Travel Book Company
First things first. The bookshop in the movie isn’t really the one tourists keep photographing themselves in front of and there is no “Travel Book Company” on Portobello Road. The shop on which that was based is the “Travel Bookshop” round the corner at 13-15 Blenheim Crescent. The space where they built store for the movie is at 142 Portobello Road, now occupied by a Chinesish furniture and knick knacks store called Gong.
And now back to the plot.
Portobello Road
Probably one of the most famous streets in London and despite all the hype surrounding a certain movie (oh OK it was Notting Hill starring Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts and Rhys Ifans and yes, thank you fror the house price dividend) and the two decades’ worth of gentrification, Portobello Road has managed to maintain an air of unselfconscious shabbiness.
You would think by now that by now only the richest corporations could afford to open up here and it has its fair share of places you’d have to be nuts to buy furniture in, but there are still plenty that have been there for decades and plenty that have hand painted signs.
Amazingly such independent record stores as Intoxica (which formerly rejoiced under the dubious name of Vinyl Solution) and Saints Tattoist, the tattiest tattoo parlour (pardon my aliteration) in town still co-exist alongside Starbucks and Coffee Republic, more of which later.
My favourite halal butcher
One shop that has closed is what I used to call “My favourite halal butcher”. This may surprise regular readers on two counts (three including the claim that I have regular readers). Firstly, if you read any of my pub or restaurant reviews you’ll know that I rely on my wife much of the time because I’m a vegetarian. Secondly I’ve given no indication that if I did eat meat it would need to be halal.
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August 13th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Well…. I do know that Notting Hill is not to much Posh… as Chelsea but It was only a joke… because to me it seemed to be posh… maybe in Spain they could understand me… But Im sure there are lots of interesting pubs in Notting Hill and I am really sure that NottingHill has an spectacular Carnival.
We keep on touch in our Blogs.
Thank you!!!
August 13th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Actually at the heart of my post to your blog was a sneaking admiration that you could write about Notting Hill in English and just assume that Spanish people would understand not only the words, but the irony.
I mean even if I spoke Spanish, how much do I know about which areas of, say, Madrid or Barcelona are posh?!
Full of admiration
A/
October 16th, 2008 at 9:30 am
I was just there on Tuesday! There was a older man with round glasses who was standing across the street from The Travel Company. He was telling everyone (including me) that this store was not the one from “Notting Hill” the movie. Now I know what he meant! I think he’s made it his personal mission to educate all the tourists because he was still there when we left the area two hours later.
Wonderful website! I am going to visit your kitchen remodel blog as well.
September 6th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Hello again, thank you for saying what has been on my mind lately, one thing you missed out on was the films latent racism.
The film spent all year on Portobello yet we did not see any black faces. Indeed, did the scene where Julia and Hugh get “hot hot hot” at the Carnival end up on the cutting room floor? Hmmm, questions must be asked!
(For those who may be wondering, it is a no). And they didn’t even pass Black Arab or Asian faces in the street.
About the painted street signs…
As an ‘Honourable member of the signwrighters guild’ (or is that ‘Member of the Honourable guild of…?) and someone who has painted signs on Portobello I can only agree. Just look at Westbourne Groves Antique section, some of those beautiful signs are around 100 years old, while plastic signs have a deteriorating 30 year life span at most.
P.S. Oh, I’ve just used up the rump of my two next ‘articles’.
Hope you are well.
September 6th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Hi Luke,
Yes that has been noted around here. Should have mentioned it. I particularly like this quote from the movie’s Wikipedia entry:
‘[Richard] Curtis chose the setting of Notting Hill for the film as he lived there and knew the area well, stating “Notting Hill is a melting pot and the perfect place to set a film”.’
As you say, the fact that it’s a melting pot doesn’t appear to have influenced the movie one iota.
March 30th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
the travel company is now a shoes shop. I was there in last week and I was so sad because that.