Conflict over new Dalston flats goes beyond the usual gentrification angst

The fight over The Teardrop flat complex in Dalston is a minor battle in a war about what Zone 2 of London will look like in 10-20 years from now.

In-depth interview: Helen Babbs on creating a new generation of urban nature writers

The best things to do in London this week, from Art in Whitechapel to Zines in Hackney

This week it’s films in Peckham Station and the first cinema in Westminster, dance party in Walthamstow, comics in Hackey, esoteric publishing in Whitechapel, neon signs in the City, the London Podcast Festival,

Let's look at some young artists from Russia: Calvert 22 “Practice for Everyday Life”

The new exhibition of Young Artists From Russia- “Practice for Everyday Life”- at East London gallery Calvert 22, takes its title from the book of the same name written by Michel de Certeau in 1980. De Certeau’s book explores the way in which people individualise mass culture, and critiques the presentations of individuals as passive receivers of culture and ‘non-artists’.

An open letter to the hipster

Dear Hipster,
I've been meaning to write for a while, but couldn't hold off any longer. I wonder if you'll allow me to offer some constructive criticism. I actually admire you in a strange way. Turning up to work with a handle-bar moustache is genuinely funny. Unlike the sixty-eighters or the punks, you're precisely as subversive as you think you are (answer: ever so slightly subversive). One thing that can always be said for knowing irony is that it is, at the very least, knowing, and for that you deserve credit.

Theatre Listings for December 2010

April Theatre microreviews

Snipe's Theatre guide for May

Theatre editor Alan Hindle’s checks out every play running in London*.

• Every play may not be included.

Get Your Kick at Route 36, Bolivia's first fast-serve cocaine bar

“Take it out of the bag”, one of them whispers, as a small mountain of Bolivian marching powder unfolds from the wrap. Forming peaks where it piles on the surface, the small patch of black bin liner is emptied into the soft light of the room. They lean in; throats dry with a fiendish desire, pushing pure uncut white to and fro with an out-of-date health insurance card from some place far, far behind them now. Racked up with two fat lines sat side-by-side along the blackened edges of a bootlegged copy of Appetite For Destruction, some stranger nearby leans in and assuredly urges: “Don’t use the straw, use this”, as he carefully hands over a softened and tightly rolled 10 Boliviano note. The newcomers eye their bounty, savour a last intake breath as they lurch down, and begin judiciously disappearing it up their snouts, chattering and grunting between disjointed monologues that they might later call conversation.

Remains of the day - links that, for one reason or another, we just couldn't get a blog out