The lovely things edition
Includes flowers, ice creams and dogs
It maybe won’t surprise you to know that Monday’s ‘Gentrification issue’ was by far the most read edition of London in Bits to date. It’s obviously a subject that a lot of people feel very strongly about (as evidenced by this Reddit thread under the link to the issue).
As a result we’ve set up an interview with one of the people who worked on the ‘Pushed to the Margins’ report and, if all goes well, we’ll be running that next week.
If you’ve got any opinions about the gentrification of London, or if you’ve got questions you’d like us to ask one of the authors, then we’ve opened up the comments on this issue so you can let us know. Be nice!
In the meantime, we thought we’d take a break from some of the more ‘heavy’ stuff we’ve been writing about lately, and instead given you some news that’s designed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Warning: the following content is almost devoid of journalistic value. Don’t judge us.
Lovely flowers
Lewis Miller is a floral designer from New York whose known as ‘the botanical Banksy’ because he likes to create ‘flower flashes’ i.e. pop-up floral displays in unlikely urban settings (like hot dog carts).
As you’ve probably guessed by now, Lewis has been busy in London, decorating the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus (yes, we know it’s not actually Eros, don’t write in!), some phone boxes on Great Windmill Street in Soho (above), and a bin on Dray Walk off Brick Lane.
The displays are pretty impressive, using enough flowers to make Elton John blush (the Piccadilly Circus design alone used over 12,000 blooms from Covent Garden Flower Market), but if you want to go see them in the erm… flesh?… then you’ll have to be quick because “passers-by are encouraged to take flowers from the interactive displays”.
Lovely benches
Benches might not be on top of everyone’s list of go-to ‘lovely things’, but those people probably aren’t aware that the annual City Benches competition is on right now. Part of the London Festival of Architecture (more of which in Saturday’s newsletter), the competition is designed to “showcase emerging creatives” through the medium of the humble bench.
This year all nine winning benches have been created around the theme of ‘care’, so you can go and sit on The Friendly Blob (above) to get a reminder to take care of your mental health, or perch on the Quick Getaway for a bench-sized “holiday-inspired oasis” (no quarantining required).
Or there’s the Monuments to Mingling, which look like some Lego had sex with Aldgate Pump and had a bench baby (and is therefore our favourite). Details of all nine benches, including their locations, are right here.
Lovely dogs
There’s actually quite a bit of dog news around this week. Probably the most high-profile example is Pebble, the Jack Russell puppy belonging to the Tory MP, Danny Kruger. About a year ago Kruger and Pebble (is it just us who thinks they sound like an 80s synth duo?) went for a walk in Richmond Park and managed to cause a stampede of 200 deer. Yesterday Mr Kruger admitted losing control of his 11-month-old puppy and was told to pay a fine and costs totalling £719.
(Someone should have fined Prosecutor Dominic Hockley who had the gall to stand up in a court of law and say this with a straight face: “It’s been said it only takes one pebble to start an avalanche. In this case it only took one Pebble to start a stampede.”)
This past weekend also saw the 150th anniversary of Battersea Dogs Home being in Battersea. Although the charity was set up in Holloway in 1860, it moved Southwest in 1871 and and changed its name from the decidedly less snappy ‘Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs’.
By far the most meaningless but adorable dog-related story of the week is the ‘data’ released by yappy.com (“a personalised shop for dogs, cats and their humans”) that shows “the dog breeds that are most and least likely to be spoiled by their owners according to where they live in the UK”.
According to Yappy.com’s data scientists, “London's most pampered pooch is the Dandie Dinmont Terrier” (that’s one, pictured above). But Yappy haven’t stopped there, they’ve broken down their findings by borough, revealing that the “Cavapoochon comes top of the most pampered pooch list in the City of Westminster,” while “in Kensington and Chelsea, Dachshunds take the lead into the top spot”.
Lovely ice cream
As you’ve undoubtedly already heard, it’s going to be really quite hot this week. So if you need cooling down and a Calippo just isn’t going to cut it, then maybe you can try an ice cream made by “the world’s greatest Chocolatier”.
Pierre Marcolini’s Marylebone High Street store now has a “luxury ice cream pop-up” out front offering a “customised ice cream experience” which involves picking an ice lolly from flavours like Coconut, Dark Chocolate, Mango or Raspberry, and then dipping that in one of their high end chocolate sauces, before adding a crunchy coating of roasted hazelnuts, almonds or pistachios.
At £4.90 they’re pricier (and a bit smaller) than a Fab, but it’s sunny and we’re allowed outside now, so why not?!
And the rest
As we reported last week, TfL is having to find £900m in savings a year to meet the terms of the government’s latest bailout, and it looks like that might mean cutting some Tube and bus services, and maybe even axing jobs and whole departments.
Related: More people are cycling in London than ever before. Data from TfL and Halfords has shown an increase in cycling “of more than 200% on some weekends”. A record numbers of Santander Cycle hires has helped, plus “62% of adults who own a bike in London said they have cycled more over the past 12 months compared to previous years [and] 49% said they felt safer on the roads.”
According to a survey by the serviced office group Orega, “half of London companies are considering shifting their model to a mix of home and office hours, while three-fifths of staff are considering this way of working.” The survey also says that “34% of office workers in the capital want self-service contactless beverage vending machines” (not because they’re lazy you understand, but because it means “fewer people touching the kettles and potentially make some places feel more secure from Covid”).
Clapham Common’s 1950s paddling pool isn’t going to available for paddling this summer. But the good news is, it’s closing so it can get a much-needed upgrade. Lambeth council has confirmed that they’re going to invest £1m to “improve the common and replace the paddling pool with a safe, modern waterplay area.”
The Mayor’s office has produced a short film to promote London’s role as host city for Euro 2020. It must be the fifteenth thing to have the title ‘This is London’ and it can’t hold a candle to Nike’s ‘Nothing Beats a Londoner’ campaign from a few years ago, but at least it has Sadiq doing keepy-uppies:
Or, if you have a Telegraph subscription you can read their ‘Destination Expert’ Chris Moss on how tourism in London is doomed thanks to the city being “short on space, heavingly overpopulated, connected up by an ancient and airless Underground system, expensive and consistently poor value”. His answer? “Break up the British Museum and divide up its wares to be exhibited at a hundred smaller museums across Britain. The same goes for the National Gallery, and the Tate, and the Science Museum, and the V&A”.
Our recent ‘Where Do You Go?’ interviewee, Sam Roberts has just crowned “London's best ghost sign” via his Ghost Signs World Cup. The winner is Peterkin Custard on St John's Hill in Battersea. And here it is in all its custardy, ghostly glory:
And, of course, we meant 'Calippo' and not 'Calypso'. We have already sacked the person responsible for that.
“Warning: the following content is almost devoid of journalistic value. Don’t judge us” 😀
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