The good news issue
Including dogs, flowers, drag queens and cocktails
We’ll be honest with you, this issue was supposed to be about the price of a London pint. But once we started looking into the effects of inflation, Brexit, fuel prices, and Covid… Well, we just couldn’t face it.
Maybe it’s because over the last few weeks we’ve talked a lot about things like mental health, personal safety, gentrification, displacement and pollution, (and that’s before we even get to the shitshow that is the Met), that we felt like we needed a bit of a break.
So, instead we’ve collected some stories from the past few days that are a bit more ‘upbeat’. Just a few things to remind us that London can be a fun, fair and exciting place to be (hopefully without tipping over into MyLondon-esque inanity).
(If you really want to know why you might be paying £7 for a pint soon, you can read all about that here.)
Two ‘Fixing Factories’ are coming to London so you don’t have to buy new stuff all the time
The Restart Project is a “people-powered social enterprise that aims to fix our relationship with electronics”. Essentially that means they teach people how to repair broken things instead of throwing them away and buying new ones. The good news is that they just got some Lottery funding to open two ‘Fixing Factories’ in London.
Their Camden space will allow people to get their broken products fixed on a ‘donate as you feel’ model; and in Brent they’re creating a laptop Fixing Factory inside Abbey Road recycling centre where “local volunteer and professional repairers will repurpose computers for local school children out of adapted shipping containers”.
There’s a LEGO London Underground kit coming and it looks amazing
LEGO Ideas is the platform where people submit proposals for new LEGO sets and vote for their favourites. If your idea gets 10,000 votes then LEGO might put it into production. As you’ve probably worked out by now from looking at the picture, the latest set to get backing is ‘Mini City Diorama: London with Underground Station’ by John Harvey.
Just look at this thing. The seagull. The mouse (or is it a rat?). The roundel. The cut away Tube carriage. The hipster barista. Take our money LEGO!
February is LGBT+ History month
There is A LOT going on for LGBT+ History Month (the full calendar is here),but some of the highlights happening in London include:
Pride of the Royal Opera House Tours, which are happening every Saturday and explore “queer themes, productions, and the rich contributions to the music and theatre made by the LGBTQ+ icons who have helped shape the Royal Opera House”.
The infamous Disney Snatch Game, which is coming back to the Two Brewers on Valentines Day for a “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious evening of hilarious impersonations and fairytale fabulousness!” that will include “special guest appearances from London’s finest Drag performers”.
Proud at the King’s Head Theatre, Bren Gosling’s play about a gay man who relocates from Brixton to E17, where he “unexpectedly falls for Amir, a much younger refugee with a war-torn past.”
The ‘Mapping Queer Lambeth’ event at which Camp Books will be launching their project to chart “Lambeth’s rich LGBTQIA+ history through the physical buildings, spaces and spots across the borough.”
This guy sells sandwiches out of a phone box and they look pretty good
Italian composer Gabriele Contenta opened up his ‘restaurant’ Pinkadella in a Hampstead Village phone box last month. By all accounts the self-proclaimed “smallest focaccia shop in the world” is going down a storm. He’s even had a bit of international press.
London has four out of five of the best cocktail bars in the country
Just in time for the end of dry January comes the list of the Top 50 Cocktail Bars in the country as voted by a panel of “leading businesses, influencers, and drinks writers”.
London didn’t take the top spot (that went to Cardiff’s Lab 22), but it did take places two through five, with Swift Soho at number two, The Connaught Bar in third place, Shoreditch’s Tayér + Elementary in fourth (the highest new entry), and the marvellously-named Satan’s Whiskers in Bethnal Green sneaking in at number five.
In fact, London bars make up nearly half the list, so it might be a good idea to bookmark this page and come back to it when you’re after some inebriation inspiration.
A bit of Costa Rica has landed in Kew
Summer might feel like a long way away right now, but if you want to immerse yourself in a tropical paradise for a bit then you need to head to Kew Gardens.
Their annual orchid festival started last week and maybe they sensed that we all need a bit of those Costa Rican vibes in our lives right now, because they have really gone for it this year.
As well as the “stunning horticultural displays” you might expect there’s “vibrant installations of monkeys, sea turtles and the native quetzal bird” and every weekend there’s performances of traditional Costa Rican folk dance.
This dog got thrown into a canal in a bin bag, but he survived and now he’s been adopted
Not much more we need to say about this is there?
News bits
After the Home Office revealed last week that there are 25,000 asylum seekers and 12,000 Afghan refugees in UK hotels, the BBC spoke to one of those refugees who has been in the Hilton London Metropole on Edgware Road since last August.
Boris Johnson’s £1.7bn scheme for Chinese investors to “transform east London docks into the capital’s third financial district” looks to be on the brink of collapse after a “final termination notice” was served to the developer because of delays.
The Met is facing a legal challenge over its Gangs Violence Matrix, the database they use to “identify and risk assess” gang members. Apparently the database is made up of 79% black people, despite the fact that black youths only account for “27% of those convicted of offences related to serious youth violence”.
An update on last Wednesday’s issue: It looks like Richard Caring is no longer interested in buying Corbin & King, the restaurant group that owns The Wolseley.
The design for the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion was revealed a few days ago. Called ‘Black Chapel’ it’s a “10.7m-tall wooden structure with an open oculus in its roof” that will provide a “sanctuary-like environment for reflection and communion”.
The Times (paywall alert) has met some of the second generation “Russians in Londongrad” who are are buying “large swathes of London for themselves”.
We thought the mail in South London was getting delayed because of Covid, but last week posties in Clapham had to abandon their rounds after they accidentally ate hash brownies:
