london

I wonder if there are cultural centres to check out. Certainly South Korea and Japan do some work in showing more films in London.

Keep an eye on this page for later in the year? https://www.filmafrica.org/

I see also that the Japanese embassy (?) is running events again, looks like you can go see this for free: https://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/JAPANUKEvent/event/2022/202207/10-JHL-Film-TheHiddenFortress.html and also the events calendar there are other film screenings you can attend, some online but most not.

i've heard the actual japanese embassy has some strange entry requirements (a passport? something like that). oh but that's Japan House, which is just a shop, so probably won't.

i always mean to see it the polish centre in hamersmith is screening anything interesting. website looks dead(ish) though.

Thanks for the recs - to be clear I am less interested in govt curated festival circuit arthouse type stuff (well not "less interested" just have a better grasp of that stuff) and more about grass roots popular cinema hitting rooms to cater to local immigrant groups.

Anyone made themselves an itinerary for a London visit recently?

Arriving into Marylebone and then walking to Ottolenghi's NOPI (Warwick Street, W1B 5NE).

What's good around? (I know that's a vague question, depending on taste).

What kind of recommendations are you after?

A major Cezanne exhibition opens at Tate Modern tomorrow if that’s your thing.

I heard about that on the radio this morning and it sounds like a really interesting selection of works.

The Wallace Collection, one of my favourite medium-sized galleries in the UK, will be a pleasant stroll down Marleybone High St

Last time I went to London (after a long break, having previously lived there), I really enjoyed just mooching around and finding new shops and cafes and (forgotten rather than new) pubs, so I was being deliberately vague, gyac. I do just quite like wandering across a city.

Ok thanks for the clarification

The Lucien Freud exhibition at the National Gallery looks pretty special.

I saw a notice for the Lucien Freud exhibition but ooft, £25 seems like a lot?

My farty answer to your question, djh, is to map something using Nairn's London and go from there.

That's not a bad call.

Slightly random thought: does Bradley's Spanish Bar still exist?

it absolutely does yes

and the other spanish bar does too

"Last time I went to London (after a long break, having previously lived there), I really enjoyed just mooching around and finding new shops and cafes and (forgotten rather than new) pubs, so I was being deliberately vague, gyac. I do just quite like wandering across a city."

I used to live in London as well, and one of the things that surprised me about returning every now and again was how walkable it was. How close together it was. When I lived there I used the underground to go everywhere, so I never had a sense of how the topside fitted together. The topside. Allabove. Upthere. The sunside. It was a mythical place, the allabove. In the downbelow it was safe and clean. Aboveground was scary, and blinding. It had cars!

I worked in Kilburn, and I remember being surprised that I could e.g. walk to Camden Town after work. One day it dawned on me that I was just around the corner from what was then the Saatchi Gallery and Abbey Road. And a famous modernist / brutalist housing estate:
https://goo.gl/maps/nHwrYgkSx8uJz38w9

I remember thinking "one day I must go there" and one day I did. I looked at a paper map and worked out a route. I still remember it. The last time I visited I essentially walked from Waterloo Station to Notting Hill and back, via Hyde Park and South Kensington, which (looking at the map) is about four miles each way but on the flat. It looks odd without posters of the last two Hunger Games films all over the place. They really went to town advertising that film. London feels empty without Jennifer Lawrence peering at me. And Cara Delevingne.

Er, where to go? The Science Museum's IMAX cinema periodically shows actual films. Not just documentaries about Hubble and seals. I remember going to a double-bill of The Terminator and Robocop a while back. At the Science Museum. Why did the Science Museum show those films? Because they both had robots in them. "But technically they're cyborgs" - the Terminator is not a cyborg. Even if it was a cyborg the Hunter-Killers at the beginning of the film are robots. And so is ED-209! ED-209 is a robot. Not a cyborg. Somerset House had an exhibition of photos by Chris Stein a while back that demonstrated it was very hard to take a bad photo of Deborah Harry. And when I say "a while back" I mean "late 2014".

Late 2014. Where has the time gone? Where has it gone. Why do I return? Life is meaningless unless you're in London. It doesn't matter what happens outside London. No-one cares. It's "local news" if it happens outside London.

Obviously I can't visit London now because there are continual train strikes. South West Trains used to have a £15 return offer. Now it costs £45. That's... I mean, it's nothing nowadays, but I'm old enough to remember when £45 was a lot of money.

Think of London, a small city
It's dark, dark in the daytime
The people sleep, sleep in the daytime
If they want to, if they want to

I saw a picture earlier of a huge billboard or maybe a giant screen featuring a netflix depiction of a famous American necrophile/rapist/cannibal/serial killer dominating the side of some ugly looking building on Tottenham Court Rd. Stay classy London.

Anyone made themselves an itinerary for a London visit recently?

One thing I like to do is to visit the physical locations I’ve just read about in autobiographies and soak up any remaining vibrations from that time if any remain. Soho, Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury, and Hampstead are particularly good for that.

One thing I’ve noticed is just how cheap must have been to rent a place in prime central London up until the ‘70s or so.

Occasionally, I’ve felt that the obsessional search for the past might be a fast-track route to neurosis though.

I used to live in London as well, and one of the things that surprised me about returning every now and again was how walkable it was. How close together it was. When I lived there I used the underground to go everywhere, so I never had a sense of how the topside fitted together. The topside. Allabove. Upthere. The sunside. It was a mythical place, the allabove. In the downbelow it was safe and clean. Aboveground was scary, and blinding. It had cars!

Haha, this is very OTM!

I’m in Bloomsbury and I walk most journeys in an area stretching from Waterloo/London Bridge in the South, Highbury/Camden/Regent’s Park to the North, Hyde Park to the West and Brick Lane to the East, unless I’m carrying a lot of shopping or the weather’s really shit.

I live in Vauxhall (amid the new Dubai on Thames skyscrapers), but my standard walking area/range is almost the same as Suzy’s.

In terms of the cheapness of the London of the past, my parents bought a 2 bed flat in Battersea in 1985 for 42,000 pounds. I remember looking at the deeds and noting that it had last sold in 1978 for 12,500 pounds. I mean, you could almost put that on a credit card

£12,500 in 1978 is equivalent to about £80,000 today.

two recent exhibitions:

Mikalojus Čiurlionis at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Some of your enjoyment of this may depend on your appetite for mysticism, but the movement from mysticism into modernism and abstraction, often via a form of symbolism, is a genuine and often underexamined element of modern art and versions of abstraction and well explored here. The exhibition makes a play of Čiurlionis being 'ahead' of Kandinsky and possibly even instigating Kandinsky's parallel journey. That seems contentious and i'm not sure matters at all. There's a mixture of howling Lithuanian elders/gods at the edge of creation, symbolic auguries, structured symbolisms, a mixture of subterranean and aerial pallette, alien landscapes, local landscapes feeling alien etc that's strange and fun and worth visiting.

Cornelia Parker at the Tate Britain
I was indifferent to a lot of this - the smashed, squashed silver and instruments, and the video installation bit was busy so i couldn't be f'ed, but there were a couple of rooms working at a more intimate level that I really enjoyed, AVOIDED OBJECTS AND TEXTILE WORKS 1990s–2015, and ABSTRACTION. Here Parker seems to be untying a classical understanding of 'objects' by dismantling them or understanding new ways they can be transformed to create new objects that fall outside traditional ontologies. The objects that are created become themselves fugitive, as the title of the room suggests, in some way embodying absence or occupying spaces that haven't previously existed or are created by them. as a consequence they have an aesthetic delicacy that's v appealing. that classical quadrant being aristotle's material, efficient, formal, final.

Parker sees performance in the way that for instance customs destroy contraband objects - burning cocaine into a lump of ashes - or she dismantles a gun, not as a gunsmith would assemble or dismantle a gun, but across its unified parts, to create a disassembled version of the original object that is no longer the original object. cloths that have been used to rub silver carry ghost like impressions of the object to which they were subjected.

It was these transformed or absent objects that Parker's created or collected and transformed that stayed with me after.

Didn’t like the Mikalojus Čiurlionis exhibition much, sorry to say. For me, the tempera palette was too gloomy. Even when painting flowers, pyramids and summer, it was like it was looking through a murky mist or sandstorm. You could practically feel the depression coming off these works: flat, lifeless and dull.

I definitely preferred the abstract works and the ink drawings, but they don’t accord with my personal preferences for a play of colour and use of space.

yes, totally see that. i quite liked the miasma, or it was a *mood* as they say. my main resistance is towards the mysticism which, again depending on my mood, i find quite facile.

Lest we forget. pic.twitter.com/eZZ3fMQWZO

— Brian Tweedale (@BrianHTweed) October 23, 2022

I hear he's on the moderate left of the party

never forget his response to complaints about rampant racial profiling was to announce he was raising council tax to put more bobbies on the beat

Hi everybody, I'm going to be in London for a week from 11/22-11/29 (staying in Kensington) and am trying to plan my trip and am a bit overwhelmed! Basically I have no plans so far apart from the Totoro musical and whatever's playing at Donmar Warehouse during that time. I have no real plans other than to just ~vibe~, I am more interested in like experiencing what London is actually like vs. seeing a bunch of landmarks or tours or whatever. Can anyone give me some pointers re: the following?

• Museums/attractions: I am generally not interested in like history stuff (old churches, classic art/artifact museums, anything royal) but I do like really like contemporary art and anything really specific or novel or esoteric (like the Museum of the Home sounds p cool? also anything kitschy/outsidery), are there any must-see things? I am prob going to skip the British Museum and the Museum of Natural History, I might to to the V&A, and I will definitely go to the Tate Modern

• In terms of specific neighborhoods, what areas are worth prioritizing just to like hang out and wander around in? And are there any overrated spots I should avoid?

• I am v overwhelmed trying to find great restaurants to prioritize, because there seem to be SOOOO many great restaurants, but what should I make room for that is like distinctly London? I mean btwn Philly and NYC I can get amazing Italian, Thai, Indian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, etc., but what are the types of things I'd have a hard time finding stateside? I love fancy but I also love really simple and humble, I am open to anything, really.

• What clubs are worth going to? Is Fabric still worth carving out time for? Do I just check Resident Advisor a few weeks out and go wherever the best lineup is?

Will FAP with you, will also take you for The World’s Best Sausage Roll.

Tate Modern obviously for contemporary stuff. You can get the boat there!

Museums/arts: I like the wellcome collection. It has a cool public access library upstairs and exhibitions that ae broadly to do with medicine (but are usually way more interesting than that sounds).

I haven't been to museum of the home since the reno but it was good before and would recommend based on that

If you like scifi there's a scifi thing on at the (wait for it) science museum

You might be into the Horse Hospital? Def more on the esoteric end of things

Oh and maybe see if any of the art stuff on at the barbican is up your street. The barbican complex itself is interesting for a wander.

On wandering/neighbourhoods, would avoid the whole Oxford Street/Carnaby Street/Regent Street area. It's mostly shopping and mostly stuff you can get in any big city.

except soho is still worth a wander in, right?

feels a *bit* old, but the soane museum might be worth a view? (and a stone's throw from the horse hospital).

Discover the extraordinary house and museum of Sir John Soane, one of the greatest English architects, who built and lived in it two centuries ago. The museum has been kept as it was at the time of his death in 1837, and displays his vast collection of antiquities, furniture, sculptures, architectural models and paintings.

I think so! I know some people are down on soho but I like wandering there.

it’s still quite various and racketty!

if you're in Kensington anyway, my favourite little exhibition place after the Wellcome is Japan House under the shop on the high street.

Tate Britain has good modern stuff too, and it's a nice walk up through Westminster, the Strand, st Paul's and over the bridge to Tate Modern.

around Cork Street is where all the tiny galleries are.

British Museum is a nice place, always something interesting. ditto V&A. even if you've been a dozen times. check out the 'Lates' that a lot of these places do once a month, late night opening, djs, lights down low...

The little cartoon/comic museum on Wells St. W1 is worth a look I think.

A good walk would be along the Regents canal pretty much anywhere between Islington and Mile End although the often narrow towpath can get pretty busy (including cyclists).

I've never been here Stevie but I've always thought it looked fun!

https://novelty-automation.com

"I mean btwn Philly and NYC I can get amazing Italian, Thai, Indian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, etc., but what are the types of things I'd have a hard time finding stateside?"

See Vietnamese, Turkish and Ethiopian have not been listed. There are some good places though ppl here should know better.

Anybody ever been to Museum of Brands in Notting Hill? Might be of limited interest to American visitors ... but I'm a sucker for old packaging etc, and keep meaning to pay a visit when I'm done in London:

https://museumofbrands.com

I have. It is (or at least was) pretty much exactly as you'd expect - lots and lots of old packaging - and none the worse for it.

The Design Museum moved a few years back to the bottom of Holland Park (not far from where you are staying) and is in this fantastic building, the old Commonwealth Institute. Then you could wander up into the park itself, hang out in the orangery and see the Kyoto water gardens.

I have no real plans other than to just ~vibe~,

This is a good plan imo. It’s a good idea to allow a certain amount of time for simply soaking up the various areas of London and their own characteristic nature. My only tip: don’t be persuaded to spend all your time in East London on the grounds it’s the most vibrant, but also make time for the South Bank (combine with Tate Modern) and Notting Hill (you’re well placed in Kensington) and the central areas of Bloomsbury, Soho and Fitzrovia.

Also avoid the Stratford Olympic Park unless you want to hang out at a rocket launch apron with a football stadium and pile of twisted metal plonked down onto it at haphazard angles. Soho is a good call for wandering through its low canyons, also near to Chinatown.

> The Design Museum moved a few years back

probably worth a look at the permanent collection on top floor if you've not been before but i was there at start of october and it seemed very down on its luck - lights only half on, the secondary exhibition space closed, shop contents seemed odd, somehow, and the outside shop now sells only plants.

holland park worth a wander though, yes. actually feels like being in the woods despite being in central london.

(like the Museum of the Home sounds p cool?

Enjoyed the Museum of the Home but it's gone through major restructuring since I last went.

Was going to suggest the Museum of Childhood and the House Of Illustration but both are temporarily closed, boo hiss.

Re: restaurants, considering your list includes most of the major diasporas...maybe if you're willing to go posh with it, you could try modern English (please do not laugh) cuisine? Lyle's, The Clove Club and St. Johns are all good representatives of this, tho also all pricey as fuck.

Re: Turkish food of course I'm biased but numara 19 bos cirrik does a mean mixed grill in a super noisy/unpretentious atmosphere. Mangal 2 is good for a more fancy take.

If you like Jazz some of the best concerts I've seen recently have been at the Church Of Sound in Clapton. Actual rented out church, strong community feel.