Bob Mazzer is an amateur photographer who’s been taking pictures on the London Underground for the past 40 years and his photos capture the rather grubby state of the Tube before the King’s Cross fire, the smoking ban, and the major upgrading and modernizing of the system that has happened in the past couple of decades.
The Tube these days is bright and polished compared to the old days of dimly-lit trains with wooden floors covered in cigarette butts and old stations where waiting for a train was like being in a dank Victorian dungeon. Not to mention the vending machines that never worked, I lost count of the amount of times I lost money in one of those things trying to buy a bar of chocolate.
Mazzer took most of his pictures late at night when the Tube was full of people on their way to or from an evening out and that’s how I like to remember the London Underground best; not as the stressful, overcrowded system where I had to squeeze like a sardine onto a train to work every day, but a subterranean shuttle to good times where you could also have a party on your way to a party.
Grotty though it was, I loved the Tube back then and some of my happiest memories of London happened on it at night (usually while drunk): going to a party with some mates and drinking Rum and Cokes that we mixed in plastic cups on the train (much more fun than just opening cans of beer), serenading some poor girls on the platform at Kennington with our rendition of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, and having an epic food fight on an empty carriage with takeaway KFC. Few nights out would be complete without also falling asleep on the train and waking up at the end of the line, thankfully I was usually just in time to catch the last train back the other way.
I also had several snogging sessions on the Tube but never on a packed carriage like this. The best thing about this photo is how nobody is paying attention to the necking couple.
Though he doesn’t live in London anymore Mazzer is still taking pics on the Tube and while it might be cleaner, safer, and more modern these days it’s still full of life and character because London is still London no matter how many of its rough edges get smoothed down.
Download: Last Train To Transcentral – The KLF (mp3)
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Hi Lee. Just discovered your blog while I was looking up Pauline Murray….not literally in the pervy kind of way, but, like you, in the wasnt she wonderful and what’s she doing now kind of way. I loved the tube back then too, and it never seemed smokey because it was so normal. I loved going to and from gigs and clubs on the tube and catching the night bus home, picking up a kebab on the Blackstock road in the wee small hours. What a different time that was. I live in the states too now, and you’ve contributed to my homesickness with your great blog. Best. Mat
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Cheers Mat. Always happy to hear from a fellow Pauline Murray lover – and another expat to boot.
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