Go east to find London's heart

It's Sunday and it seems that half of London is on Brick Lane. The street is crammed with people: plenty of hip young things with sculptural haircuts and tight jeans but also little children clasping their parents' hands, tourists, everyone in between. A man in long robes, his wrinkled face framed by a neat greyish beard and a pristine white skullcap, walks slowly through the crowd, silently displaying the iridescent peacock plumes he is selling. People sit on the edge of the pavement, eating takeaway purchased from the stalls selling a veritable multicultural banquet inside the nearby Sunday UpMarket.

Workers from the Indian restaurants that famously line this street are also competing for their slice of the Sunday trade, advertising their special prices and dubious awards to passers-by, hoping to stand out in a saturated market. I've heard that rising rents are forcing some of them out, new businesses taking their place as Brick Lane - multicultural, creative, dynamic - is transformed once again, a microcosm of modern London.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my stepmother a year or two ago. "It's all east these days," she told me, talking about London and where its pulse lies - she's a Londoner through and through so she ought to know. Which is not to say the rest of the city is lacking in excitement - one of its primary attractions has always been its village atmosphere, incongruous in a city of eight million-plus; the way different areas have their distinctive tones and individual attractions. But it's no secret the East End is now its creative hub, just as the streets of Notting Hill around the Portobello Market were in the 1990s or as Chelsea was in the 60s.

The jostling of the crowd interrupts my thoughts as we move reluctantly to the sides of the street, making way for a car - its driver foolhardy or perhaps just stupid; who drives down Brick Lane on the weekend? - slowly pushing its way through the mass of people.

A man the spitting image of Jimi Hendrix, his face surrounded by a cloud of dark hair, is producing a clatter of psychedelic blues from his electric guitar, a little amplifier mounted on a pram and a drum kit so small it looks like a toy. His name is Lewis Floyd Henry and he's successful enough to have toured Australia in the last few years, yet he's here playing for a pocketful of coins.

Further on, the street is lined with people selling fruit and vegetables, cow hides and Mexican wrestling masks, bikes and old cameras, craft and any old stuff from the back of their cupboards. An ageing Jamaican man dances unselfconsciously beside a jerk chicken stall. He waves two sticks of incense to the music, the fragrant smoke mingling with the spicy smell of the meat cooking over an open flame. Nearby, unwanted clothes and shoes are spread out on sheets on the ground, their owners smoking cigarettes and chatting as they wait to make a sale.

We pass the Brick Lane Beigel Shop - a reminder of a previous layer of this street's history, of a time when this area was robustly Jewish in character - and reach the end of the street. Wandering up Shoreditch High Street, it is quieter but still bustling with weekend trade. After stopping for a coffee at The Old Shoreditch Station, a cafe in part of a disused former train station, we head back down towards Boxpark, a series of pop-up shops in shipping containers.

On our way, we stop to browse in a shop called Labour and Wait, which sells - in its own words - "timeless, functional, well designed, high quality products, at a time when most retailers are tending towards cheap, disposable low quality items". This translates to old-fashioned Stanley flasks, minimalist linen tea towels, improbably lovely hammers and secateurs and staplers, and just about everything imaginable in enamel: plates, pie dishes, cups, soap holders, lamp shades, pots and pans, even a candle-holder.

It's all rather beautiful in that quasi-retro, utilitarian way that is currently fashionable, particularly in Britain where the various royal celebrations of the past few years have brought nostalgic British style back into vogue. It seems to sum up at least some of what the East End of today does best: capturing the past in a thoroughly up-to-the-minute way. It's also evidence - if more was needed - that this area is now thoroughly gentrified: when a shop can thrive selling designer staplers for £45 ($85), particularly when they can be had for £1.60 at the Tesco supermarket round the corner, you know the neighbourhood has gone upmarket.

The following weekend, we venture further east, to Hackney's Broadway Market, sandwiched between the green calm of London Fields, a big park, and the bobbing houseboats moored in Regents Canal.

The site of a busy food market since the 1890s, the market was dwindling by the early 2000s. In 2004 a new market was established on Saturdays, drawing in new traders and visitors.

This also fed into the ongoing discussion about gentrification which is relevant across much of the East End as the area becomes more desirable and thus more expensive, pushing rents out of reach for many long-time residents. Nevertheless, Broadway has become one of London's most successful local markets - no small feat in a city positively packet with them.

It has even spawned a kind of mini-Broadway called Netil Market, a smaller, quainter version just around the corner in a bunting-bedecked schoolyard.

There are about 100 stallholders at Broadway, selling vintage clothing and handmade children's outfits, a broad range of excellent food, from Indian and Persian takeaways to smoked salmon and cheese and homemade cured sausages.

There are crafts and prints and books, Ghanaian hot salt beef and bakeries offering every sort of baked good imaginable. Interesting shops line the street, along with some good places to eat, including the esteemed Market Cafe.

A few glimpses of the East End of old, as well: a greengrocer stall run by a man named John who has been selling fruit and vegetables at Broadway Market for 50 years; F. Cooke's traditional pie and mash shop, established in 1862, which advertises stewed eels on the menu.

It's an appealing mix, multicultural and vibrant, always changing, bringing together the traditional and trendy, a community feel with creativity and an appreciation of the past. And these days, that's what the East End does best.