London agenda for Friday 8 June 2012

1. Watch the biennial anime festival at the BFI [Le Cool]

2. See over 30 circus, cabaret, and other weirdo act acts at this year’s Postcards Festival [Run Riot]

3. Discuss the film Mission to Lars, in which the family of an autistic guy tries to get Metallica’s Lars Ulrich to drop by. At the RItzy [Don’t Panic]

4. Time Out says that the Spitalfields Summer Festival begins today. So there’s that. [Time Out]

5. Dress for the pleasure gardens of the 18th Century [Ian Visits]

6. Embrace the London Festival of Photography [Tired of London]

Another Lover by Scott Rudd

Earlier in the week we brought you the video for this rather lovely, wistful ditty from Brooklynite Scott Rudd. You can now download the track in full below.

Scott will be touring the UK throughout July with singer-songwriter chum Jo Schornikow. For a full list of dates see his website.

Evening Standard goes all Daily Mail with "sexiest WAG" and "nude dominatrix" stories

“Melanie Slade has been voted the hottest WAG of England’s Euro 2012 squad – while Coleen Rooney came bottom of the poll.”

Thanks, Evening Standard! I’ve been wondering what the consensus was going to be about hot WAG this year.

Something is afoot on the Standard’s recently relaunched website.

Today we have the WAG story, which obviously doesn’t objectify women at all, headlined:

Pictures: Who has been voted sexiest WAG of Euro 2012?

While yesterday we were treated to the following story, whose headline was written in the strange language of SEO rather than English:

Lara Pulver Sherlock dominatrix nude scene wins her best actress nomination

It was, naturally, accompanied by a picture of Lara Pulver Sherlock dominatrix nude scene.

The Daily Mail-ification of London’s dedicated daily newspaper has begun. Hurrah!

See also:

London has chosen its Mayor, why can’t we chose our own media
The Evening Standard: even more pro-Boris than in 2008?

Posh, where the elite meet to eat and, eventually, rule

Welcome to The Riot Club, where the young elite assemble with a view to getting absolutely ‘Chateaued’ on fine wine. As bin liners are tied to each seat we prepare for the onslaught; a night of total drunken debauchery, Oxbridge style. Boris and Dave would be right at home amongst the japes and high-jinks of this lot. Nominally, the Riot Club is based on Oxford’s infamous and socially exclusive Bullingdon Club, but this is clearly more than just a Bullingdon satire.

With a change in government since Laura Wade’s Posh had its 2010 run at The Royal Court, the play, now at The Duke of York’s Theatre, reflects the new coalition government and the Greek economic crisis, providing a relevant and sometimes dark exploration of our obsession with class and class-consciousness. Further updates see the ensemble singing choirboy renditions of rnb hits such as Labrinth’s Earthquake, posh boys singing chart music could be considered cheap laughs but nevertheless—it was really funny. And, by the chortling and guffawing from the auditorium, the old boys had a jolly good evening out as well. But it’s the silence between the laughter that makes Wade’s play stand out. As things start to turn sour the boys transform from satirical toffs to antisocial yobs and an unsettled feeling quickly spreads through the auditorium.

With the lives of the privileged becoming increasingly being unveiled to the common folk through television screens and social media sites, Posh captures our Kate-and-Wills-loving-twitter-obsessed society. I was half expecting a new-gen royal or reality television star to trot in from the Kings Road. But jokes and the silly choirboy rapping aside, Posh raises serious social questions that Question Time isn’t answering.

Posh runs at The Duke of York’s Theatre until 4 August.

Tonight: Andrew Paul Regan

Cardiff-based indie maestro Andrew Paul Regan brings his new album, The Signal & The Noise, to London tonight for a release party. The record is a ten-track conceptual pop piece, based around the concept of white lies, untruths, assumptions and small deceptions. As subtle as it sounds, it rings true when you hear it – this is intelligent, literate songwriting at it’s very best.

He’s joined by Dad Rocks! and Mat Riviere. Doors are 7.30pm, it’s a fiver to get in, and the show is at Dalston’s new hipster café Power Lunches, on Kingsland Road.

Here’s a free song by each band.

London agenda for Thursday 7 June 2012

1. Discuss dystopian futures with Julianna Baggott, Martine McDonagh, and David Wingrove at the Post-Apocalyptic Book Club [Le Cool]

2. Listen to an Occupy Movement lawyer, Paul Randle-Jolliffe, introduce concepts of law at Passing Clouds [Run Riot]

3. Watch a ‘ white-hot band of ex-military blowers and Gypsy musicians from Bucharest kick serious brass’ at Mahala Rai Banda [Don’t Panic]

4. Talk to the Limehouse canal lockkeeper about the Olympics and East End Waterways [Ian Visits]

5. Visit the Garden of Disorientation [Tired of London]

Mayor Boris Johnson - "I could be president"

Mayor Boris Johnson was a guest on the eponymously-named US chatshow Late Night with David Letterman late night. Here’s his clip.

Spend your weekend at Maltby Street and Spa Terminus

Turn off Tower Bridge road onto Maltby Street, on a Saturday or Sunday morning, between 9am and 2pm and you’ll encounter a medium-sized throng of locals, foodies and their children enjoying the gastronomic delights of Maltby Street and Spa Terminus.

Hailed as the laid-back and less crowded alternative to Borough Market – although it is emphatically presented as a collection of rented trading spaces – the area has become home to a selection of independent food and drink retailers over the last few years.

The arches which house these businesses can be accessed from surrounding streets, funneling people to explore an otherwise unassuming and modest Southwark neighbourhood.

Highlights include:

1. custard doughnuts from St Johns Bakery on Druid Street;
2. pale Indian ales from Kernels Brewery on Rope Walk;
3. toasted cheese sourdough bread sandwiches from Kappacasein, off Spa road;
4. bresaola from the Ham and Cheese Company on Rope Walk;
5. peach and tarragon ice cream from La Grotta Ices, outside Monmouth Coffee on Maltby Street;
6. Smoked sausages, from Topolski Polish Foods, Druid Street.

Whilst most of the arches are closed to the public during the week, Gergovie Wines, at 40 Maltby Street is now open on two evenings of the week, when it is transformed into a bar, serving artisan wines from Italy, France and Slovenia with plates of food.

The edible supplies on offer have also attracted the curious to the tardis-like and probably haunted, Tower Bridge Antiques warehouse, an essential destination for people seeking character furnishings, spanning the last two centuries.

For those ready for more browsing, the adjacent warehouse space is also home to a regular bric-a-brac and curios stall and a Dutch bicycle vendor.

Maltby Street and Spa Terminus

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Photo by Robert Brook

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Wanted in London: a football pub for the connoisseur

Where are the best pubs in London to watch Euro 2012? If you have any interest in drinking and football, you will probably have a personal list of acceptable venues which possess the minimum requirements of a.) having a screen and b.) selling beer.

This may be adequate. But is it really enough?

What if you’re really interested in football?

The sort of person who once completed a Panini stickers album.

The sort of person whose idea of scintillating conversation is attempting to name all the members of the 1993/4 Swindon Town Premier League squad.

The sort of person who owns a Seattle Sounders away kit for no good reason at all.

For you the traditional football pub, with flags in the window and beer on the floor, doesn’t quite do the job. A summary of limitations offensive to your refined sensibility might include:

• A limited selection of the coarser lagers
• Insufficient seating
• No audible match commentary, meaning your apposite punditry cannot be reinforced by official statistics. You also miss out on the thrill a talented commentator’s cadence can lend to a significant moment. (“It’s a great run by Michael Owen…and he might finish it off…OHHHHHHH he’s scored a WONderful goal!”)
• People cheering goals and behaving excitably, rather than cooly analysing the tactical context
• A generally loud atmosphere, precluding reasoned conversation in which you can show off your knowledge of Serie B

What would an ideal pub look like? Seating would be plentiful, the match commentary loud. Each table would be equipped with its own chalkboard so you could bore your companions with alternative tactical setups. Cerebral conversation would be encouraged at the expense of base passions such as excitement and joy.

If you know of such a pub, or a close approximation, please get in touch.

Suggestions to @mikpollitt, or leave them in the comments
Image by Ruth_W on Flickr under Creative Commons

How should London light its Olympic flame?

Beijing had a gymnast racing urgently round the stadium roof. Sydney had Cathy Freeman lighting the cauldron through a wall of water. Barcelona had an archer shooting a flaming arrow across the sky. All three were potent dramatisations of their nations’ state of being: China’s ceaseless striving; Australia’s coming together from a troubled past; Spain’s innate sense of drama and, since the archer missed, of Manuelish incompetence. Don’t mind them, they’re from Barcelona.

London’s options appear to be thin on the ground. In order to capture the polite self-deprecation of our traditional national character, the ceremony should really begin with a nameless administrator in a suit casually ambling up to the cauldron, fumbling in his pocket then turning to the crowd to say “I’m terribly sorry, does anyone have a lighter?”.

But that wouldn’t hit any YouTube shareability targets, so something grander is required. And, living as we do in the austerest of times, surely using material already in place is the way to go. You might think that the missiles which are planned for the common at Blackheath and atop blocks of flats in Bow and Waltham Forest are a bit of an Olympic fun-blocker. It’s a fear the authorities share. In the immortal words of Col. John Campbell, one of the military men responsible for the missiles, “we’re trying to de-militarise this and let the sport do the talking.” But while a de-militarised Olympics might sound superficially attractive, it misses a great opportunity.

Because just imagine the fun when a missile, packed not with explosives but with the Olympic flame itself, is fired with pinpoint accuracy into the heart of the cauldron, and the London 2012 Olympic Games begin with a bang!

Picture the spectacle, it’s made for TV. Start with a close up of the soldiers placing the sacred Olympic missile carefully into the launcher. Cut to expectant faces in the stadium crowd. Cue helicopter shots of the missile leaving the launcher and arching toward its target, and cue Elgar to accompany the ecstatic climax as the cauldron bursts into flame, and the Games of the 30th Olympiad get officially underway.

This may seem far-fetched. But then the Olympics have a habit of throwing perspective out of the window.

For not only do the games have their own military hardware, they have their own territory to go with it. Aside from the sites at Stratford, Woolwich and elsewhere, there’s Leyton Marsh, where a temporary basketball training complex is currently going up on Metropolitan Open Land. That’s public land, to you and me, upon which any building is supposed to be tightly controlled. The loud protests of local people who thought the land belonged to them have been ignored.

And the Olympics have their own law, the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006. This is the legislation demanded by the IOC when London was awarded the games, and it’s this law which might restrict you from entering the stadium with a political statement on your T-shirt, and stops corner shops putting Olympic rings in their windows in case Coca Cola gets upset. To aid the drafting of this law, the IOC helpfully sent the government a document setting out their “Requirements on Brand Protection” which included the following thought:
bq. “…the burden of proof could possibly be reversed so that the defendant is presumed to have violated the law by using such signs and identifications, unless he can show that his actions have not created a link to the Games”.

In other words: guilty until proven innocent! Thankfully this was one IOC requirement which didn’t make it into British law. Which is just as well seeing as it would have undermined hundreds of years of thinking about the most basic human rights.
So the Olympics have their own weapons, their own land, and their own law. Throw in their own language (the O2 translates into North Greenwich Arena, sponsors translate into partners) and you might be forgiven for thinking the Olympics amount to a state all of their own. And an unpleasantly authoritarian state at that.

If all this sounds like churlish griping, it is. From the moment that missile crashes into the cauldron and the Olympics get underway, I’ll enjoy watching the events and supporting the athletes.But I don’t believe that these games belong to the people, or the athletes, or the city. We belong to them.

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Twitter: @MikPollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com