london

pretty sure this level of police cordon is ott for some dude with a couple of cans of camping gas. it's all the way up to euston road now

and if i had taken lunch half an hour later i would have had a half day off. damn

any sign of boris in a bomb suit yet?

sky are reporting he just threw some files from the window. soon he'll be on to the paper clips.

that's our boris

Hostage-taker now arrested by police, so I guess that's that then.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17869815
Throwing computers out of a window.

― ILX uh-huh-uh uh-huh uh-huh BEEP BOOP BOOP BEEP (snoball), Friday, April 27, 2012 1:14 PM (2 hours ago)

did he want to make something real

Ha!

I think I can hear Yaz, actually.

can't believe I survived that ordeal. i think i might try and get myself on BBC news and maybe write an autobiography

Ordeal? Sainsbury's curry isn't absolutely pukka, but it's not that bad.

My eyewitness report indicates tottenham c road is still closed, with a pile of assorted rubbish on the street. However, I am in Sainsbury's RIGHT NOW.

Meanwhile, the New York Times discovers a mysterious land called East London and would like to let you know about it:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/travel/36-hours-in-east-london.html

9 a.m.
4. ETHNIC BREAKFAST

lol ethnic meaning beigel bake

Head north on Shoreditch High Street until you hit Regent’s Canal, nearing its 200th anniversary and once used to transport goods around the city. On the lively pedestrian and cycling path, walk under arched low bridges and take in the varied architecture.

Though the hottest East London club is always a moving target, you’re safe starting explorations at Hoxton Square.

they rly are str8 trolling

, nearing its 200th anniversary and once used to transport goods around the city

as canals are wont to be employed

lol ethnic meaning beigel bake

for the NEW YORK times lest we forget

lol @ how they couldn't be bothered to leave shoreditch

* Bill
* Auburn, CA
Unless you've been to London several times, I would not recommend going to the East End. Almost all the main tourist sites are in The City and Westminster.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/travel/31hours.html

urgh the queen of hoxton

11:45 p.m.
5) LAST CALL AT LEICESTER SQUARE

Anyone turned off by the charmlessness of Times Square in New York, best regarded as a place that you hurriedly pass through on your way to somewhere else, might be amazed at the late-night vibrancy of Leicester Square, in the heart of the West End. Though the specific elements don't amount to much — a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, a couple of movie theaters, and nightclubs with doormen who are alternately entreating and threatening — it all comes together to create a lively gathering spot for 20-somethings spilling out of nearby pubs by around 11 p.m., most of whom clearly don't want the night to end. It's a sometimes chaotic party scene that lasts until 2:30 a.m. or so, when everyone starts heading home on the early-morning buses that fan out from central London.

speechless.

speechless!

Anyone turned off by the charmlessness of Times Square in New York, best regarded as a place that you hurriedly pass through on your way to somewhere else, might be turned off by the charmlessness of Leicester Square, best regarded as a place that you hurriedly pass through on your way to somewhere else.

Would rather stick a knife in my face than spend a second in Leicester Square.

I always eyeroll at people who think that gentrified Hackney is the x1 place to spend your holiday in London but then again NYT tourist pieces about our fair capital are pretty much my favourite pieces of terrible tourist writing.

This has nothing on their recommendation that American tourists check out New Cross and Deptford. Like I can vaguely see the appeal of going to New Cross if it is going to persist in turning itself into Dalston south of the river but I can't imagine what even the most insufferable of fairweather exoticism-seeking Yank tossers would gain from rocking up on Deptford Broadway on a Saturday night.

I ate at beigel bake tonight guys

You ethnicist

Leicester square was once described as the closest thing London had to a European style piazza or square. On a quiet sunny early morning you can still just about see it if you squint a bit. That was near on 100 years ago now tho. place is a purgatorial shithole at any other time of day, esp Friday night.

To be fair the first piece is specifically about east London, definitely some weird ideas but they do recommend some good stuff.

The canal is sort of ugly I guess, I have visions of terrified Americans walking it at night, but on a sunny day it is a pretty nice walk.

I know this has come up before but I don't think it's weird to use east as your base for seeing London.

that leicester square thing is surely a piss-take SURELY

xxp yeah it's just like any pedestrianised shopping precinct now

the bit between leicester square and piccadilly circus might actually be my least favourite stretch of road in the entire city

Thrill to the shabby faded shittiness of the Capital Radio building!

(used to walk past it every day on my way to work and think to myself 'Chris Tarrant used to work here? Fucking figures...')

Leicester square at night too! It is truly the most horrible atmosphere of anywhere I've ever been. And you'd struggle to find a good pub.

i know right, there are no pubs on the square and very few even near it!

i am SURE the writer must have been somewhere else and got the name wrong

The pubs near Leic Sq are the worst. Packed, standing room only (they take the chairs and table out to fit more people in), full of shrieking office worker twunts.

Soho I could understand at a push. I feel bad for even one poor tourist who specifically times their trip to Leicester Square for 11! It's like somebody told him that as a joke, such a precise recipe for disgust.

why no bloomsbury

Leicester Sq was half dug up for crossrail when I was there recently, made it even more of a dump. Getting harassed for comedy nights.. the pickpocketing.. Most amusing is the article suggests you finish at Moro and go there afterwards.. I think even a cabbie would deter you from that option.

Yeah it's nice around Moro! There are plenty good pubs there.

I know this has come up before but I don't think it's weird to use east as your base for seeing London.

Nothing wrong with using east as your base, but I think its good to see a variety of the rest of London e.g. Regents Park, Hampstead, Chelsea, Soho, Fitzrovia, The Thames embankment/Tate Modern/Southwark, rather than staying in the east.

I personally find that for all the cultural vibrancy, the east is aesthetically grim in a way that depresses me if I stay in it too long.

Yeah it's about variety. The other thing about East London is once you get past Shoreditch and Bethnal Green then it becomes kinda difficult to get to other places, or certainly more difficult than I would want it to be on a brief trip to the city. I'd probably still recommend people go out there in the evening certainly over Leicester Square or the fucking King's Road or wherever but it's still just one part of London.

The area around Exmouth Market/Moro is lovely and both the food and drinking all around there are fantastic but I barely even think of Clerkenwell as East London at all, although I suppose it is technically. But yeah going from there to Leicester Square would just be a bizarre choice, weird they even mentioned Leicester Square at all and not, y'know, Soho two minutes up the road.

I suppose the thing with Bloomsbury is that it's tourist central in some ways and it's lovely and peaceful to just wander round during the day but a bit of a desert, food and drink wise, by night.

Also Slocki are you coming to Todd Terje tonight? In London's brutalist Elephant & Castle you will find an edge that many believe has disappeared from much of New York altogether.

A lot of my friends stay east when they visit (not on my rec either!) and I think it's cos they get an idea of how their friends who live here live.

Like personally I don't care about actual tourist destinations, would rather good restaurants and bars.

I definitely agree there are prettier places than parts of east London, I guess I'm saying I can completely see how some people really should base themselves east, it's one type of holiday.

On the transport thing, walking surely is the way to get around east? Like for young people... maybe less attractive if you're not with someone who knows the area.

Yeah it depends on the kind of trip you want, I maybe wouldn't recommend walking everywhere round East London because a) it's kinda big and a lot of the better places are pretty spaced out and b) the potential to wander off the beaten track and end up somewhere either really boring or just intimidating if you don't know the city is pretty high? But I suppose that's the case with a lot of London. Personally I'd want to be at least a short walk from a Tube station really.

Re: the canal it's actually really pretty if you follow it further West, round Islington but also the stretch between Little Venice and Camden Lock is wonderful.

in any city get the damn bus and go explore

(Part of the reason why the "hey, check out Deptford!" article is so lolworthy is that a lot of Deptford is really quite dark and empty at night, I don't know why you'd recommend anyone going there for a night out, especially having flown several thousand miles).