After 36 years serving newspapers, sweets and cigarettes to the many thousands of passengers decanting in and out of Brixton Tube station each day, Pritesh Patel is finally learning the names of some of his customers. But they’ll only be his customers until Friday.
Following an Instagram post by food critic Jay Rayner last week — in which Rayner lamented the closure of the news stand that Pritesh and his brother Piyush bought from Finlays in 1990 — there’s been a steady trickle of well-wishers coming to bid their goodbyes. It’s been tinged with an outpouring of sadness — and a hint of anger too.
“From when we started in our peak to the mid 1990s, we sold 200, 250 Guardians, 200 Times, 200 Suns.” Pritesh tells me, “We’d have stacks in the morning.”
Speaking to me as he gives someone directions to Waterloo, serves someone else a chilled bottle of fizzy water, and tops up a third person’s Oyster card (yes, people still do that, although the commission for Pritesh is a measly 2%), the newsagent explains that while business is nothing like the heady heyday of the 1990s, that’s not the reason he’s shutting up shop.
“The trade is still here. Not as big a living as we used to, but we’re till making a living.”
The problem, as documented by Rayner and others, is that the landlord, TfL, has decided it wants to enlarge the shop (something which Pritesh had been game for) and — here’s the sucker punch — vertiginously increase how much it’d cost to remain in situ. “It’s double the rent,” he says, “So for us it wasn’t viable.
“The rent is £85k,” adds Pritesh. “I wish them luck.”. He looks like he means it.
The end of the Patels’ tenure marks the near-extinction of this kind of establishment on the London Underground network: “As a serve-over-the-counter magazine or newspaper kiosk, I don’t think you’ll find another one,” says Pritesh.
But this was always more than somewhere to buy Skittles and Private Eyes. Over the years, the Patels’ stall became all things to all people: Directions with a smile. A trustworthy valet. A walk-by therapist who also happened to stock Mars bars and vapes.
“We have people dropping their wallets off, keys to the house and stuff, saying ‘oh my son’s going to pick this up'”, says Pritesh. “And we don’t know them, but they just know that they feel safe to leave it with us, because it’s the same face every day.
“I have so many conversations with so many customers — everything. Politics. Anything. Just talk rubbish. If someone’s in a really bad mood, and just wants to let it out, they say ‘oh shit, this happened’ or ‘this is pissing me off.’ And the same with me. If I’ve had a bad day I tell everyone! It’s a good release.
“It’s so wonderful. They don’t even know my name. But I know their history, they know my history. You’ve had someone to chat to. You’ve told them what you maybe can’t tell anyone else. And it just stays here.” What’s uttered at the news stand stays at the news stand.
It’s perhaps no surprise given how much this humble corner of the ticket hall entrance has given to London’s Underground passengers over the years, that now — while Pritesh is used to dishing out the news — he’s very much the news himself. These glum tidings about the closure have spread far and wide too — not just in distance, but years. “I’ve had people come over from north London who went away 20 years ago and say ‘I remember you as a child,” says Pritesh.
“But it’s embarrassing, some of my customers I’ve known for 20 years. I know how many kids they have. I know everything. They know everything about me, my kids, my grandkids. But I’ve never asked them their name.” In the past week or so, that’s been changing.
I leave Pritesh as a regular sidles up to invite him to an exhibition of her photographs, going on display in a local cafe. He says he’ll be there. She hasn’t yet heard that he’s leaving, and is shocked to learn it. The London Underground isn’t exactly famed for its quality human interaction, and on Friday it loses a rare piece of that. But now people are finally learning Pritesh’s name, it’s one they’re sure to remember.
All images by Londonist.
