As you thread your way through its clangourous streets, in and out of arcades crammed with yellow-haired girls in micro-skirts and boys in hip-hop clothing doing their best to impersonate 50 Cent (or 50 Yen at least), as you negotiate narrow lanes thick with McDonald’s outlets and Laura Ashley shops, more Kentucky Fried Chickens than you ever see in London or New York, and those things that are not Californian often mock-Californian, you may reasonably wonder why you’ve left your home in Islington, perhaps, to come to a poor copy of Islington, but with signs you can’t read.