There are a lot of problems in Hackney. But there’s a hell of a lot of joy to share, too. Atlantique - Large Geo Print Hobo by ALVIERO MARTINI 1A CLASSE

Geo Atlantique - Large Geo Print Hobo by ALVIERO MARTINI 1A CLASSE:

t has its critics and its cynics, its looters and its bicycle thieves. It has fixed-wheel hipsters with daft tattoos, and NCT mummies colonising overpriced cafés with their free-range children. It has some of the worst inequality in the country and a frightening number of people in long-term unemployment. And still, on a sun-kissed afternoon, Hackney feels like the best place in London.

This Saturday just gone, when the Olympic torch passed through the borough, you could have mistaken it for an urban utopia. Around noon, my wife and I went for a walk up through Clissold Park in Stoke Newington, trying to see the old neighbourhood through the eyes of an Olympic tourist. There was a lot an outsider would have smiled at, we decided.

Clissold Park, like Victoria Park to the east, has just had a handsome makeover. It has been a focal point for the area since Victorian times. Now it has algae-free ponds, a butterfly dome, beautiful deer, a skate park and a fancy café (which dropped its prices after a concerted campaign).

Many people share this space and, pretty often, they interact — it just takes a stray Frisbee, or one of those free-range children freewheeling into your leg. Once, I started kicking a football around with a friend, and before long we had involved half the park in a huge game: Turkish teenagers, Australian students, loping rude boys, a handful of schoolkids.

On Saturday, we simply admired the new adventure playground, and then turned into Church Street, where we heard the One Hackney festival making its way towards us. Shopkeepers, drinkers, people you recognised from the bus-stop lined the road, bobbing up and down to the sound of carnival drums.

Church Street, where Daniel Defoe, Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Wollstonecraft once paraded, has been in transition recently. After Nando’s became the first chain restaurant to arrive a few years ago, many feared its independent character would soon be lost. Sainsbury’s now has designs on the bottom corner, despite bitter opposition.

Still, just when you think it has been gentrified into uselessness, it surprises you. The most recent arrival is a shop selling Rastafarian equipment. Church Street is still home to a vacuum cleaner repair shop and an Irish Women’s Centre. Down on the High Street, the slightly up-itself café Lemon Monkey recently vacated its premises — in its place came a scuzzier pop-up that has proved far more popular. A couple of weeks ago, a menacing post-rock band was playing an incredibly loud free gig there at 6pm. Children were dancing as if it were Justin Bieber. I got talking to a musician who had just moved to the area. “I f**king love it here,” he remarked.

We felt something similar as the drums became louder. We paused to watch every conceivable community demonstrate Hackney’s particular kind of civic pride. An African drumming troupe vied with a brass band; then came a samba troop, Tamil dancers, Vietnamese pensioners, even a float full of pasty hipsters. One old hippie woman held up a sign saying “Hackney: The Creative Heart of London”. Everyone who saw it cheered. And when the street sweepers brought up the rear, everyone cheered again.

When you’ve lived here a while, you begin to look on this multitude like family. You are allowed to roll your eyes at the latest Dalston micro-trend, complain about house prices, fret about the riots. However, when an outsider does so, you become defensive. You can never pin it down so easily.

Later that afternoon, we took a bus to Hackney Town Hall, where our friends were getting married. To get to the department of births, marriages and deaths inside, we all had to work our way around a steel band playing Hey Ya! on the steps. The crowds were still there when we emerged an hour later, and they hooted and hollered for the new bride and groom.