Weekend roundup for 31 July
Includes walking boats, men's make up, spicy tripe and deep fried Mars Bars
🔒 The mayor has ordered a new review into the capital’s vulnerabilities to terror attacks and how the Covid-19 pandemic might have impacted the city’s resilience. Part of the review will involve scrutinising “potential ‘learning points’ from recent terror attacks in the capital including the stabbing attack in Fishmongers’s Hall”.
🚓 Boris Johnson appeared on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show this week and took the opportunity to take a shot at Sadiq, saying he hoped to speak “quite soon” with Khan about fighting knife crime, adding “there is more that could be done... and I would urge the mayor to do it.” Johnson stopped short of talking up his own mayoral record on knife crime, possibly because last time he did that people called him out on it.
☔ The mayor has been busy addressing the other big threat to Londoners: rain. On Tuesday Khan met with TfL, the Fire Brigade, London councils and the Environment Agency to discuss a plan for preventing future floods. He also put pressure on the upcoming COP26, saying that the meeting should be an opportunity for the Government to “give us the powers and resources we need to take even bolder action on climate change.” N.B. This isn’t a new thing. The Romford Recorder has taken a look back at the floods “which have devastated east London since 2016”.
🚨 New Home Office figures have revealed some depressing statistics around rape investigations in London. In the year to March the Met concluded 7,482 rape investigations where the alleged victim was female, but only 4% of those resulted in a charge or summons. The Met “dropped 6,405 investigations due to difficulties gathering evidence and 685 cases because a suspect could not be identified.”
👮 Meanwhile eight Met officers are being investigated after they allegedly shared “inappropriate material” about Katie Price's disabled son Harvey in a WhatsApp group.
💰 At the start of the week TfL revealed a revised 2021/22 budget that has been reduced to £1.9bn (down from the £2.7bn it estimated back in March). But that still leaves them “facing a £500m funding gap for this financial year,” and if there’s no longterm agreement agreed before December 11 then there’ll be zero money.
💺 One of the details in the new TfL budget was “new Bakerloo line trains to replace the oldest fleet in the UK”. According to the plans the trains will be ordered in the financial year 2023/2024… Assuming that they get the required investment from the government.
🎓 London is the best at something! Apparently, “an international ranking of higher education centres” has declared London the best city in the world to be a university student, “despite low marks for affordability”.
⛔ It looks like the four day tube strike will go ahead next month, after the RMT said there had been “a solid vote for action” from its members and subsequent talks “failed to resolve” the issue.
🚇 Final bit of travel news for this week: At last weekend’s London Labour Conference 74% of London’s Labour MPs backed a motion calling for Sadiq Khan to cancel the controversial Silvertown Tunnel project on environmental grounds. The motion read, “If Labour are truly committed to clean air and tackling climate change there is no justification for the tunnel.”
👷 Plans, for the redevelopment of the Stag brewery (“one of Britain’s oldest breweries”) in Mortlake have been rejected by Sadiq Khan because the public benefits offered would “not clearly outweigh the harm”. Apparently there was particular concerns “about the amount of affordable housing”.
🏗️ Property developers Soho Estates are looking for “a high-profile leisure occupier” to co-design a £100m development in Leicester Square, next door to the Odeon Cinema. Apparently they are seeking “to secure a long-term partnership with a global brand and build a bespoke new property to suit their needs”.
💄 The world’s first men’s make-up store has opened on Carnaby Street. War Paint for Men (above) is a British brand that “offers men the chance to learn about make-up options and trial products” including “tinted moisturisers, concealer, beard and brow gels”.
🕹️ Hamleys have realised that kids these days are looking for more than a Furby or a Rubik’s Cube and have opened their first video games department. It could be seen as a bit of a token gesture given that the UK’s largest gaming arena is just down the road.
Art and culture bits
🏔️ Do we need to tell you the opening of the Marble Arch Mound has been a complete disaster? This was always going to happen, but the scale of derision has been greater than even we might have expected. The Guardian dubbed it “a slippery slope to nowhere”, and the Telegraph agreed with The Guardian (!) with the headline “Behold the £2m hill of rubble”. The scorn even made it to the other side of the Atlantic, with CNN calling the project “little more than a mound of earth” and even the venerable NY Times got in on the act, calling it “a pile of blocky scaffolding covered in patches of vegetation that look in danger of slipping off”. The views on social media were even more harsh, and included “Teletubby Hill”, “slag heap”, “scaffolding covered in B&Q turf”, and “the worst thing I've ever done in London”. The Mound closed after two days and will stay closed “until further notice”.
⚓ There’s a 14.5 tonne boat walking up and down the banks of the Thames on hydraulic jacks at the moment. The Mudskipper is part of an art commission by Battersea Power Station, Nine Elms on the Southbank and Royal Docks, and is the creation of artist James Capper who apparently wanted to find out what would happen if a lorry and a boat have sex with each other. If you can get down there this afternoon, James and his cool/terrifying invention will be doing a demonstration at midday. After that it will be ’walking’ down to the Royal Docks for more unnerving demonstrations. All the dates and details are on the website.
🎷 West End Live is the free “annual musical theatre event held by the Society of London Theatre” and it’s just been announced that it will definitely be going ahead this year. Over the weekend of 18-19 September, dozens of West End productions will be performing 15 minute slots in Trafalgar Square. Keep an eye on their site for more details.
🎥 Bit of a weird one: The former UK headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witness organisation in Mill Hill is going to be converted into a film studio to meet the massive demand from studios looking to film in London.
🎧 North Fest 10 is a new “mini-festival” that aims to celebrate “London club culture at it’s finest”. On Saturday August 14 at Loft Studios NW10 there’ll be four stages (one each for funk, house, reggae and disco) hosting live performances and DJ sets. Tickets are twenty quid and you can pick them up here.
🌕 The Ryoji Ikeda exhibition (above) at 180 The Strand has been extended until 18 September. The mind-melting “multi-sensory exploration of light and sound” has been getting rave reviews for the past few months, so this is good news for anyone looking to have their senses overloaded.
🐴 We had to link to Tatler’s list of the “most fabulous activities you should book for all the family this summer” because the last activity on the list is “visiting Teddy the Shetland pony” in his “beautifully constructed stable” at The Goring hotel in Belgravia. That is peak Tatler.
Food and drink bits
🌏 Pippa Middlehurst (better known as ‘Pippy Eats’) is a former cancer research scientist turned cook who specialises in East and South-East Asian cookery (she also won the first series of Best Home Cook). Earlier this week Pippy took to Instagram to talk about the issues she has with The Ivy Asia (screenshots reproduced above with Pippa’s permission), primarily the way the chain lumps “48 countries, 4.5 billion people and countless cultures and ethnicities into one homogenous THEME”, and the way their marketing material presents “women as exotic objects and commodities for the consumption and pleasure of non-Asian/white males”.
😋 The Foodies Festival is coming back to Syon Park in Brentford next month for a three day pig out. They seem to have roped in every Bake Off and Masterchef winner from the past few years as well as around 200 exhibitors from across London’s food scene. The music headliner is Sophie Ellis Bextor, and they obviously blew the budget there, because she’s playing alongside a Coldplay cover band and a Killers cover band.
🍝 Russell Norman has revealed that his new restaurant and bar, will be opening in September. Trattoria Brutto will be on the former site of the Hix Oyster and Chop House in Smithfield and will open in the mornings for “coffee, pastries, sandwiches and breakfast Prosecco,” while in the evening there will be “dishes such as pappardelle with wild boar; chicken liver toasts; peposo (a beef stew); and lampredotto (spicy tripe in a sandwich)”. You had us at ‘breakfast Prosecco’.
🥘 Meanwhile Brindisa is heading out of central London to Richmond, for its largest location yet. Tapas Brindisa Richmond is due to open in October on the banks of the river, and they’re adding a ‘Bodega Room' to this one for those nights when you want to tuck into “curated Spanish cheeses, Ibérico hams and rare wines” in private.
🇮🇳 The Drummond Streatery project in Euston is hosting a free summer street party next Thursday. From 6:30-9:30pm they’ll be shutting the road so you can enjoy the “rich and culturally diverse businesses spanning from South Asian to Turkish” as well as music “from internationally renowned DJ and BBC Asian Network presenter, AJD, rising contemporary crossover artist RIKA and Bhangra star H Dhami”.
🍕 Slice by Pizza Pilgrims has been delivering perfect partial pizzas from their pop-up along the South Bank. But from August 11 they’ll be moving into a permanent site in Finsbury Park, that apparently takes its “inspiration from their sights of the slice joints and dive bars of New York City.” It’s about time London got a decent slice spot, and if anyone can do it, this lot can.
🍟 if you’re going anywhere near Stratford today then you might want to pop in to the E20 Street Food Market in East Village for a free french fry milkshake. Inspired by the joy of “dipping hot, salty McDonald’s French fries into cold milkshakes” this ‘concoction’ is made from “vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, cream, a dash of salt and potatoes” plus you get “chocolate-coated French fries for dipping”. If that sounds good to you then there are 250 of them up for grabs throughout the day.
🥪 The notorious Arcade Food Hall at Centre Point is getting a full makeover, which includes “eight new kitchens, a new independent Thai restaurant on the mezzanine level, a counter dining experience, and a standalone bar and outdoor dining terrace”. The original opening was scuppered by the now infamous £14 ham sandwich not to mention its “expensively sterile” atmosphere. Oh and the food wasn’t great either. We’ll find out in November if Arcade 2.0 fares any better,
🍖 Le Bab are giving away free food again. This time it’s Babs for Jabs, or in other words: if you are vaccinated in August and can send proof to them via Instagram DM then they’ll book you in for a free kebab of your choice. More details on their IG.
🍫 Six By Nico’s new Canary Wharf spot’s just opened, and their first ‘conceptual’ offering is The Chippie, a six-course tasting menu that “features reimagined and elevated chip shop classics from Chips and Cheese to Scampi to Steak Pie to the Scottish delicacy of the Deep Fried Mars Bar.” There’s an equally ambitious/daft video to accompany the launch:
⭐ Salt Bae’s London restaurant hasn’t opened yet, but as of earlier this week it had already garnered 38 Google reviews with completely made up hot takes such as “Overpriced below average steaks, great for Instagram but that's where it ends,” and “food is so good i love it but giving one star because he salt in my mouth.” It looks as though the reviews have been cleaned up now. Unfortunately that image will stay with us for a long time.
🍣 In case you needed reminding, the Olympics is happening in Tokyo right now. So The Spectator has paid someone called Joe Rogers (who we’re pretty sure isn’t Japanese) to write an article on how you can “dine like an Olympian” in London. There’s only five restaurants on the list and the majority of them opened in the last few months. If you want a more informed take on Japanese food in London then we’d suggest following the brilliant Yuki Gomi of Yuki’s Kitchen. That woman is a genius.
Long read of the week
Adam Almeida, the gentrification researcher who we interviewed back in June, has written an article for the socialist magazine Tribune on how the city might be de-gentrified.
