Wood Green

Wood Green is where north London does its shopping while the postcodes up the hill do their brunch. The High Road runs the full length of a Piccadilly line stop, shopfront after shopfront from one tube station to the next, and the planners call it a metropolitan centre with a straight face. Even the local railway station dropped the name in 1982 and took the palace's instead. The people who buy here spend years telling friends it's lovely two streets back from the High Road, and the annoying part is that they're right.