Weekend roundup for 18 June
Featuring wonky Wonkas, fancy pancakes and grime stories
One of the public pieces of art we forgot to mention in Wednesday’s issue was Jeff Koon’s Balloon Monkey (above) which is currently sat in the middle of St James’s Square, waiting to be sold by Christie’s, with all the proceeds (probably between £4m and £6m) going to humanitarian aid for Ukraine.
If you’re not a paying subscriber to LiB then you will have missed Wednesday’s issue and you’ll only be able read around a third of today’s roundup, which means you’ll miss out on things like artistic uncancellings and gastropub controversies. But if you scroll to the bottom of this email you can start your free week’s trial and dive in.
News bits
♀️ At the start of the week the mayor announced his “refreshed” Violence Against Women & Girls (VAWG) strategy, which places “a stronger emphasis on partnership working, prevention and education” and targets “the behaviour of those who perpetrate abuse” (rather than telling the potential victims how to behave). The plan is also getting an extra £17.7m from City Hall’s coffers.
🍫 In Monday’s issue we looked at Westminster council’s promise to ‘crackdown’ on the Oxford Street candy shops. On Wednesday council leader Adam Hug posted the tweet below showing “over £100k worth of counterfeit or illegal goods” that had been seized by trading standards officers (including 2246 counterfeit Wonka Bars). He followed that up by calling on the government to “properly resource Companies House, HMRC and other agencies” to take action on the bigger problem of tax avoidance (because Westminster Council - understandably - don’t want to be paying to take all these shops to court). It does seem that some landlords are voluntarily chucking out their tenants, probably due to the increase in publicity (which might have been Westminster’s plan all along).
🛺 While we’re on the subject of Westminster’s new council making their presence felt: Pedicab drivers in the West End have been “slapped with record fines” after a “council crackdown on ‘rip-off’ operators”. Drivers have been fined over offences including blocking pavements, playing loud music and charging extortionate fares.
🏘️ John Lewis is getting into the housing business. Apparently the high street chain is going to offer build-to-rent properties for “both short- and long-term tenancies, with the option for fully furnished, and rents at both market value and affordable levels”. Two of the initial three locations are in London, with one site in Bromley and another in Ealing.
🛥️ The captain of the ‘superyacht’ that was detained in London the other week for belonging to “a person connected to Russia,” has said that the move was just government “headline-grabbing, clickbait, attention-seeking.” The yacht (which contains an “infinite wine cellar… with 400 bottles”) is thought to be owned by the retired businessman, Sergei Naumenk. But the vessel is “registered to Dalston Projects Limited, a company based in the Caribbean dual-island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, and carries a Maltese flag.”
🚳 There’s another new map from TfL, this time showing all the routes that you can take a full sized bike onto (hint: you can take a non-folding bike on the Elizabeth between 9.30am and 4pm).
🧳 York’s National Railway Museum is appealing to the public to see if anyone can identify the West Indians portrayed in photographs of “the last boatload” of Windrush immigrants arriving at Waterloo station in the spring of 1962. The museum is also keen to hear “from any Black railway workers – particularly women who worked in station catering – who arrived in Britain between 1948 and 1962.”
🏳🌈 Jeremy Joseph, the owner of G-A-Y and Heaven, said this week that both venues could close down for good. The clubs both shut on the 12th for a week’s break in order to “protect the mental health of staff,” but Joseph also told Virgin Radio that he is weighing up “three to four” options on what to do next, “including closing and selling up”.
🐦 Do you live in Ealing and recently visited Orkney where you picked up an usual electronic device on the beach? Then you should know that there’s a PHD student tracking your movements (including that pizza restaurant you visited on your way back to London) and there’s £100 in gift vouchers for you if you return her bird tracker.
Art and culture bits
🌍 The RA’s Summer Exhibition is here again (in summer this time) but the reviews are very disappointing. In The Guardian Jonathan Jones calls it “a Tory exhibition” as it has the whiff of “Boris and Carrie Johnson… ostentatiously affecting green concerns” (there’s an eco theme to this year’s show). While in the Telegraph it’s just two stars and words like “mediocre”, “dull” and “smug” are thrown about. It’s only in the Times that there’s any positivity, with Rachel Campbell-Johnston giving up four stars and saying that this year’s exhibition “shows us what’s important”.
🎨 Artist Jess De Wahls (who was canceled and then apologised to by the RA last year over a row involving transphobia - and who has a piece in the Summer Exhibition) has written a piece for Unherd about how she was ‘uncancelled’ by the Academy and what it felt like to be at the centre of that particular storm.
🪩 If you’re into photo essays of British youth culture then you might be shelling out a bit of money in the next few weeks. First up is Acid House As It Happened, a new book by Time Out’s old nightlife editor, Dave Swindells, who was there with his camera “when rave hit London in 1988”. The Guardian has some excerpts from the book here.
📷 Marc Vallée’s series When I was at Art School in the 90s has an introduction by the artist Jamie Atherton, who lived with Marc at the time when they were both “new to the metropolis and seeking something else”. Dazed has an interview with Marc here where he talks about how he and Atherton were part of the same 90s alternative queer scene who “went to Popstarz, and to Ghetto which was behind the London Astoria.”
🎤 Finally Grime Stories: from the corner to the mainstream just opened yesterday at the Museum of London, aiming to honour “the music, people and places central to the grime scene and its roots in East London”. Again The Guardian has a preview, with a selection of the images from the show.
🎥 As of next month the BFI IMAX screen in Waterloo will no longer be run by Odeon. The chain had a ten year deal to run the cinema and have decided not to renew it, so the British Film Institute “will resume programming and operations” in July and will also give the venue a “major re-launch” later this year.
🤳 If you fancy picking up a camera yourself, the free summer photography workshops are coming back to Canary Wharf this year (along with the Canary Wharf Photography Competition). There’s adult and kids classes for things like wildlife, street and mobile photography and you can claim a place from Monday.
📢 On Tuesday The Guardian profiled The Silhouettes Project, the Hackney-based music community that’s “acting as a loudhailer for hip-hop, jazz, soul and R&B artists who might be ignored by streaming services and arts funding bodies.”
✏️ Remember the guy we told you about who was going to draw every building in Greater London? Well now there’s an artist who is planning on drawing every pub in London:
Food and drink bits
🏆 The winners of the National Restaurant Awards were announced this week, and while the top prize went to Ynyshir on the Welsh coast, seven out of the top ten UK restaurants are in London. That list includes Brat, The Ritz, The Ledbury and Manteca. In other prizes, ‘Cocktail list of the year’ went to Kol, ‘Wine list of the year’ went to Noble Rot, and ‘Opening of the year’ went to Bibi.
🍻 Four London pubs have just been given new or extended protection by Historic England. The two that have been listed for the first time are the Blythe Hill Tavern in Catford (Grade 2 listed thanks to being “a well-preserved example of the Brewer’s Tudor style”), and Admiral Vernon in Dagenham (also Grade 2 for “the quality and completeness of its original internal fittings”). Added protection has gone to the Prince Alfred in Maida Vale and the beautiful Red Lion on Duke of York Street in Mayfair.
🍺 Staying on the beer theme... The London Craft Beer Festival is back at Tobacco Dock in August, celebrating its tenth year. There’s over 100 craft breweries signed up, with over 1000 different beers on offer (plus food from places like Tacos Padre and Napoli Gang). Then in September, The Great British Beer Festival returns to Olympia for its 45th outing, and they’ve got over 500 different breweries along with live music, and street food.
⚽ Islington is getting a new sports bar in the form of Valderrama’s, which is due to open on 4 July at 163 Upper Street. From the team behind the 12:51 restaurant down the road, Valderrama’s will have “Beavertown beers on tap, cocktails, frozen margaritas and [chef James] Cochran's ‘Around the Cluck’ fried chicken.”
🥯 The Compton Bar and Restaurant has opened up in the building in Clerkenwell where the Modern Pantry used to be. The place is run by the Compton Property Agency, but you don’t have to be looking to let an office space to eat there. And if you don’t want the full sit down dining experience then there’s a deli round the back offering smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, and “seriously stacked” salt beef on rye sandwiches.
🥞 Fitzrovia pancake house Where the Pancakes Are is running a guest chef series, with Anna Haugh from Myrtle, Poon’s Amy Poon, and Lee Johnson and Sinead Campbell from Bong Bongs chipping in to “celebrate pancakes from around the world,” with dishes like ‘grated potato pancake with cabbage and ham hock’ and ‘steamed pancakes filled with pork hock and Mang Tomas sauce’. Tickets are £25 or you can try and win some free ones here.
🍽️ “It is lovely, but is it a pub?” That’s the sound of The Telegraph ’(paywall alert) attempting to answer the question of whether the ‘the gastropub has killed the boozer' or not. Exhibit A is the newly refurbished The George just off Oxford Circus.
🍸 If you’re not really a pub person, then Bloomberg has listed their 13 Best Bars in London Right Now (a list which includes the obvious spots like The Connaught Bar and Tayēr + Elementary, as well as some less obvious places like Funkidory in Peckham).
Long read of the week
Nick Bowes of the Centre for London looks at The power struggle at the heart of police accountability in London.
N.B. If you want something a bit ‘lighter’ (and to continue the accidental pub theme of this issue) the people behind New Cross’s newest micropub explain how and why they opened the place.
Tweet of the week
Some great replies to this…
