Dead fish in London's river Lea caused by pollution after a storm

Artists impression of a fatberg on the 4th plinth

London home owners, private renters and social renters 1961-2011

Lilo Evans and Tristan Stocks in the Mikado

Chart showing how Londoners get to work across inner and outer London

Chart showing how Londoners get to work by mode, 2011 data

Chart showing how the way Londoners get to work is changing over time

Map of empty homes or second homes in London

London borough population changes 2011-2012

Map of red kite sightings in London, May 2014

Artists impression of the "Teardrop", as seen from Ridley Rd, Dalston

Poster against Chatsworth Rd market in London

Tim Cresswell's poetry collection Soil, published by Penned in the Margins

Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley

Behind The Light from Victor Martinez on Vimeo.

This film by Victor Martinez is 5 minutes of warmth on a grey day.

24 Oct 2012

VIDEO: Steve Coogan remembers "an incident with a pigeon" at soon-to-be-demolished Acton swimming baths

“In 1979, no one died. In 1980, some one died. In 1981, no one died. In 1982, there was the incident with a pigeon.”

I used to quote this clip, from The Day Today, endlessly. Now it looks like Acton swimming baths, where the scene was filmed, is to be bulldozed and replaced by a leisure and community complex. Some local campaigners are not happy with the loss of a 100-year old listed building, but Acton W3 reports that English Heritage support the new development as doing more good than harm. They say:

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to accommodate fully accessible services to the necessary standards within the ‘skin’ of the building. ‘Therefore, we have come to the conclusion that the substantial heritage benefits associated with refurbishing and re-using the vacant and deteriorating grade II listed Acton Town Hall (the most significant element of the town hall/baths complex), along with the genuine public benefits of providing a new leisure facility at this location, would outweigh the harm that would be caused to the character of the conservation area by the loss of the baths.”

And so commotions in the rafters will cease for ever. The rafters will be gone.

17 Oct 2012

This video takes us inside the late-night juggling subculture of Camden Town

Yep, there’s a late-night juggling subculture of Camden Town. Vimeo user pyrishoya has a lovely little film about it. Juggling, it turns out, is a great way of chilling out. One juggler likens juggling to meditation. These jugglers are no clowns. They are men and women at peace.

As an aside, they seem to include a disproportionate number of computer programmers. I don’t know what that says. One of these programmers says he commutes to work on a unicycle.

keep your balls up in the air from pyrishoya on Vimeo.

16 Oct 2012

Take Me Home by Perfume Genius

08 Oct 2012

City History: Filmmaker Si Mitchell brilliantly explains the Tottenham Outrage of 1909

View on Vimeo

Si Mitchell’s 10 minute documentary about the Tottenham Outrage, an anarchist murder which shocked Edwardian London, is superb. Talking corpses, blood-spattered maps, dodgy Latvian accents and a narrator wandering in and out of chase scenes…this is a visual style which really, as they say, brings history to life.

Wikipedia has a full run down of the story behind the film. I excerpt the introduction below:

“The Tottenham Outrage is the name given to an armed robbery and double murder which took place in Tottenham, Middlesex and Walthamstow, Essex, on 23 January 1909, which was carried out by two anarchists Paul Helfeld and Jacob Lepidus both Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. The “Outrage” became a cause célèbre in Edwardian London, with the route of the murdered policeman’s funeral cortège being lined by a crowd of half a million people. The event led to the creation of the King’s Police Medal, to reward the gallantry of the police officers involved. It also reinforced a feeling of xenophobia, fear of immigrants, and anti-Semitism.”

27 Sep 2012

Photographer Zed Nelson takes on gentrification in Hackney: A Tale of Two Cities

[Skip to 1.50 in the video above or view all the photos on one page at Zed’s website here]

Zed Nelson’s collection is called Hackney: A Tale of Two Cities. He introduces it by saying:

“The social landscape for an under-privileged teenager growing up in Hackney, one of London’s poorest boroughs, is a million light-years away from the new urban hipsters who frequent the cool bars and expensive cappuccino café’s springing up in the same streets. These worlds co-exist side-by-side but entirely separate, creating bizarre juxtapositions of wealth and poverty, aspiration and hopelessness.”

So while his title harks to Dickens, the thought behind it is pure Disraeli, who said that of England that it was:

“Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.”

Do these thoughts accurately describe two Hackneys which exist today? Or two Londons?

I think there are many more Hackneys and Londons than that.

26 Sep 2012

VIDEO: It's been raining, so raw sewage flows into the river Thames

When it rains, as it just has, much of that rainwater gets washed into the sewage system. Too much, in fact, for the sewer pipes to hold. So the water, mixed now with raw sewage, overflows out into the rivers, the Thames or the Lee.

This video, by Pete Fry last year, shows the effect on the Thames at Chelsea. It’s disgusting. This happens 50 or 60 times a year. It doesn’t take much rain to do it.

Thames Water have a cleaned-up graphic explaining it all in their promotional material for the proposed Super Sewer.

The proposed super sewer is a good thing.

See also:

Londonist – Trips into the sewage system at Abbey Mills and the Fleet river

25 Sep 2012

"I'm told that cycling is safe...but my husband is dead" - Debbie Dorling speaks about losing her husband Brian

Laura Borner interviewed Debbie Dorling, whose husband Brian was killed while cycling at Bow Roundabout last year. It’s a very difficult interview to watch.

Ten cyclists have died so far in 2012. We shouldn’t tolerate the status quo.

The whole film, entitled White Bikes, is a cogent run-down of the arguments for improving cycling infrastructure in London. It includes contributions from TfL, the Mayor’s office and the London Cycling Campaign.

24 Sep 2012

VIDEO: Oliver Lynton shows us the mesmeric craft of gilding

Skills and Traditions; Gilding from Oliver Lynton on Vimeo.

The gilder is Sophie Levene who works in Highgate, North London. I stumbled across Oliver Lynton’s video of her at work on Vimeo, and think it’s rather lovely.

I defy you not to be charmed by the sudden way the thin gold flattens in response to the gilder’s breath.

Here’s Oliver Lynton’s Vimeo profile.

20 Sep 2012

VIDEO: 1960s businessman rides amphibious scooter down the Thames

“It might seem improbable, these ski scooters using dear old father Thames as a waterway for workaday businessmen…”

Nothing improbable about it. Nothing improbable about it at all.

Via the brilliant British Pathe YouTube channel. Although I detect in this commentary that a certain ironic knowingness had crept in to the Pathe newsreels by the 1960s. The end was beginning.

19 Sep 2012

LONDON WEATHER

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