Weekend roundup for 13 November
Includes Christmas ducks, noodle sandwiches and basil tunnels
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News bits
🚇 The RMT has joined ASLEF in threatening Tube strikes in the run up to Christmas. While the ASLEF dispute is over potential changes to pension and working conditions, the RMT strike centres around the Night Tube and what the union call “intolerable demands on staff ahead of the reopening of the service”. The relationship between the RMT and the Night Tube has never been an easy one (it was what caused the launch of the service to be delayed back in 2015), and this new strike threat has been bubbling under ever since the return of the Night Tube was announced last month. If it goes ahead then there’ll be 24-hour strikes on the Central, Jubilee, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines from 4.30am on 26 November and 18 December. Plus, further strikes are planned on the Central and Victoria lines every Friday and Saturday night between those dates.
🚕 The Tube strike news comes in the same week that Uber announced it was going to increase its rates in London by 10% “in an attempt to lure drivers back”. They’re also introducing a 15% surcharge which “would also apply at peak times for rides to Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton”. The FT reported on Thursday that Uber’s chief exec, Dara Khosrowshahi, flew into London this week in order “to tackle the company’s driver crisis, as it faces a shortage of 20,000 drivers ahead of the peak Christmas season.”
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🌷 The Tulip. The Ear Bud. The Butt Plug… Whatever you want to call it, you’re not going to see it on London’s skyline anytime soon. After Sadiq threw out the proposal for the building two years ago, the Tulip made an unexpected comeback last month, when it was suggested Michael Gove might give it the green light after all. Now it’s been thrown out again, with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities calling it a “muddle of architectural ideas” and a spokesperson for the mayor saying Sadiq’s view of it was that it’s “little more than a concrete lift shaft with a viewing gallery at the top.”
📿 If you’ve been reading LiB for a while then you’ll know we’re a little bit fascinated by 60 Sloane Avenue, the “luxurious office building” in Chelsea that’s currently owned by the Vatican. In April we told you that the Vatican was looking to offload the “toxic asset” because of the “mistakes or fraudulent acts” that were made during the acquisition of the building. Well, this week the FT reported that the Vatican “is in the final stages of selling 60 Sloane Avenue, for about £200m”, which means they’ve managed to make a loss of £100m on the place… £100m that was originally raised “in donations intended for the needy”.
⚖️ Something else we’ve been following for a while is the fallout from the hundreds of allegations of prejudicial behaviour at the Barbican that were detailed by staff in the Barbican Stories publication. This week, an external review into the organisation identified “a lack of diversity in the organisation, an absence of confidence in HR systems and in the handling of complaints and in managers to deal with or take seriously concerns of racism”. It also saw “preferential treatment being given to white members of staff, job applicants, and those who have had, or are perceived to have had, a private education”. The Barbican has responded by committing to “a radical transformation of culture and behaviours, including setting new workforce diversity recruitment targets on ethnicity, gender, and other protected characteristics” as well as “compulsory anti-discrimination training” for all staff.
🦈 The Zoological Society of London has released its State of the Thames Report and the headlines have all been about “venomous sharks” and seahorses, which are living in the river. Which is frustrating, because you won’t find the word ‘shark’ written once in the 90 page report (there is one mention of a seahorse though). We know organisations like the ZSL have to work hard to get their research in the press, but stuff like this only serves to distract from the actual headlines, which were all about nitrate levels rising thanks to “industrial and sewage effluent”, increasing water levels and higher temperatures as a result of global heating, and having to closely monitor “plastic levels in the Tidal Thames”.
🏙️ The news coming out of the Nine Elms development just keeps getting worse. This week it was reported that fewer than one in 15 homes in Nine Elms Square have been sold in its first year of marketing. The Telegraph’s “analysis of regulatory filings” has also shown that “only £120m of revenue has been reported since pre-sales began nearly two years ago.” Nine Elms Square cost £3bn to build.
🏳️⚧️ A trans Pride road crossing has been unveiled in Camden, on the corner of Tavistock Place and Marchmont Street, very close to Gay’s The Word, the oldest queer bookshop in Britain:
Arts and culture bits
🏎️ Rumours of a London Formula 1 race have been around for years, but this week things seemed to take a step closer to reality when it was reported that funding had been secured to build a track somewhere in the Royal Docks. Apparently a US investment firm called 777 Partners (they already own the London Lions basketball team) are in talks to develop the new “entertainment complex” that will include an F1 track, and they’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen that they “are hopeful that [Formula 1] is coming” (although the Times quickly put a dampener on the excitement by reminding everyone that F1’s owners are “focused on US and Asian markets”).
🇵🇪 In Monday’s issue we told you about the British Museum’s maintenance woes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not launching new exhibitions. Peru: a journey in time opened on Thursday and the exhibition already has a five star review from the Guardian (“trippy”), four stars from the Times (“a treasure trove”) and another four from the Standard (“wonderful”).
👨🎨️ The Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, which also opened on Thursday, brings “over 500 international artists and 800 original works” to Woolwich Works (right next to Woolwich Arsenal Pier) all this weekend. As well as accessibly-priced prints there’s interactive demonstrations and a pop up bar.
🖼️ The Courtald Gallery at Somerset House reopens on 19 November after a £57m renovation, and it looks like the money has been well spent. The Times gives the refreshed gallery a five star write up and says that even the “fire extinguishers look a cut above average”. The Standard also doles out five stars for the “perfectly judged renovation” and the new displays “which bring fresh light to its magnificent collection”. And while The i eschews star ratings, it does say that a visit is “like encountering an old friend after a refreshing holiday and some very expensive plastic surgery”.
💣 IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE KLAXON! The Gunpowder Plot is a ‘multi-sensory experience’ coming to the Tower of London next year. The creators are promising a mix of live actors, virtual reality, and multi-sensory effects in order to transport players back to 1605. And while we’re normally very quick to roll our eyes at anything ‘immersive’, we’ll admit to being quite excited about this one, if only because they’ve got Danny Robins writing the script for it (Danny also wrote 2:22 A Ghost Story and he’s the man behind the Uncanny podcast).
🕺 Sadler’s Wells has revealed the opening plans for its new Stratford venue and they include the Choreographic School and Hip Hop Theatre Academy which will offer “a two-year intensive training course to aspiring hip-hop artists, covering performing arts, graffiti and DJing”. There’s also a 550-seat theatre, and the inaugural production will be Our Mighty Groove “an immersive (🙄) dance theatre show set in an underground New YorkCity nightclub”.
🎨 A large-scale exhibition of work by the Turner Prize winner Lubaina Himid is opening at Tate Modern towards the end of this month. Himid originally trained in theatre design and the exhibition takes that as its inspiration, unfolding “in a sequence of scenes designed to place visitors centre-stage and backstage.”
🎄 It still feels way too early to be talking about Christmas lights, but this is a nice story. This year’s Soho Christmas lights have been designed by children from the Soho Parish School “under the direction of architect and RIBA Architecture Ambassador Antonio Capelao” (so a bit like when your parents used to give you ‘direction’ on your homework then). There’s a full guide to all of the designs here, and if you’re not already a fan of the Wardour Street Christmas duck…sorry, angel… then you’re dead inside.
🎠 Seeing as we’ve already started talking about Christmas… Fresh from creating their Laundrette of Dreams in Bethnal Green, LEGO have just announced a Christmas ‘immersive event’ in Covent Garden. The ‘Christmas Carousel of Creativity’ will include a “rocket race car, a firefighting dragon and a cactus Christmas tree”. Best part? You don’t need to book and it’s free.
🪣 Henry Lau is a K-Pop boy band superstar, producer, actor… and now artist (you can see his work at the Arx gallery in Knightsbridge right now). Watch below as he tells the BBC about how he creates his art by putting paint in a bucket, tying the bucket to a string and then just letting “it do its thing”:
Food and drink bits
🦇 Someone from one of the broadsheets finally got round to reviewing Park Row, that Batman-themed restaurant on Brewer Street. Grace Dent went on a Saturday lunchtime and found the “hangar-sized, yet semi-deserted” venue “absurdly shoddily staged” and serving “the worst type of cruise ship food”. The most exciting thing that happened seems to be when the staff started “noisily moving an epos terminal” half way through Grace’s ‘dining experience’. Now we just need someone to go and review that Monopoly restaurant.
🐟 Toklas is a “restaurant, bar, bakery and grocery shop” that’s just opened in a 1970s brutalist building on 180 the Strand . The people behind it are also the people behind the Frieze magazine and art fair so there’s plenty of “reclaimed parquet floor” and “bespoke pendant LED lights” but the food looks pretty promising too. There’s no red meat, so the focus is on the veg and seafood and according to the FT eating the grilled sardines with crushed potatoes is “like being transported to a beach in Greece”.
🍜 There are more than 5000 Zhang Liang Mala Tang restaurants in China, but none in London… yet. Apparently the ‘serve yourself Sichuan’ chain is about to move into a space on Shaftesbury Avenue.
☕️ Indonesian coffee shop Ngopi has opened a site in Dalston (the only other Ngopi right now is in Birmingham). This isn’t your usual east London flat white though, Ngopi is offering “iced pink banana lattes” and “double-shot espresso served with milk and palm sugar syrup”. And if that doesn’t interest you, then the fried Indomie toastie (above) should. Yep, that’s an “instant noodle sandwich with cheese, corned beef and egg”!
🌿 Eater London has an update on the much-anticipated arrival of a Din Tai Fung restaurant at Selfridges in January of next year, but the big news is that the store’s fourth floor will also be home to a Pizza Pilgrims, which customers will access via a “three-metre hydroponic basil tunnel”.
🍷 Wine bar chain Vinoteca is joining the likes of Barrafina and fried chicken brand Butchies in opening a spot at the Borough Yards development in London Bridge. Apparently the new location will have a “food menu with many of the ingredients sourced from the neighbouring Borough Market” and there’ll be a “focus on sustainability, with customers able to select a wide range of sustainably made wines”.
📈 According to Bloomberg’s Pret Index (yep, that’s a real thing) spending at Pret’s stores “in the City of London and Canary Wharf surged to 86% of pre-pandemic levels last week, the highest since the start of the crisis.” We also enjoyed the fact that the The Telegraph called them ‘Pret a Manager’ in an article written on Tuesday and, as of the time of writing, they haven’t noticed yet.
🥩 Our ‘best of ‘ list this week comes from Culture Whisper and it’s a list of London’s best roasts. Great to see Stockwell’s Canton Arms in there. Ditto Waterloo’s Anchor and Hope. And people do keep telling us how great The Clarence Tavern is in Stokie.
Long read of the week
The Guardian profiles the artist Ben Wilson who has been turning blobs of discarded chewing gum into miniature artworks since 2004.
Tweet of the week
Aerial photographer Jason Hawkes shared the 4k version of his ‘London from above’ montage. Go full screen for this one if you can.
