再London's night, October 4th 2014 P62 (ロンドンの深夜活動)
London is becoming a 24 hour city At half past three in the morning, Shoreditch is humming. Party people from Essex mingle with east London hipsters and local youths in hoodies and trainers. Newsagents do a roaring trade in cigarettes and Lucozade. Boozers munch fatty snacks outside kebab shops. Traffic moves so slowly that it barely matters when pedestrians lurch into it. For the global city that it is, London has long lagged behind 24-hour metropolices such as New York and Berlin. Now it is catching up. The shift is partly due to London's changing population, which has been rising since the mid-1980s. Between 2001 and 2011 it grew by 14% overall and by 16% in the inner city. Youngsters, most likely to stay out late, swelled faster still；the number of 15- to 29-year-olds grew the most. In 2013 London attracted 44% more tourists than a decade earlier and the proportion of foreign residents, including those from countries with a tradition of late-night merrymaking, such as Spain, has grown. Until 2003 Britain's strict licensing laws, which date back to the first world war, meant that most drinking dens closed at around 11pm. Today late-night Londoners are increasingly keen to graze, pump iron and get their hair done at all hours - and business are meeting their needs. In 2006 just six McDonald's in London stayed open through the night；today around 40 are open 24/7. At 2am the Duck and Waffle, a fancy restaurant near Liverpool Street station open 24 hours a day, is packed. More diners queue outside. The Gym, a chain, has 21 London fitness centres open around the clock. The Neal Cornelius salon on Bond Street will cut and blow-dry your hair at any time of the day or night. Nightlife is springing up in new places, too. The City of London - the capital's financial district - has just 7,500 residents to its 400,000 workers, an ideal mix for latenight revelling. A decade ago it was dead at night. Today it has 747 licensed premises, more than a third open after midnight. The capital's culture spots also welcome visitors late into the night. Over the last weekend of its run the Tate Modern's Matisse exhibition opened for 36 hours straight. Around midnight on the Saturday it was buzzing；beer flowed and music blared. Dinner was served until 4am. Night owls could nip next door for a “midnight matinee” of Shakespeare's “A Comedy of Errors” at the Globe theatre. Getting around London late at night used to be expensive or time consuming. Nocturnal groundlings can now get home more cheaply and reliably. Between 1999 and 2013 the number of night-bus routes doubled and passengers more than tripled. Since 2000 the numbers riding the Tube after 10pm have risen at about double the rate of those doing so during the day. And from next September five underground lines will run a 24-hous service over the weekend. New Yorkers can wait up to 40 minutes for a train at night；in London they will come every ten minutes. People are labouring later, too. Just over 5m Britons do shift work, according to the Labour Force Survey. A quarter work nights or a combination of days and nights, a proportion that is growing. Transport for London reckons half of all night-bus passengers are travelling to or from work. All this revelling is not without its costs, though. Hackney's booming night-time economy has brought regeneration, but it also brings crime and conflict with sleepy residents. So police are patrolling later. In Hackney a decade ago neighbourhood police teams finished their shifts by 10pm at the latest, says Superintendent Andy Walker. They now work until 2am throughout the week and until 7am on weekends. Late nights for everyone.
