108 | 241 | 309 - London buses

I've been reading the Route1to499 bus blog for some months now. Ben - who writes it - is trying to travel on all London's bus routes. He'll be doing this until 2012.

The idea tickled me, so I asked Ben to accompany him on some trips. So today, me and he went on three routes (108, 241, 309) from the grimy / glittering heights of Lewisham to buzzy-with-anticipation Stratford, from there to down at heel Canning Town, and finally from there through the residential heart of Tower Hamlets to Bethnal Green.

Some highlight sights were:

• The Las Vegas-esque sign outside Lewisham library
  
  
• A street called The Squirrels
  
  
• The church of St Margaret's, Lee (I like the punctuation)
  
  
• The Blackheath Conservatoire of Music (built in 1896)
  
  
• The zigzagging Blackwall Tunnel
  
  
• Planes landing at London City Airport

Overall, it was an interesting trip, and really made me realise how amazing London's buses are. 

There was nothing outstanding about these three routes: they were ordinary, work-a-day trips. But the very fact that they exist is brilliant.

Futebol! Football with London's Portuguese fans.

Last night, I went to South Lambeth Road to watch Portugal play Hungary and cheer along with the Portuguese fans.

London's Portuguese football watching venues have been written about before, but I've been wanting to go since I went to Portugal earlier this year. I wanted to see if the food would be any better than the not-so-tasty Portuguese fare.

All the bars along the road were showing either the Portugal match or the that and the England match (and any other match they could fit in).

The first bar - Estrella - was all very animated. People were happily chatting and drinking, but not really paying too much attention to the match. A middle-aged woman sat in the corner reading a book.

A man with a crutch came in, making a lot of bluster and noise while ordering his beer. When Portugal scored soon after, he dropped the crutch, jumped about, did a little dance with his arms aloft. So much for the crutch!

He later started talking to me (in Portuguese). When he realised that I wasn't from Portugal, he started to tell me a very rambling story about Coimbra University. It was fascinating!


At half-time, I took myself off to a second bar - Grelha D'Ouro - with more fans watching, chatting and not really paying great attention. One complained (in English) that the Portuguese players were just wasting time. Another kept trying to engage me in conversation, in Portuguese. It was all very social.

The match continued on, but it was rather dull (or is it that I don't actually like football that much?).

And, for the record, although I didn't actually eat, the food all looked pretty similar.

Piłka nożna! Football with London's Polish fans.

I went to watch Saturday's Poland -v- Northern Ireland soccer match with Polish fans, at the White Eagle Social Club in Balham.

Many, many fans - mainly male - had gathered there to watch the game. I entered into a big ballroom - which was almost dark - with a screen at one end, and about 100 fans watching the match. Moments later, green disco lights came on, and I saw that the room had chandeliers, records hanging from the ceiling and tinselly curtains. How fabulous.

Moments later, a burly man wearing glowsticks around his neck walked past. How curious.

The match itself was quite boring, only made interesting by watching the Polish manager who had the arch facial expressions of a grand Shakespearean actor.

Half-time brought adverts for Nivea, Nike, Orange & Volkswagen (every country is the same), and one for a flavour powder that is sprinkled on food called Smack (every country is not the same).

I wandered to the lounge (with charming blue chenile draped in front of lamps) to watch the second half. In fact, my eyes wandered to the fit bouncer outside rather than the less-than-exciting match. As Poland equalised, the fans cheered loudly, and continued to do so, even as the match limped home to a boring draw.

Australia, sketched

I went to Regents Park on Saturday in the hope of asking those there watching the Ashes cricket match between England and Australia to draw maps of Australia.

Despite being initally unusure I'd do it (people sitting very close to one another makes it difficult to approach), I met 16 great people all of whom drew a map, which superimposed, becomes:



The maps were drawn by: Michelle, Sam, Dan, Chris, Andrew, Taryn and Dane from Australia, Charles from South Africa, and Rob, Daniel, Phil, Ailsa, Laura, Craig, Luke and Rebecca from the UK.

Here are their maps, individually:

Sketch maps of Latin America

I went to Carnaval del Pueblo a few weeks ago with my map sketch pad in hand. It's the largest Latin American carnival in Europe. After watching the parade, I spent time in Burgess Park looking for people to ask to draw a map of Latin America.

Lots of lovely people obliged me. I collected 26 maps - I've superimposed 17 of those on top of each other to create this map:



The maps were drawn by: Paula from Argentina, David from Israel, Renato from Brazil, Anthony from Australia, Robin from Colombia, Itala from Brazil, Ivan from Ecuador, German from Colombia, Marcia from Brazil, Angel from Brazil, Jean Bryan from Bolivia, Claudia from Brazil, Simone from Brazil, Adolfo from Brazil, Matt from UK, Natasha from UK, Arianna from Italy, Lisbet from Cuba, Justin from USA, Germaine from UK, Roberto from Puerto Rica, Marcos from Cyprus, Dhannshka from Sri Lanka, Adriana from Colombia, Freddy from Ecuador & Leyre from Spain.

Thanks to all of them! When I started to superimpose these, I found that between 10 and 15 maps work best (26 is way too many!). I had to leave a few out of these, simply as they were too cluttered.

These are the maps individually:

Next: Maps of Australia by Ashes cricket watchers, and I'm going to attempt to superimpose some very differnt maps of South-East Asia

Roma twitter

When I was in Rome, I made a special trip to see a small, almost ignored statue in the corner of a small square. It's called Pasquino, and is in Piazza di Pasquino.

The ancient statue, which probably dates to the 3rd century BC, was dug up when paving part of Rome. In 1501, on April 25, Saint Mark's Day, a cardinal draped the statue in a toga, and attached epigrams in Latin to it.

A custom soon arose for those who wanted to criticize the Pope or individuals in his government to write satirical poems in broad Roman dialect and attach them to this statue.

Pasquino was, thus, Rome's first talking statue (and many more appeared), and a neat Roman-style Twitter. Even today, satirical notes are attached to the statue.

Ace poster

Ace poster by Rupert Meats on sale as part of Print Club's London summer show, Secret Blisters.


Buy the poster here

Jonas Bendiksen - Satellites - photography of unrecognised states

I recently saw Satellites, an exhibition of photography by Jonas Bendiksen at the PM House & Gallery in Ealing.

Satellites is about states that do not actually exist, particularly those in the former Soviet region. When the USSR broke up in the 1990s, 15 'new' countries emerged. However, political and ethnic tensions also led to a number of less well-known and unrecognised states, such as Abkhazia and Transdniester.

Bendiksen spent seven years journeying in these places, culminating in an amazing set of photographs.

I especially liked the photos which showed solitary individual figures set in huge, vast landscapes, like these below. The first shows a little girl (you can barely see her) amongst large Soviet-style buildings. The second shows Tanya, a babooshka, outside large Soviet blocks of flats.

The impression was of these small, unrecognised nations trying to find their way amongst big super-powers and massive international and global structures.




Equally fascinating, and on the same theme, were his images of local people in the area where rockets and spacecraft are crashed in the Kazakh steppe. Locals here pillage the craft for scrap. Again, they seem like solitary people getting by in vast structures.



The exhibition continues until 9 August. Satellites is also available as a book.

Grace Jones, Somerset House

Last night I went to see Grace Jones in concert at Somerset House - it was amazing. There was a costume change for every song, or rather I should say a hat change. She was wearing a fabulous set of hats. They included:

• a fascinator feather with alien bug-eye lights
• full-moon centurion style circle
• Hat in the shape of Angor Wat
• Space age Virgin Mary get-up in a washing machine extraction tube
• Giant copper bowl with matching cymbals
• Bug-eyed alien mask
• Gold alopecia feathered Cleopatra
• Cabaret circus ring master
• A diamond-encrusted cocoon
• Big leaf, with Zaha Hadid style swoop
• Bug tentacles & antelope horns
• Flashing blue sunglasses
• Disco ball bowler hat with lasers
• And finally she emerged wearing a Christmas decoration on her head.

Highlights of the night were when Grace exclaimed "Jesus! What's with the yellow light?" and "No fan's gonna fuck up my hula hoop" before hula-hooping while singing Slave to the Rhythm.

Here's a rubbish video of a little bit:

Shakira - Loba / She Wolf - amazing!

Shakira has a new song. It is amazing.



My review:

• Squelch disco.
• HORN!
• Disco
  
• Honking horn!
• Beeps!
• Shakira sounds like she's drunk on a vocoder.
• HORN!
• HORN!
• Spanish singing!
• Synth-laser!
• Head-flick.
• Ooh, quick fire rap-singing.
• Ugh grunt.
• Synth-laser! (head-flick.)
  
• High-as-the-sky chorus.
• "Ah-woooooooo!" wolf sound.
  
• Heavy breathing.
• HORN!
• More Spanish singing.
• Synth-laser
• Head-flick.
• Quick-fire & ugh.
  
• Chorus.
• HORN!
• "Ah-wooooooooooo!"
• Bridge = Ghetto-blaster humping moment.
• Breathing, breathing, breathing.
• Massive, OTT crescendo.
• More drunk vocoder.
• HORN!
• Synth-strings!
• Handclaps!
• HORN!
• Heavy breathing
  
  
• And it's called SheWolf. Brilliant. Even if it is crying out for a big gay hands-in-the-air remixing.
  

Tel Aviv Bauhaus building flash mob

Yesterday, I took part in a flash mob. I never thought I'd say that. What with summer downpours, it almost threatened to be a "flush mob". Boom boom.

The purpose of the flash mob - organised by the Jewish Community Centre in London - was to build a replica of a Tel Aviv Bauhaus-style building.

This is part of their celebrations of Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary. I had no idea that Tel Aviv was only 100 years old, originally founded on the outskirs of another town, Jaffa.

And as the city grew in the 1920s and 1930s, German Jewish architects introduced Bauhaus architecture to Tel Aviv. Now, Tel Aviv's White City, contains more than 5,000 Modernist-style buildings inspired by the Bauhaus school and Le Corbusier. Apparently, Tel Aviv has the world's largest concentration of Modernist-style buildings.

So, yesterday, in Hoxton Square, clad in pink hard-hats, around 20 people made blocks from cardboard boxes, some cardboard balconies and flowers from crepe paper, and our very own Bauhaus building, 17 Emile Zola Street

And then we demolished it.

There's another Tel Aviv bauhaus building flash mob event on July 12. Go, it's great fun.

Food & Meat-related tube stations

It's a quiet day in our office, and a conversation about Swimbeldon turns turns meatily to Gambledon and a whole afternoon of foody pun fun.

Puns are good.

• Turnpike Loin
• Aldgate Yeast
• Banger Lane
• Parsnip Green
• Elephant & Custard
• Euston Squash
• Bacon Street
• Brent Cress
• Charring Cress
• Mill Hill Feast
• Arnos Grape
• Ladbrook Gravy
• Marrow-on-the-hill
• Bean Park
• Green Pork
• New Crisp Gate
• Turnip Green
• Kings Cross St Parsnip
• Snout Kensington
  
• Hamden Town
• Whitechipolata
  
• Mansion Grouse
• Offal
• Turnip Green
• Maida Veal
  
• Shepherds Pie Market
• Piccalilli Circus
• Marrowlebone.
• Brussel square
• Mint-Imperial Wharf
• Old meat
• Lan-pasta Gate
• Sprout Kensington
• High-berry & Ice-cream-ton
• Oxford Circus-cous
• West-Mince-ter
• Pimmslico
• Chutney bridge
• Seven shish-ters
  

Any more?

Walbrook - London is a river city

I took part in Amy Sharrocks' artwork Walbrook on Friday, a walk which recreated the course of London's underground and lost Walbrook river. About 30 people, all wearing blue, were tied together and walked the course of the river from Islington to Cannon Street Bridge.

Amy spoke before the walk about us being water: we were tied in formation resembling the molecular structure of water, and we, as humans, are 90% water. In this walk, we were water in the form of a river. Her artworks deal with how Londoners interact with water.

As we set off, I found that, rather than learning a lot about where we went through, the geography of the city was slipping past. I was talking and learning about other people in 'the river' - almost oblivious to what was going on around us.

Maybe all rivers do that. They flow silently, unseeingly through landscapes, especially cities. People are busy building over and around them, on their banks, but the rivers unknowingly continue flowing, doing what they do.

I noticed placenames with watery connotations, but they slid past. I was able to photograph some, some I missed.

The experience really resembled being a river - our sense of onward momentum was very strong, the movement like a river current.

The blue elastic ribbons holding us together were sinuous - at one point I was wrapped and surrounded, later I only had two ribbons tied behind me. It moved around silently, unbeknownst to me, like water when you swim.

We set off with a great pace, slowed at some points and sped up again. Having sluiced slowly through the city, we reached the Thames in silence.

99 cone

It's summer! Yesterday, I had a 99 cone - lovely ice-cream and flaky chocolate. Lovely.

I started to wonder, though, why is it called a 99? But, sadly, it seems, nobody really knows. The term was used as early as 1936 in a Cadbury's ad which said "Try a 99 ice cream with Cadbury's Dairy Milk Flake chocolate".

There are some wild theories, such as:

• There's an idea that the flake chocolate bar is exactly 99mm long, but everything back then was measured in imperial measures.
• Askeys, a cone-making company, made a cone stamped with "99"
• An Edinburgh ice cream maker called Arcari claim to have invented the treat in the 1920s and named it after the address of their shop at 99 Portobello High St.
• The initials of ice cream - IC - is one way to write 99 in Roman numerals... but the usual way is to write it as XCIX

Lots more interesting suggestions on Wikipedia and BBC.

Photographers Gallery

I recently submitted some images to the Photographers Gallery in London - not in any professional sense, but for a fun online gallery called Beautiful Disasters, which encourages anyone to upload images they have taken which went wrong, but have something beautiful about them.

I uploaded these two. The first is a building somewhere in the City seen, I think, from Bethnal Green road (or somewhere Hackney / Shoreditch) on a bright February afternoon. The photo came out blurry, but I really like the feeling of this being a balmy high-summer day, and the light reflecting on the building in the foreground.

The second shows blurred street lights in Cork city, around dusk. It wasn't as dark as the photo implies, but I love the effect of the sky and the light trails.

The gallery is now closed for uploads, but there are many interesting photos to look through.

I also noticed on their site a project called the The World in One City. It aims to take portraits of citizens living in London from all 205 world nations, to be displayed in time for the 2012 Olympics. Fantastic.

What's in San Marino

I've long wondered exactly what is in San Marino. Just what keeps such a small state afloat and what goes on there?

In my recent trip around Italy, I decided to stop overnight in San Marino. Perched high on a mountain, San Marino city overlooks the rest of the tiny republic. The San Marino flag features three towers on three peaks, the symbol of San Marino.

There are also a variety of tacky-sounding museums (the Museum of Torture, and the like). Mainly, it seems tourism is the prime industry here with souvenir shop after souvenir shop.

Sadly, when the final bus leaves at half past six, San Marino empties. I walked around the town, seeing closed shops, empty bars, empty cafés and empty restaurants. It was all rather disheartening.

Happily next morning, everything was busy again and San Marino seemed a happy place. So happy, indeed, that the police wear delightful mustard yellow shirts. Lovely San Marino.

футбол! Football with London's Bulgarian fans

Last night, I watched the Ireland -v- Bulgaria football match with Bulgarian fans, and pretended not to be Irish (bit like Lorraine from The Apprentice).

I went to two venues. Starting in Arda2, a restaurant in Finsbury Park, I joined 5 Bulgarian football fans to watch the match.

Two screens showed the match - one with Irish TV, and the other with Bulgarian TV. Oddly, the sound came from the Irish channel.

I began to question whether these guys actually were Bulgarian. Some of them seemed quite happy to see Ireland take the lead. Then, they were equally happy to see Bulgaria equalise. Add to that, they were speaking to each other in a mixture of English and another language (I can only assume it was Bulgarian).

It was, it's fair to say, a sedate affair - mainly as they sat drinking Coke & J2O and staring out the window.

At half time, I decided to leave the maybe-Bulgarians, and hot-footed it to Green Lanes to Juliana99. If Arda2 was sedate, Juliana99 was comatose. Two men sat inside watching the match in dead silence. The Bulgarian tv commentary was deadpan with a ridiculously low volume.

An old woman sat in the corner clucking and sucking her teeth.

Eventually a few more men arrived. I noted they were all snappy dressers with trendy jeans, designer jackets and t-shirts. The bar owner - in a loud Hawaiian shirt - rather let the side down.

The (boring) match ended in a draw, with the Bulgarians on TV barely cracking a smile. I hung around afterwards, hoping to hear some Bulgari-pop. But there was none. The bar just emptied out, leaving me to wonder where all London's Bulgarians are. Maybe they've been credit crunched?

Hey, Mr DJ

I'm DJing tonight, at London Media Gays in barcode. Should be an ace evening of retro and nu-pop! My last foray at DJing was playing foreign pop at the long-gone Club Contact, and I'm hoping to revive the foreign pop tradition tonight by playing lots of - now v trendy - ace Swedish pop, such as:

Velvet - Chemistry

Alcazar - Burning



Maybe Infernal - Redefinition

and, of course, Agnes Carlsson - Release Me

Map drawings of Ukraine by Yuliya, Switzerland by Lorena & Hungary by Felician and Lisa

One of my favourite things about Eurovision parties is the potential to meet others from different countries, especially if that country has an ace song. When Greece won in 2005, I celebrated with a Greek guy at my party and ended up talking to his elderly father (on the phone from Greece) about how brilliant Elena Paparizou had been.

This year, at Eurovision parties, I met people from Ukraine, Hungary and Switzerland, and asked them to draw maps of their countries for my EuroRevision project.

Yuliya, from Ukraine, drew her country. She was bemused by my request.

Lorenza, from Switzerland, was in high Eurovision spirits wearing fabulous gloves. She drew this map.

Finally, Felecian & Lisa drew this map of Hungary. Both had been in the UK for three years, initially moving here to find work.

Vroom with a View

While on holiday, I like to read something about the place I'm visiting. In Italy, I read Peter Moore's diverting Vroom with a View, his account of travelling from Milan to Rome on a 1960s Vespa.

Some facts I gleaned were:

• Vespas were named after the Italian for wasp.
  
  
• Vespas were designed as transport for ordinary Italians still reeling from the Second World War. The cost of a Vespa was, however, just a bit less than that of an average Italian salary. So, Piaggio (the manufacturer) came up with the idea of allowing their customers pay in instalments, which was a radical concept for the 1950s. Piaggio was the first European company to try this, and it paid off with more than half a million Vespas sold by 1953.
  
  
• The Italian phrase cugi - which means tacky or cheesy - comes from the phrase cugini di campagna 'your country cousins'