25 July 2008

I Reckon That Greenwich Village Will Have to do with One Fewer Queen

About this time last year, there was a lot of talk about establishing a new enclave in New York, an official district like Little Italy or Chinatown. There, in the heart of Greenwich Village, British expats and marketing geniuses alike dreamed of founding Little Britain.

The area, near 12th and Greenwich, does have a few English-inspired and English-owned shops, notably the restaurant Tea and Sympathy, which was head office for the "movement." The Campaign for Little Britain in the Big Apple had rallies, petitions, a video on YouTube starring Tango spokesman Ray Gardner, endorsements by Joss Stone and Kate Winslet ... The whole affair gave loads of nice publicity to Tea and Sympathy, the shops in district, and the sponsor, Virgin Atlantic. The activists's motto is, "What's Another Queen in Greenwich Village?" Good on them.

I went to check on the movement's official website, and now they have a strange message scrolling across the homepage, "Breaking News: New York Shuts Down Little Britain." Yet, when one rolls over the message, it mearly leads one to a pdf file of "7 Reasons Why Greenwich Avenue Needs Little Britain." Mysterious.

If anyone knows what's happening with this effort, please let us know here at Phonybrit. If I learn anything from separate inquiries, I will do a follow up.

2 comments:

Mmm said...

How very curious. I would love to go there, if and when that happens.

Mmm said...

If you go to the below page, you can read their reasons for the decline. I suspect the campaign links to the reasons to remind people why Ny would benefit from such a neighbourhood officialised.

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_221/britsretreatplannew.html

BTW, I'm going to get more people to sign that petition by hopefully getting a few on my Anglophile readers to take a gander. I'm glad you bought this to our attention.