supposes, is do we spend millions doing up these beautiful architectural gems or do we spend millions fixing the ghetto (materially and socially)? Right now it's no dilemma at all for those in power. They are doing neither when they should be doing both.