Weekend roundup for 7 August
Includes flies in drag, sex maps and chicken on demand
Before we get into this week’s Roundup, just a reminder that we’re taking a quick break, so the next time you receive an email from us will be Wednesday August 18.
We’re more than fifty issues in now, and we’re knocking on the door of 1,000 subscribers, so we just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has signed up, shared, liked and said nice things about London in Bits over the last few months. When we get back we’re going to be looking at how we introduce paid subscription options, as well as some new regular features. So if you’ve got any strong opinions then the comments are open and so is our inbox.
See you in a couple of weeks…
And now, the news
🚔 Sadiq Khan has put an extra £5 million investment into the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) “to expand its work in a bid to tackle [the root causes of] violent crime.” The new range of measures will give support and specialist training to youth workers and create a “new programme to support young people who have witnessed domestic abuse in the home.”
⚖️ The families of the victims of the 2016 Croydon tram crash have formally requested a second inquest after last month’s coroner’s inquest concluded that the seven deaths were “accidental”.
🚲 After Wednesday’s horrific crash in which (to quote road.cc) “yet another cyclist [was] killed on London’s Holborn gyratory,” many people have been asking why nothing has been done to make this route safer. One of these people was the Standard’s Ross Lydall, who quote tweeted his own report from 2019 on TfL’s plans to improve the gyratory. Lydall tweeted “Why didn’t this happen?”, to which we would reply “You’re the journalist! Finding out why that didn’t happen is literally your job.”
🕯 Reclaim These Streets held a vigil in Fryent Country Park in Wembley on Tuesday to remember Nicole Smallman and her sister, Bibaa Henry, who were murdered in the park over a year ago.
🌹 The London Festival of Architecture held a contest to “rethink the infrastructure used to create segregated cycle lanes” in London, and the winners have just been announced. From what we can tell by the images in this tweet ‘Blooming London’ by Pitman Tozer Architects seems to use artificial flowers to light up and mark cycle lanes. We love that. We also love the image of David Byrne on a Zoom call:
🏔️ The Marble Arch Mound is taking another stab at being a viable attraction by reopening as “a free experience”. Meanwhile Labour have called for an investigation into just how the Mound “spectacularly flopped”.
⚫ Hot on the heels of the Marble Arch Mound comes the Stratford Sphere. The Madison Square Garden Company have applied for planning permission to build a 95ft-high music venue in the Olympic Park. Shaped like a giant blackhead, this thing will use 36 million lights in order to “glow 24 hours a day” and will be “covered with animated adverts for half the time”. The plans have gone down like a cup of cold sick, with one Stratford resident saying “Nobody expects a gigantic ball of light to arrive on their doorstep, no matter where they live,” and the Labour MP for West Ham dubbing it “monstrous”.
🛍️ Claire Spreadbury has been to King’s Cross for the Independent, and she likes it… A lot. Claire is a massive fan of the area’s “wonderful mix of high street stores, designer labels, independents, second-hand treasure chests and tattoo parlours,” (second-hand treasure chests?), not to mention the fact that she can “start a conversation with anyone local and get a friendly reply” (as opposed to getting shanked?). Claire even declared the area “the future of retail as we know it.” If you want to offset this hyperbole with something a bit more measured, the FT’s article on the area from last year is a good place to start, or there’s this long but brilliant essay by Owen Ward on the ‘King’s Cross badlands’.
💉 From tomorrow, Heaven will become the country’s first nightclub to be turned into a pop-up Covid vaccination centre:
🗺️ Dubious PR ‘study’ of the week comes from LoveHoney who have created a ‘sex map’ of the “UK’s raunchiest towns.” Apparently, Farringdon is the sexiest place in London. We’re not sure why, and we don’t really have the stomach to find out. Click at your own risk.
Art and culture bits
🐍 The Serpentine Gallery has announced a new fellowship to “seed, support and grow different networks and bodies of knowledge in the arts.” Ten fellows will each receive a grant of £10,000 “to develop creative ideas along with mentoring and development workshops.”
📷 Photographer Feruza Afewerki lost four family members in the Grenfell fire. Dazed has taken a look at her new photo book, Gold & Ashes, in which she “captures the images and voices of survivors and the bereaved, looking to the future with hope.”
🪰 What’s On Stage has interviewed Christopher Clegg of the Drag company TuckShop (the people behind the “Drag-atha Christie” murder mystery Death Drop), and asked him about his dream of doing “a Drag staging of Lord of the Flies”. Take our money now!
🧣 This year’s winner of the Wellcome Photography Prize (in the single image category) was film maker Jameisha Prescod’s self-portrait of her knitting in her London flat (above) “an activity she used to cope with her depression during lockdown.”
🧟 If you loved Zack Snyder’s Netflix zombie flick, Army of the Dead, but came away thinking it could be a bit more… immersive, well you’re in luck. The Army of the Dead – Viva Las Vengeance's VR taco truck (yeah that’s a lot to unpack, but just go with it for now) is arriving in London next month, promising to put you “into the shoes of one of the mercenaries for a bit of post-apocalyptic zombie combat in a VR style.” All of this is happening in the extremely Vegas-like location of the fifth floor of the Westfield car park. You can book tickets here.
🖍️ Bleeding Cool has created a list of Things To Do In London If You Like Comics for August, and there’s some great things in there (particularly if you’re looking for stuff to do with kids… Beano workshop at the Cartoon Museum anyone?).
🤳 The wonderful (and ridiculously productive) people at Hoxton Mini Press have a new photo book out. London in Lockdown, is published in collaboration with the Museum of London and features work from a number of photographers who have tried to capture some of “the anxiety, the love, the boredom, the tranquillity and the reconnection with nature that isolation brought.”
Food and drink bits
📍Reddit user, aamukherjee has created “a map of (mostly central) restaurants of every cuisine in London which I think are worth your time”. One to bookmark for next time you’re peckish in an area you don’t know that well.
🍇 Noble Rot’s wine shop Shrine to the Vine (below) has opened on Lamb’s Conduit Street and Eater has spoken to Co-founder Dan Keeling about what’s on offer and what their plans are for the place.
🍺 One of King’s Cross’s recent successes is craft beer bar House of Cans, who have just been granted permission to open a tap room in the railway arches of Wood Lane Underground Station. Although they won’t be able to host QPR fans “outside before or after games at the nearby Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium.”
🍻The London Craft Beer Festival is happening at Tobacco Dock next weekend. They’ve got 100 breweries coming down as well as a handful of London restaurants (Bleecker Burger, Big Apple Hot Dog etc) to help line your stomach, and entertainment in the form of a Django Django DJ set and Hip Hop Karaoke.
🍜 Udon noodle specialists Koya are opening a third location just off Broadway Market next month. The new place will be called Koya Ko and will “act as a more neighbourhood version of Koya,” offering “a new take on Koya’s udon and donburi dishes.”
🐟 Restaurant and nightclub impresario, Richard Caring was interviewed by the Times this week about London ‘pinging back’ post-Covid. He also announced that his Mayfair seafood institution, Scott’s will be opening a second restaurant on the banks of the Thames in Richmond later this year (following a very similar announcement from Brindisa last week).
🍗 KFC have opened a fried chicken-themed hotel in Shoreditch (obviously). The House of Harland is not a permanent fixture, it will only be open for eleven days this month, but if you book a stay you will be picked up in the Colonelmobile (a black Cadillac) before being escorted to your room by a ‘chick-in’ clerk. The rooms are £111 a night and come equipped with ‘press for chicken’ buttons.
Long read of the week
Wired have taken a look at how engineers are planning to protect the London Underground against more floods (we didn’t realise this, but 41 different Tube stations have closed due to flooding in the previous five years!).
Tweet of the week
As big fans of restaurant celebrity photo walls, we approve of this.
