My little sis has gone and moved to London.  She landed yesterday on the initial 3-week “getting-to-know-you” period (during which, she hopefully finds a flat).  As Frants and I followed some initial observations of hers this morning, it got us to chatting about our old neighborhood.  As I tried to discover the name of our old supermarket, I used Google Street View — and ended up walking around our old haunts to see what they are like today.  So, here’s a look at our Tooting neighborhood, complete with some photos from our time there.

The Tube Stop at Home.  Good ol’ Tooting Broadway.  Jewel of the Northern Line.

The Tube Stop at School.  (Fun Fact: This Burger King across the street is where I had to wash my hair out after a pigeon crapped on my head.)

Our Flat.  This one is difficult to pinpoint, because the places have gotten a coat of paint and some renovations in the past 12 years. Frants found it, I was too far up the street, forgot we were closer to the corner.  Used to look like this.  It was a good little home, complete with a spacious guest bedroom.

This is J.J. Moon’s.  Our favorite pub, where we’d get two meals (Fish & Chips, Bangers & Mash, etc.) for 5p, and a pint of Theakston’s Best Bitter for .99p, which can’t be beat for international students living on the cheap.  Seth/Soren/Duck/I took advantage of this quite often.

This is The Castle.  Our nemesis.  Ideally, this would have been another pub we enjoyed — it was old, big, spacious.  But on our first night in town, they treated us like jerks.  So we didn’t go back.  (Although, according to legend, whenever I returned from a night of drinking — and the tube ride made me queasy — I always happened to get sick in the same spot… on the front door of the Castle.  Jerks.)

Lick’n Chick’n/Londis.  On the left is our favorite chip shop.  Nothing finished off a nice night at the pubs like getting off the tube, turning around the corner and picking up a BIG BAG of chips to devour at home.  On the right is a convenience store (very 7-11ish) that might have gone by a different name when we lived there.  I remember it fondly as a quick stop for magazines or candy or — more importantly — a can of beer to take with us on the tube as we went into town to meet friends (yay for permissible public drinking).

Broadway Market/Iceland.  Broadway Market was a crazy indoor marketplace where they had random shops/stands.  I found an awesome Laurel Aitken CD in there, so I loved it.  Iceland was the local supermarket where we’d stock up on chicken patties, crisps and digestives.

Mini-Mart/Off-License.  If I recall correctly, this is where we’d pick up most of our beer and wine for nights at home.  Our favorite wine was Haro — not only because it was named after our Ithacan pal, but because it was 2 pounds.  For beer, it was often Broonale — or, for ambitious evenings, Faxe Bryghorhryyy.  (Fun fact: this is where I first said “cheers” instead of thank you.)

**Not pictured, because they didn’t do a street view of that section: The crazy Jamaican barbershop, the weird meat pie/fish shop that smelled awful, the burger place near J.J. Moons (it wasn’t Fatburger, but something like that — Duck, you remember?), Mothercare.