I have a suggestion for the Works Dep’t responsible for Abbey Road in St. John’s Wood. To understand this suggestion, you’ll need to see my barefoot walk over the famous Zebra crossing in November 2000. Not very impressive, eh?
Countless people have tried to recreate the Beatles’ crossing of Abbey Road in the last 30 or so years. Bear in mind that when the Beatles made their crossing, they had the traffic held up for them and, most importantly, the photographer was perched on a stepladder in the middle of the road. Not only had I not brought my stepladder with me on the plane from Canada, but I had to rely on the kindness of a stranger in my Beatles Walking Tour to take the picture.
Thus, even though I might have been willing myself to run into difficulties with the local constabulary in order to get a better shot, I couldn’t guarantee that this stranger would willingly risk his life for the cause of providing this website with a more authentic-looking photograph.
Instead, the stranger had to make his way to a rather small and distant island in the not-near-enough-by intersection. That, combined with his unfamiliarity with my autofocus, led to the poor result you have seen.
So, here’s my suggestion to the St. John’s Wood Works Dep’t or whomever it may concern:
Darren had the pleasure of touring the VW AutoStadt in Wolfsburg, Germany in the spring of 2001. Among many of the examples of historic VW’s on display was the VW Beetle on the cover of the Beatles Abbey Road album.
Since the locals who drive Abbey Road each day must surely by now be used to the crazy tourists constantly trotting back and forth over the famous stripes, barefoot, in white suits, black suits or jeans. And since this would include, for instance, North Americans who, not only don’t know how to use a Zebra crossing properly, don’t even know how to pronounce it. And since this is the most famous crosswalk in the world and these people aren’t going to go away even if the neighbourhood wants them to, couldn’t a small island with a raised platform be installed where the stepladder once stood? Sure, the tourists will be zipping back and forth across the road to get to it, but they do that anyway with the other unhelpfully located island. Just a thought.
And maybe while we’re at it, we could ask the museum in Wolfsburg, Germany to put the most famous white VW Beetle back in place.
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