Weekend roundup for 10 June
Featuring fudgy eggs, aggressive crows and massive chairs
In this weeks roundup we’ve got news of another beloved Soho institution that’s under threat of closure, some rare butterflies, an aggressive bird, a few cooling towers and some really nasty theatre reviews.
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News bits
🚢 A plan to install a giant ‘asylum seeker barge’ next to London City Airport has gone down like a cup of cold sick, not just with the mayor, but also the Royal Docks management authority, Newham Council and the airport itself. So far, the Home Office has declined to comment on the plan.
🚇 The big transport headline of the week is that the number of trips made on the Underground is back to 90% of what it was pre-pandemic. New data from TfL has shown that, in April, 91 million Tube journeys were made, compared with 101 million for the same month in 2019.
💰 As the number of trips goes up, so does the amount of pockets picked. New data from British Transport Police has shown that there were 7,899 thefts on the Underground network last year, more than twice the number in 2021. The worst line for getting your stuff lifted is the Central Line.
💺 London has a new Transport Commissioner and it is, surprise surprise, Andy Lord who has been the interim Transport Commissioner for the past eight months. On taking the job, Lord said that his key focus “will be on securing the long-term government funding that we need to continue our vital work” (he also got a 11.3% pay bump, going from £355,000 per year to £395,000).
🌉 The fate of Hammersmith Bridge seems to be no closer to being resolved as the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council firmly chucked the buck back to the mayor and City Hall this week. At a council meeting on Monday, Stephen Cowan said: “I think it will be up to the Mayor of London to decide what will happen to the bridge, ultimately, because it is a London issue rather than a Hammersmith and Fulham issue.” Using this logic, the next person to have a say might well be God.
🏗 Back in 2021, developers Landlease submitted plans to build an 18-storey office block at Elephant Park in Elephant & Castle. After more than 450 objections from the public, Southwark council rejected the proposals saying the building would be “out of character” and would have a negative impact on resident’s privacy and light. Undeterred, Landlease are trying again and there’s a public inquiry in September to decide what happens next. The residents group is now fundraising so they can be a part of that inquiry and not “just stand on the side-lines while Lendlease uses big money to overturn a local decision, taken by the councillors we elected.”
🏊 If you want to go swimming in Middle Dock in Canary Wharf, you can now do that seven days a week (as long as you have a NOWCA membership). There’s even a changing hut, and we’re assured that “the water at Canary Wharf is regularly tested and reaches high levels of cleanliness as required by EU Bathing Standards”…
💩 … Which is good, because, as the Times reminded us at the start of the week, while today’s Thames is much cleaner than it used be, it “still suffered from more than a thousand spills of raw sewage last year, along with other pollution.” The good news is that Thames Water, Anglian Water and Southern Water have all “promised” the Port of London Authority “that they will work faster than planned to curb the amount of sewage spilled from storm overflows and do more to strip out pollutants in effluent from sewage treatment works.”
🚽 On a related note: New Scientist has been down the ‘super sewer’ to see how the tunnelling is coming along (there’s some impressive shots of this vast engineering project, but we can’t help thinking that the real hero will be the journalist who goes down there once it’s operational).
🦋 The rare black-veined white butterfly has been spotted “flying in fields and hedgerows in south-east London”. The species officially became extinct in Britain in 1925, but has recently reappeared in “hawthorn and blackthorn trees on the edge of London”. The charity, Butterfly Conservation told the BBC that someone has probably released them and this is not, unfortunately, “a spontaneous recovery of an extinct species”.
🚈 TfL has launched a new safety campaign with “bold type and a Pop Art feel”. The ‘take extra care after drinking alcohol’ poster that moves, did actually make us feel a bit queasy.
🏨 There’s a new hotel which has just opened off Tottenham Court Road, which is completely underground and has no windows in any of the rooms. The hotel is, of course, spinning this as a feature not a bug, billing itself as a place “designed to prioritise sleep, positive health, and overall wellbeing.”
🐦⬛ The Camden New Journal reports this week on the crow in Gospel Oak that’s “attacking people with long hair”. Here’s footage of one of the ‘attacks’.
🔊 Drum & Bass On The Bike returned to London last Sunday. You can watch the full recording of the two hour ride below (they hit Oxford Street around the hour mark), and there’s a good interview with DJ Dom Whiting here.
Food and drink bits
😢 The ‘London institution at risk of closing’ this week is the beloved New Evaristo Club on Greek Street (better known to everyone as Trisha’s Bar). This time though, it’s not money that’s the problem, it’s the council. On Thursday, Trisha’s said via Instagram that “Westminster Council have told us they want to ‘review’ our licence. They are asking to close us down and we need your support.” You can see the council’s ‘application for review’ here (pdf), it talks about “several complaints” raised by someone living in St Anne’s Court, which is a whole three streets away from Greek Street! It also mentions “overcrowding.. and failure to properly maintain members’ and guests’ books”. You can leave a comment in support of the bar remaining open here (as we write this, the link in Trisha’s IG bio isn’t working).
🛍 Back in the summer of 2021, we interviewed the founders of Little Places for our Where Do you Go? Q&A. Since then, the “platform for discovering independent places and brands in London” has grown way beyond its humble lockdown origins and this week they announced that, later this month, they’re going to be launching Little Places Market, where you’ll be “able to shop a curated selection of products from coffee beans and wines to handmade soaps and candles from some incredible local makers.”
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