Week in books: Reality Hunger to Ten Stories About Smoking
Reality Hunger 11am Saturday 19th
Is the novel extinct? Has non-fiction and celebrity memoir filled the gap? For answers to those questions head to the Sheikh Zayed Theatre to hear Geoff Dyer, Robert Hudson and David Shields discuss the current state of fiction.
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, LSE, Houghton St, London, WC2A 2AE. FREE
Yarn Daytime Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th
Get yourself down to the appropriately named Book club for this illustrationarium and zine workshop. Let the inner doodler in you out and learn how to incorporate story telling with pictures.
The Book Club 100 Leonard St, London, EC2A 4RH. FREE
Stuart Evers Launch 7.30pm Wednesday 23rd February
Watch as Stuart Evers’s new collection of poetry, ‘Ten Stories About Smoking’, is interpreted into film, theatre, music and spoken word by artists including The Strumpettes, Quattro Formaggio, Verity Flecknell, The Android Angel and Camila Fiori.
Queen of Hoxton, 1 Curtain Rd, London, EC2A 3JX. £5
Book Slam 7.30pm Thursday 24th
One of the big guns on the spoken word scene plays host to Orange Prize winner Andrea Levy and David Levithan with music from Eska.
The Tabernacle, Powis Square, London, W11 2AY. £10
19 Feb 2011
Street Art View launched: Vandalism goes mainstream
This will interest all lovers of street art/graffiti/visual clutter. It’s basically Google Street View but with interesting bits of street art from around the world tagged and categorised. Shoreditch features heavily, as you might guess, but this is a global project so the best of Sao Paulo and Manhattan are there too. You can add your favourites and thus contribute to the common good, if you are of the fashionable belief that these doodles sit at the apex of our generation’s artistic achievement.
19 Feb 2011
Week's end wind up
Before you go down the pub, catch-up on everything that you have missed this week:
The Scoop
The chaps and chapettes at SE13ZURE have this to say about Snipe’s new Scoop site: The Scoop is shaping up to be a really good source of serious London journalism. See for yourself.
- Assembly member attacks foot tunnel ‘incompetence’
- Lewisham Council pushes through library closures
- Lambeth Council leader broke standards rules
- Woolwich set for Crossrail station after all
- Thames Cable Car delayed following crash fears
- Boris Johnson’s electric car revolution loses its spark
- Ken takes lead over Boris in Mayoral race
We’ve also set up a tipline: email the Scoop team at scoop@snipe.at if something in your Borough needs the harsh light of a moderately-trafficked website upon it.
In Art, Lauren Down has a week’s worth of amazing art picks. and we take a look at the next four years on the Fouth Plinth of Trafalgar Square.
In Books, Jon Davis discusses The 18th Century, putting the pornography into poetry
In The Metropolis, Michael Pollitt rounds-up the best Internet memes of the week, helps you win every argument, and we approve—approve!—of something Toby Young did.
But lastly, before you’re off, take a moment to listen to a week of Tom Jenkin’s lovingly curated MPFree’s.
MPFrees-18Feb2011 by snipelondon
18 Feb 2011
Interpretation of Memes: Royal Wedding Sick Bags, and the rest of the week's internet
Words of the Week
“I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women, though, they’re all ‘crazy.’ I have a suspicion—and hear me out, because this is a rough one—that the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.” Tina Fey tells it like it is in the New Yorker [£].
Childish product of the week
Some wag has designed a Royal Wedding Sick bag. You will either find this very funny or very stupid. We say: off with their heads! [Via Creative Review]
Joyous juxtaposition of the week
Jeff Mangum, of incomparable 90s indie geniuses Neutral Milk Hotel, is going to be rocking Butlins Minehead this December. This is incredible news, in so many ways. [Via Spinner]
Sundries
We loved this very quick, very cheap, gorgeous looking starter. Be generous with the chili and lemon, it can take it.
The sports nerd in us really got off on discovering this tool from ESPN. Click on Tactical Formation, then Average Position, and then bore your friends to tears with an analysis of Jack Wilshere’s effectiveness in a deep lying midfield role.
Oh look, it’s ten of the best new toys from the American Toy Fair. Includes a massive stuffed Angry Bird, inevitably.
And finally, snakes used to have legs. This just makes them more creepy, in our opinion.
18 Feb 2011
Bizness by Tune-yards
Listening to Tune-Yards for the first time encourages post-first-kiss sensations: awkwardness, confusion; the feeling that your world has turned ever so slightly on its axis. Trying to pigeonhole California based Merrill Garbus’ sound is nigh on impossible – Sub-Saharan African rhythms, soulful horns, R ‘n’ B vocals…imagine Everything Everything, Dexy’s and Barrington Levy marooned in the Congolese bush, writing songs in exchange for food. A touch of Dirty Projectors perhaps?
As a pre-cursor to the release of second album Who Kill (out April 18th on 4AD), you can download a new track, ‘Bizness’, for free via the Tune-Yards website. Catch Merrill and band at the Scala, June 8th.
18 Feb 2011
London agenda for Friday 18 February
1. Get tied up in The Yarn Festival at the Book Club and Queen of Hoxton [Le Cool]
2. Celebrate electronic music and arts in Croydon [Run Riot]
3. Hear some dark drama and religious grime with Young Buffalo, Our Mountain, Family, The Rifle Volunteer [London Gigs]
4. Dine at Cafe Boheme [Tired of London]
5. Celebrate the 5th Birthday of the Old Queen’s Head [Flavorpill]
6. Consider the Rhombicuboctahedron [Lauren Down]
18 Feb 2011
Assembly member attacks foot tunnel 'incompetence'
Greenwich Council has been accused of “incompetence” by a London Assembly member after formally closing the Greenwich Foot Tunnel without telling its users.
The claim comes at it emerges the Labour council’s leader Chris Roberts refused to answer questions from deputy transport committee chair – and Liberal Democrat – Caroline Pidgeon about the foot tunnel, telling her to speak to a Labour assembly member instead.
The link between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, which is undergoing refurbishment work on its stairwells, was formally closed on 4 February after its increasingly-unreliable lifts finally packed up after months of almost-daily closures for breakdowns. It is not expected to reopen until 25 February, when the stairs are due to reopen and the lifts will be replaced.
Used by thousands of pedestrians each day, the tunnel is also one of only 24-hour cycle crossings east of Rotherhithe Tunnel. The other, at Woolwich, is also closed after its refurbishment – also overseen by Greenwich Council – hit other problems.
Stranded cyclists have to pay to use the Thames Clippers boat service or take a lengthy diversion via Tower Bridge or the Woolwich Ferry.
Greenwich is one of just two London councils to publish a weekly newspaper, which it distributes to all homes in the borough. But despite closing one of its best-known transport links, there was no space in Greenwich Time to pass on the news, and no information on the closure on the council website until yesterday.
When news of the refurbishment works emerged in summer 2009, rumours of a 10-month closure spread without being publicly checked by the council.
When Caroline Pidgeon wrote to Chris Roberts to find out what the situation was, the council leader responded by saying he was in regular contact with the Labour assembly member for Greenwich and Lewisham, Len Duvall, and she should speak to him on the matter.
“I am sure that once tenders for the works have been received and a detailed plan developed, Len will be able to update you at that time,” he wrote in September 2009.
A more recent letter to Roberts, sent on 10 February, has so far gone unanswered.
Despite Roberts’ reluctance to speak to a member of a rival political party on the matter, Greenwich’s foot tunnel closures have also been criticised by Labour figures, including Greenwich & Woolwich MP Nick Raynsford and assembly members Val Shawcross and John Biggs.
Pidgeon told The Scoop this morning: “It was bad enough that Greenwich Council was so dismissive of pedestrians and cyclists before the work started on improvements to the Greenwich foot tunnel.
“Yet sadly their recent record in keeping people informed about the opening hours of the tunnel has reached new depths of incompetence.
“To suddenly close such an important route without proper publicity simply shows a total disregard for the many pedestrians and cyclists who rely on this vital link.”
A Greenwich Council spokesperson responded this afternoon: “The work was planned in consultation with cyclists, traders and tunnel users and a schedule of work was put in place to enable pedestrians and cyclists to use the lifts while the stairs are being renewed, and vice versa. Alternative means of crossing the river were put in place for all but a few hours each week.
“Regrettably, the Council has now had to take the decision to close the Greenwich Foot Tunnel temporarily while refurbishment work on the stairs is completed.
“Greenwich Council apologises for the inconvenience caused to users. We wish to stress that this is very much a temporary situation with the newly refurbished stairs expected to reopen by the end of February.”
18 Feb 2011
Toby Young presents a reading list for his school that any pinko would love
Professional grump Toby Young has released a suggested reading list for his proposed free school in the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. And you know what? Young is a big ol’ softie after all.
Instead of the loopy individualism of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, the little dears will be reading about tolerance and understanding in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Emil and the Detectives.
Is the Bible on the list? Nope, but Catholic-bashing His Dark Materials sure is. Unless you count the homoerotic bible, Beau Geste.
All in all, it’s a pretty cool list for the 11-12 year-olds that will be attending the school. (It’s only Year 7s to begin, and even then, 445 have applied for its 120 places.)
17 Feb 2011
Silver Screen (Young Montana remix) by Beat Connection
Seattle duo Beat Connection release their debut single,Silver Screen, on February 28th via Tender Age/Moshi Moshi. The b-side is a glitchy, experimental re-mix by Coventry’s Young Montana – Mary Anne Hobbs’ favourite unsigned artist of 2010. Were it not for the heavily treated vocal sample, it would bear almost no resemblance to the original, which is kind of the way a re-mix should be. You can catch Young Montana at XOYO on March 19th. Beat connection will be embarking on a short tour of the UK in May, following the release of their mini-album ‘Surf Noir’ in April.
Beat Connection – Silver Screen (Young Montana Remix) by snipelondon
17 Feb 2011
The Next Four Years of The Fourth Plinth
The mixture of Politics, Art and Tourism that plagues the infamous ‘Fourth Plinth’ has become a recipe for uninspired projects and creative apathy so says Charlotte Simmonds.
17 Feb 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
© 2009-2026 Snipe London.