Notting Hill Carnival, Notting Hill, London

If you’ve ever wondered what the sights and sounds of a New Orleans mardi gras would be like, you needn’t travel much further than the Notting Hill carnival for an insight.
Wonderful, boistrous, colourful with all manner of fabulous costumes, music and food - it’s everything a great party needs to be!
A definite must for all the family, guaranteed to entertain

Yes it’s crazy, yes it’s loud, yes it’s crowded and yes you have to go! Throngs of people line the streets like you have never before seen! Be prepared to spend a while stuck in crowds - keep your mobile phones handy in case you get split up from your friends! Music, costume, atmosphere, food, fun! That’s the carnival spirit in a nutshell. There are cafes and stalls available at the side streets which give you a welcome break from being on your feet all day (you will need this!) Check out the food on offer at the carnival - fantastic Caribbean fare and other unusual foods. Even if you go just once, you have to experience the bonanza that is the Notting Hill Carnival!

Fulled with beautiful costumes, spectacular music and wonderful food, Notting Hill Carnival is the place to go if you like to have fun. There’s a great vibe and you won’t forget it. However it’s packed with tourists so if you don’t like crowds you definitley should give this a miss.

A great day out and the food is always amazing, especially the sugar cane! The music is good and is worth seeing just for the experience. Avoid if you hate crowds as it seems to get more packed with each year and sometimes it’s hard to see what is going on when the crowds are too big. The best carnival in Europe!

The best day out in London. Better than NYE. Consistently captures the essence of London year after year. I first went to Carnival 10 years ago and was blown away by the atmosphere. So many people going crazy partying in the streets - it blew me away.

Contrary to popular opinion, the better day is the Sun, not the Mon. Everyone goes on Mon because they think Sun is for the kids, as it’s called “Children’s Day”. Mon, therefore, is much more crowded and that’s the day there’s generally more trouble. And on Sun, the sounds systems, like Sancho Panza play classic old school house attracting a more mature crowd. It is the perfect way to celebrate the end of the English summer.

Regardless of which day you go, the Carnival is a guaranteed fantastic day out - especially if the London weather cooperates. The keys to a successful day are knowing where to go, timing you entry and exit and sticking to a good area. So, it helps to have some inside knowledge. Otherwise use the map in the Time Out, which outlines all the sound systems location, type of music, etc.

When many years ago I would laze around in front of the TV, complaining to everyone that there was never anything to do – The Notting Hill Carnival was probably that something that I was dreaming of. (Picture a nerdy kid on a couch sighing and looking into the ether as a little thought bubble pops up filled with skimpily dressed dancing girls and massive dub blasting sound systems.)
This was my third free North London Summer festival this year, and it was the second year in a row I’d been to the Notting Hill Carnival. For me these events are the best part of the summer and demonstrate the very best qualities of Londoners. I can understand though if, for instance, you lived in the area, hated loud music, were intimidated by drunk people and felt trapped by the crowds, then this might well be the worst part of the summer and an example of everything wrong with life in the capital.
I arrived there on the Monday at about 3 pm at Kensal Rise Station. The train was full of Carnival goers, almost all of whom had got on in Dalstan. (I have a theory that as Notting Hill has gentrified and the Caribbean communities have moved east, this carnival is increasingly a Hackney/Brixton festival that is staged in Notting Hill – might be a controversial idea)
Leaving the train we were greeted by some thumping dance music, the smells and smoke of jerk chicken and no less than 40 police and transport workers. Dogs sniffed everyone and seemed to find everyone of interest. Which meant long body and bag searches. Now I’m not complaining about this though. I continue to be really impressed with the way that London police operate, and particularly at big events which is where I tend to get closer to them. I LIKE the idea that people are searched for weapons. And I think their attitude to drugs is really practical. It seems that large quantities or the higher class drugs will get you in trouble, but they unofficially aren’t bothered about small amounts of pot. The policeman searching a lad in front of me said to a colleague “I found a spliff on this one – what should I do?”
“Take it off him and tell him he’s lucky”
I love this attitude. Actually most of all I love the policeman calling it a “spliff”. Really getting into the spirit of the thing!
The crowds got denser as we approached the carnival area proper, although we were always able to walk at a reasonable pace. We were stopped for a few minutes when we ran into the main procession. The floats were amazing! So much work went into them. Along with the costumes and the dancers and the music. Just brilliant! I hadn’t watched the parade last year but this year we walked for an hour or more against the flow of the floats, drinking wine and taking photos. I sensed no agro at all in the crowd as Japanese and German and all other flavour of tourist posed for photos with the dancers, danced themselves and just soaked it in.
Last year we’d used a map to get around and this year I was a bit disorientated. My favourite part of the carnival is the soundsystems and I was a bit confused as to where they were. We had to double back along the path of the parade to find them and this took quite a while. Along the way police had blocked off different roads to manage numbers and we had that sense of being inescapably stuck in a really large crowd that moved very slowly.
We found the spot we wanted and spent three hours of so dancing and meeting people and generally mixing it with a flowing group of revellers in front of some very large speakers.
Around 7 the music stopped and the thousands of people all wandered off to the transport points or their after parties. I didn’t witness any trouble at all on the way out. We bought some chicken and sat on the canal for an hour or so till the worst of the crowds cleared and then caught a not ridiculously full train back home.
Going on my standard device for measuring crowds at festivals (the queue for the toilets) I thought there were less people this year than last; might have been the sunny weather last year that brought everyone out.
Whilst buying a kebab yesterday I read in one of the tabloids that there had been around 600 or so arrests or incidents at the carnival but that there was not a single stabbing or shooting or other major horrible drama. I think that’s a cause for a huge celebration. All we hear about in the media is how dangerous London is , about how terrible are the gangs and the stabbings and the drugs. But here we have the biggest street party in Europe, filled with all those young people we are told to be scarred of, and there is almost no crime.

Fro people in my age group or younger feared to go carnival as most gangs of youths went to fight or rob buti went never the less with a group of my mates and we enjoyed it the police calmed and volience before it erupted and where kindly stoppin and searching everyone they thought were suspicious which showed they where alert however they also got involed posing for photographs, dancing and that gave it a community feel as everyone was dancing and getting along

I usually go carnival every two years and I feel this year there was much more people to what I am used to and about 15% were police.

The floats were great as usual especially choicefm and rampage. This years carnival has to be one of my favourite because the one and only Kano acknowledge me and waved to me from the choicefm float which was my highlight of the carnival. Then he performed for a hot second which felt like ages, cause it was that good.

Then at rampage which is always over crowded, is actually my favourite part of carnival because its like a massive street rave. This year Lloyd performed which was ok if you like his music, Busy signal also performed which was great but the crowd got a little hype but i didnt mind cause I was in my own world anyway trying to create some space to dance. Also Sway performed.

Trying to leave carnival is the worst part of carnival. Hundreds and Hundreds of people moving in the same direction at different paces, some high and some drunk is very frustrating.

Update on May 29, 2008: I just started a German group about the NHC Qyper meeting we are trying to organize.

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Original report (January 18, 2008):

For quite a while, I used to live in Cologne – which is one of Germany’s carnival capitals – but never really warmed up to the strange rituals performed by this city’s party people between November 11 and the day before Ash Wednesday each year. (More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_Carnival.)

Two years ago, I finally encountered the kind of street party I can enjoy: the Notting Hill Carnival. I had wanted to visit it since I got into black music (funk, soul, hip hop, reggae, dancehall, soca, gospel, blues etc.). In 2006, I found a cheap flight to London which, as I found out months after I had bought the ticket, just happened to take me to town during carnival weekend.

And I became hooked instantly: 40 sound systems, hundreds of food stalls (many of them selling jerk chicken, my favourite Caribbean dish), up to 2 million people having fun (with very few altercations). What more can you want?

Since that magic August weekend, it’s one of my major goals in life to return to Notting Hill Carnival as often and as long as I can. :-)

For those who feel the same way, I started a Qype group dedicated to that event:
www.qype.co.uk/groups/384-Notting-Hill-Carnival

Maybe we can use the group to organize an international Qyper meeting around carnival time …

Went a couple of years ago having not been since a child. The crowds were so dense we saw only the tops of heads in the parade. It got really silly after a while and we got pushed and threatened. We tried to leave and moved along at a snails pace..lost half our friends and at one point I got incredibly scared..I was lifted off the ground by the crowd and was being carried along. I managed to stay with the last friend visible by hanging on to his backpack as I was carried along.
Never again!

I have experienced the carnival twice now and each time it has been a good experience, full of live entertainment and interesting music and food. A great day for all.

As I have lived in this area for 10 years now, I have lived through many wonderful carnival experiences. not only is it the biggest carnival in europe (i think im right in saying that?) its also the most fun. i love the cultural togetherness that it brings. you will meet all sorts of people on the streets, dancing, drinking, eating and generally having a good time. however, i think recently the origins of the notting hill carnival have been lost slightly, and it seems to be getting worse and worse. crime is an increasing problem, people seem to use it as an excuse for getting too drunk and causing trouble. not only that, but prices have soared, even street stalls selling traditional jamaican food have upped their prices to the point of absurdity. i do love it, and stay true to it as a local, but im just not sure that its all going in the right direction. i think in the following years it definitely won’t be as good as it used to be.

The Carnival began several decades ago as a celebration by West Indies immigrants in the UK. It continues to be a huge street party (between 1 and 2 million visitors over two days), and it was a lot of fun watching the parade, eating roast chicken, and listening to the DJ soundsystems scattered through the otherwise posh neighbourhood.

The crowds are insane, but the parade is a real spectacle. It’s entertaining to see all the mobile soundsystems and the fabulous costumes roll by (so long as you can see). Everyone should go at least once.

I enjoy walking through the streets just off the parade route, to hear some good dub tunes or locate some tasty jerk chicken. It’s a full-on party vibe for dozens of blocks in every direction.

The first day is “family day”, and not as mad as the second (family day was mad enough for me, thanks!).