Weekend Roundup for 16 October
Includes bulbous cupola, the return of Cock, and wine for breakfast
🌜 The Night Tube is coming back... Sort of. Sadiq announced on Thursday that the Central and Victoria lines will get a 24-hour weekend service again from 27 November. TfL have also said that the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines will run Night Tube services “as soon as practicable”.
🚗 Following the publication of City Hall data, which showed that “BAME Londoners and those in poorer areas were more likely to suffer the effects of poor air quality” the Centre for London think tank has told the mayor and TfL that the Ultra-Low Emission Zone expansion (which comes into effect later this month) isn’t enough. They want London to “adopt a pay-per-mile road user charging scheme which would deliver cleaner air, increase walking and cycling, and reduce congestion, as well as provide a substantial income stream to help plug TfL’s finances.”
⛽ Before people drive anywhere they’ll need to get some petrol. A tenth of fuel stations in London and the southeast are still dry according to the Petrol Retailers Association, and station storage tanks “were an average of just 27 per cent full in London” as of the end of last week.
🎆 There’ll be no New Year’s Eve fireworks display again this year. Sadiq has called off the riverside display for the second year running because of “uncertainties caused by Covid”. There will still be a celebration in Trafalgar Square apparently, but no details yet on what that might involve.
🛖 Back in our 3 July Weekend Roundup we told you about the Solohaus project to build 200 modular homes to house rough sleepers. Well, the first 33 of these ‘pods’ have been built on disused land on Ermine Road in Tottenham and Time Out has been to have a look inside them. Apparently the first pod residents will move in by the start of next month.
🏡 We may need more than 200 though. It was reported this week that London is at the “epicentre of the housing crisis” as we have around 250,000 people on council house waiting lists right now and new research reckons that number could double by next year.
🧼 And while we’re on the subject of pods… One has appeared on the top of Tobacco Dock this week. The “bulbous cupola” on the Wapping skyline comes courtesy of Alexander McQueen who installed it to host their Spring/Summer 2022 fashion show. Apparently the giant bubble “simultaneously shut off and exposed its guests to the outside world, encouraging them to reach out and touch the crisp city skyline”.
🕍 In our September 4 Roundup we pointed you to two long reads about the 320-year-old Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City and the two enormous towers that were planned to be built next to it. We say ‘were’ because The City of London has just refused permission for the redevelopment of a 1960s office building on Bury Street into a 48-storey tower that would have “loomed over” the 18th century synagogue.
🏗️ And talking of the sky failing to get scraped…. The Spire was supposed to be a 67-storey ‘Shard of Canary Wharf’, but since work began all the way back in 2014 they’ve barely made it above ground level and now it looks like it won’t ever get finished. The land is owned by a Chinese real estate developer called (confusingly) Greenland and China is cracking down on overleveraged builders.
🪣 As if Facebook’s year wasn’t bad enough already, now they’re facing strike action from cleaners in their London office. The Cleaners & Allied Independent Workers Union will hold a ballot this month to decide if they go on strike later in the year due to “impossible” workloads, which have reportedly caused “exhaustion, severe back pain, stress, deteriorating mental health and, in one case, internal bleeding”.
🚲 Siona Jones has written an article for the FT (paywall alert) about her “journey from two-wheeled commuter to Lycra-clad obsessive” and shared some of the London cycling routes and clubs that got her there.
🅿️ A 2.5 x 4.2 metre car parking space opposite Harrods has gone on sale for £250,000. Not sure what else to say about this if we’re honest.
Art and culture bits
🍆 Mike Bartlett‘s play Cock, was a big hit back in 2009 when it ran at the Royal Court, but it never made it to the West End. In March of next year though Cock comes to the Ambassador’s Theatre and stepping into the shoes of Ben Whishaw and Andrew Scott are Taron Egerton and Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey (with support from Jade Anouka and Phil Daniels). The new production runs from 5 March to 4 June and tickets are on sale already.
🐙 The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition opened at the Natural History Museum yesterday and it looks like they’ve put together another incredible show. If you want to see the winners of each of the categories, the BBC has the rundown including the overall winner featuring some ‘explosive sex’.
📸 Jay-Z has been in town for the Frieze art fair. Apparently he was spotted down at Pace, the “international mega-gallery” in Hanover Square, where he was admiring work by Brooklyn-based artist Torkwase Dyson.
👪 If you’re looking for something to do with the kids this half term then the Pop-Up festival might be your answer. Running from 23–31 October, Pop-Up London is “a free festival of culture featuring family-friendly outdoor performances across the centre of the city”. Performances include “hip hop dance acts, musical comedy, storytelling, puppetry, circus skills, magic shows and many more.”
🎨 Architectural and design mag, Spaces has been to the David Zwirner gallery in Mayfair to take in their “triumphant retrospective” of work by Noah Davis (above), “the Los Angeles-based painter who died in 2015 at the age of 32 from a rare cancer of the heart”.
📷 The King’s Cross Then And Now photo exhibition has been launched to mark “the 10-year anniversary of the rebirth of King’s Cross”. Being shown across “the art benches” around the area, the exhibition shows how King’s Cross has changed over the years. It’s on until until December 1.
🦩 The Secret Museum is a “special hidden museum that will tell you stories of homelessness, once you find it.” Created by the “community driven social justice museum”, The Museum of Homelessness, Secret Museum will open on 27 October for 11 days only and will use “objects and stories from activists, community organisers and people who live at the sharp edge of inequality” to tell the story of “what really happened to people on the margins in the pandemic.” More details here.
Food and drink bits
📖 If you somehow missed the story this week of Elizabeth Haigh (the Masterchef winner who opened the Singaporean restaurant mei mei in Borough Market a few years ago) and the accusations of plagiarism that have been levelled against her new cookbook, then Eater has an excellent rundown of the whole thing as well as a broader look at what happens when “memories and stories attached to recipes become the currency of representation in the cookbook world”.
🛵 The reviews are coming in for Trattoria Brutto, Russell Norman’s new place, and so far they’re pretty great. Hot Dinners calls the deep-fried dough-balls with prosciutto and stracchino cheese the “perfect snack food” and the 1kg “behemoth” of grilled T-Bone (a Florentine special called ‘bistecca’) looks amazing despite the £82 price tag. The Standard calls it “glorious, determined and one-of-a-kind” and you don’t want to look at Eater’s photographs of the place if you’re anywhere close to hungry.
🍷 People who enjoy drinking wine before lunch, rejoice! Gordon’s legendary Beaujolais Nouveau breakfasts are back this year. From 8 until 11 (that’s in the morning, just to be clear) you can get a full English, coffee, orange juice, and “of course this year’s Beaujolais Village Nouveau” all for £21.50. Plus, unusually for Gordon’s, you can book a table.
🇫🇷 Sticking with the theme for a second: The Guardian’s Jay Rayner thinks it’s “easier to find terrific French food in London than it is in Paris.” And he doesn’t stop there. he also claims he finds Italian restaurants here better than those in Rome, and good tapas is easier to come by in London than in Barcelona.
🥂 It looks like the Trocadero might finally be getting its long-promised rooftop bar. The TAO group have been talking about installing something up there for ages, and this week they produced a bunch of drawings and details of what they’re calling “one of Europe’s largest rooftop bar and restaurants” which will have space for a 1,000 people (it is a pretty big roof after all).
🦐 Hot Dinners has been to 'test drive’ the Seafood Bar on Dean Street, newly arrived from Amsterdam, and they came away pretty impressed by the “huge seafood platters” (both hot and cold versions) on offer.
🥪 As far as back as April we were writing about the unstoppable expansion of Greggs. Back then we were reporting on the arrival of half-a-dozen more outlets in the capital, but now it looks like we’ll be getting a few more. “We are coming into London with renewed vigour,” said bakery boss Roger Whiteside this week, and as they’re looking to open 100 new stores this year across the country (and they only have 19 in London right now) you can bet we’ll get our fair share of them.
🎖️ While we were away last week the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list was announced, but we didn’t miss much because there were only two London restaurants on it ! The Clove Club came in at number 32, and right behind it at 33 (and also in Shoreditch) was the Michelin-starred Lyle’s. It’s all quite boring really.
Long read of the week
Movie Maker talks to Edgar Wright and the cast of Last Night in Soho about how the area’s changed over the past few decades, and the “young woman tries to make it in the big city” films from the 50s and 60s that inspired the film.
