Weekend roundup for 18 September
Includes dog selfies, glowing condoms and fish tattoos.
🛣️ When a statement from Westminster Council starts with the words “We remain committed to...” you can bet that whatever it is they’re talking about is very unlikely to happen. And so this week we said ‘arrivederci’ to the Oxford Street piazzas. “Having listened to residents and reviewed the cost effectiveness of the proposal for a pilot for the Oxford Circus piazzas,” reads the councils’ statement, “we have decided that it’s better to move forward with a focus on permanent schemes.” The temporary ‘pilot piazzas’ were supposed to go ahead later this year, but the council has now said that they’ll focus on “potential permanent schemes for piazzas” instead.
💥 As the bi-annual Defence and Security Equipment International arms fair began at the ExCel this week, the Guardian reports that six of the nations who have sent delegates to the arms fair are listed by the Foreign Office as “human rights priority countries”. They are: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, and Iraq.
🌧️ On Monday it rained a bit (about 25mm fell) and parts of the tube flooded, along with Tower Bridge. The Standard spoke to a hyrdrologist (they ‘study the impact of rainfall, rivers and waterways on the environment’) about why London seems to flood at the drop of a hat these days (the answer is, essentially, we’ve paved over more of our gardens and rainfall is getting more intense).
🏗️ As we mentioned in Wednesday’s issue, the plans to build “a five-storey office and shopping mall on a car park,” at the Truman Brewery were approved this week, despite objections from residents and business owners “who are concerned that introducing a large commercial scheme will change Brick Lane’s character and that the new office space it provides will not be affordable to local businesses.”
🛂 The mayor has backed proposals for the government to introduce a “Covid recovery visa” to try and fill some of the vacancies in “sectors with serious shortages”. There is an existing Youth Mobility Scheme, which gives under 30s from Australia, Canada and New Zealand the right to work in the UK for two years, so Sadiq has “called for a similar reciprocal arrangement with the EU.”
🚍 Khan also announced this week that all new TfL buses in London will be zero-emission. TfL already has 950 zero-emission buses “on the road or on order” but this announcement means they’re pulling forward their commitment “to deliver a 100 per cent zero-emission bus fleet in London by three years, from 2037 to 2034”.
🚌 While we’re on the subject of buses: TfL just released its latest data for bus fatalities (that’s a direct link to the spreadsheet by the way). The data shows that, in the past six years, three people were found dead by a driver who was “checking the bus at the end of the route”, i.e nobody noticed the dead person while the bus was driving around with passengers on it. The last time this happened was October 2020, on route 266.
🏢 Companies are starting to rent office space in London again. Property agent CBRE did one study that shows “the amount of central London office space signed for has reached its highest monthly figure since the start of the pandemic” (although the August figure of 815,700 square feet is still well below the pre-Covid monthly average of 1m square feet), and Savills have also come out with some numbers that say “commercial space requirements in London stand at a three-year-high of 10m sq ft, up 41 per cent from last year”.
🚨 The Guardian ran a column this week on why the Met commissioner job is such a “poisoned chalice” and why appointing the next commissioner from outside the Met (which is apparently the plan) is probably not a great idea.
👨🍳️ First dubious ‘survey’ of the week comes from “home appliance company Zanussi” who have ‘revealed’ that “there’s a generation of ‘Little Chefs’ on the rise in London, with children as young as five helping to cook family meals.” Apparently half of 5-11 year olds have “learned to cook a meal in recent months” which is handy for Zanussi, as they’ve just launched an “online cooking course for schools in London… designed to get children excited about food and learning how to cook healthy and nutritious recipes.”
😘 This week’s second unscientific survey comes from online beauty store Cosmetify, who have ‘discovered’ that London is the “most expensive place to date in the UK”. Apparently, the cost of “two cinema tickets, a restaurant dinner for two, a pint of beer, a cocktail and a taxi fare within a five-mile radius” is more expensive in London than anywhere else in the UK. And they needed a survey to tell them that?
🐶 From next Wednesday Leadenhall Market will be home to Dogstagram, “the UK’s first ever pop-up photo station exclusive to dogs.” There will be four free photo stations with themes including “Jurassic Bark, Flower Pooch Patch, the Toy Box and Puparazzi Ready”.
🏡 The Times have published an article (paywall alert) with the headline Confessions of a millennial whose dad bought her a flat in London, which sounds like the worst bawdy 70s sex comedy ever.
Art and culture bits
🎨 The Royal Academy’s (delayed) Summer Exhibition opened this week and it’s already got great reviews. The lowest rank so far is the Standard’s three stars, but The Times gives it four stars, and the Guardian goes one better with five stars, saying that this year’s coordinator, British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, has managed to uncover “new worlds of talent and imagination. He makes you see with new eyes.”
🎭 Amy Adams will make her West End debut next spring in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie at the Duke of York’s theatre. Previews for the play start on 23 May 2022, but tickets are already on sale.
👭 The Battersea Arts Centre has launched its autumn programme and it includes Little Wimmin (”a live art, feminist ‘adaptation’ of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel”), We Are As Gods (a “large scale immersive experience” that puts some of the UK’s most exciting dance talent “in a maze of rooms, rooftops and secret stairways”); and The Interrogation (which takes you “on a GPS-guided walk through the streets” to discover what happened to Charlene, a woman who has “done something terrible”). Worth noting that BAC has a ‘Pay What You Can’ scheme for all its shows.
🏙️ The Design District (above) has officially opened. The development, which is on the Greenwich Peninsula, is made up of 16 buildings “with two buildings each designed by eight different architecture studios.” As none of the architects were able to see what the others were designing, the resulting cluster is very mixed. Dezeen quotes the District’s director as saying she wants visitors “to feel that they're not in Kansas anymore; that they've stepped into somewhere distinct from the surrounding city.”
🍞 It’s Nice That has been to take a look at Lunch, Erica Eyres’s piece for the London Design Festival, “a collection of food sculptures celebrates immigrant contribution to Park Royal’s food industry.” The collection of ceramic sculptures was created “in partnership with food distribution charities in a nod to their tireless efforts throughout the pandemic and through history.”
🐕 London Fashion Week started yesterday and as part of it “cult Camden store” Cyberdog has created an “immersive virtual reality experience” that they’re calling “the world’s first 24-hour virtual reality shopping experience based on a real-life shop.” If you’ve always wanted a box of Cyberdoggy glow-in-the-dark condoms, but been too embarrassed to buy them in the store, now’s your chance.
🎶 Amy Winehouse (who would have been 38 this week) is getting a new exhibition in her honour at the Design Museum. Amy: Beyond the Stage, which opens in November, will include “previously unseen personal items, including her teenage notebooks, photographs and handwritten lyrics.”
Food and drink bits
☂️ Although al fresco dining in Soho ends this month, outdoor eating will continue in Covent Garden. Westminster Council have extended the outdoor dining scheme in Henrietta Street, King Street, Maiden Lane and parts of Southampton Street. A scheme in St John’s Wood will also be extended. Earlier this week, hospitality staff from businesses across Soho gathered “to create an artificial canopy using umbrellas as part of an ongoing campaign to extend the area’s alfresco scheme” (above).
🍜 Camden’s Hawley Wharf just opened its doors and there’s some pretty good places to eat in there already, including BBQ specialists Hotbox, Chinatown legends Bun House, dim sum from BaoziInn and a cafe from French pastry chef, Philippe Conticini.
🍇 La Cave is a “wine bar, pop-up space and incubator kitchen” that is taking over the space in the basement of the Hoxton Holborn hotel, where Chicken Shop used to be. The space will get host a variety of chefs and restaurants, with the first resident being former Pachamama chef Adam Rawson, whose Cantina Valentina “will feature a range of dishes inspired by Peru”.
🥃 An old Italian restaurant on Roman Road by Victoria Park, has been turned into “an atmospheric Stateside-dive-bar mixed with added East London attitude”. The Bourbon, which opened on Wednesday, is well named as the place offers 40 varieties of the stuff (including some rare 23-year-old bottles) which you can sip on on while you gnaw on some barbecued brisket, ribs and burnt ends.
⚓ To celebrate their first UK opening today, Poke House on Portobello Road is bringing in tattoo artists for today’s launch event where customers can be inked “with California-inspired designs for free”. And if you agree to get a tattoo of Poke House’s logo (and sign a waiver saying you’re of sound mind and body) then you’ll receive “free poke for life” (actually “limited to four times a month, over a five-year period”).
🍽️ The FT has spoken to Jesus Adorno, who was Le Caprice’s “legendary maître d’” for forty years, about why he made the move to Charlie’s, in Brown’s Hotel, a place which is aiming to be “the Establishment lunch spot in Mayfair.”
👠 The FT is also the publisher of this week’s ‘best of list’ thanks to their pick of the ten most delicious restaurants to see and be seen in this Fashion Week. Just don’t try and walk into Maison François, wearing this sleeveless neon tech vest from Cyberdog.
Long read of the week
Sean O’Hagan reviews Michael Bracewell’s new book, Souvenir, for the Guardian: “A shifting, impressionist narrative made up of recalled moments, places and encounters in the now impossibly distant London of the 1970s and 80s.”
