London

Words by Dan Jones

Sunshine picnics, art car boot sales, boozy avant-garde parties and a newfound optimism: this jumbled, iconic and ancient capital is completely unique. After 2000 years of gory history, the unimaginable has finally happened. London is cool again.

London is a dirty old beast. A confusing, illogical metropolis of jellied eels, Waterloo sunsets, garage bands and transgender club kids, it’s a city that quietly screams its uniqueness from every street corner. After 2000 years of turbulent history, including a voracious fire, a plague, WWII aerial attacks and the Spice Girls, something rather odd is happening in the ancient capital.

A curious sense of optimism has begun to pervade London, coupled with soaring property prices, the 2012 Olympics and the ability to buy a drink after 11pm. An endless programme of festivals in sprawling parks, political rallies and cultural celebrations have perked up the city’s traditionally dour resolve. There are the secret craft circles and Vogueing championships, retro Rockabilly bowling nights and village fetes, and an explosive music and fashion scene that hopes to dominate the world. London is blooming and it doesn’t care who knows it.

This growing creative confidence amongst Londoners has seen a band of youthful upstarts and celebrity stalwarts create a social network that further defies the conservative misconception of the British. It’s an after-dark community held together with glitter and artifice: people are dressing up again, embracing the avant-garde, blurring gender and eating chips together on the night bus home. In the east, it’s sharply obvious those ‘70s and ‘80s icons of London still delight – from Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols to David Bowie and Leigh Bowery’s dripping, painted-on wigs. Enjoying a healthy tension between the classes, London has turned in on itself, evident in its growing love of chav culture, traditional cuisine and a healthy obsession with the legendary British boozer.

With a firm grasp of history and national pride, few other contemporary cities have embraced multi-culturalism to such an impressive scale. London’s population, fast approaching 8.2 million, boasts a distinct collection of international communities connected by the oldest and most tangled transport network in the world. Split east to west by the River Thames, south London houses all night mega-clubs, the Globe theatre, Battersea Power Station and Electric Avenue in Brixton. The west is home to Notting Hill, the Kings Road and Chelsea (where a lost whale keeled over and died last year) and all manner of upmarket boutiques and department stores. The centre of the London contains all your tourist necessities including the unofficial seat of UK retail royalty, Topshop. To the east lies Shoreditch and Hoxton, Brick Lane and the hub of London’s art and fashion scene where every other swoopy-haired waif is a stylist or graphic designer. Or say they are. Further still lies Greenwich and the Prime Meridian set out with a bright green laser splicing the city in two in near-perfect symmetry.

As London slowly re-emerges as a truly contemporary city, it’s hard to ignore its ancient past – 2000 years of gory history, mini skirts and pie and mash have helped create this completely unique capital. But forget what you know about the London of old - it’s this newfound optimism that prevails.

SLEEP

In a time when London’s licensing laws weren’t so relaxed, sleeping was something you’d be doing by 11pm every night. These days, London is an all night city with frequent 24-hour buses and trains running until the early hours at the weekends – you can stay out late, live further out of London’s tourist centre and experience a little more realism on the streets. Accommodation is traditionally expensive in the capital, but an influx of cheaper design hotels and B&B options have encouraged competitive pricing and more frills for your money. Naturally, the cost of a room or suite in the heart of the city is still fairly steep, but other options in East or West London offer a fairly central location but without the luxury price tag, and often in a more vibrant and interesting neighbourhood.

Zetter Hotel
The winner of London’s Best Small Hotel in 2006, the Zetter’s 19th century shell has been reworked inside to create a sharply contemporary hotel with 59 rooms, second-hand books, 4000 free digital music tracks, Eley Kishimoto wallpaper and a hot water bottle. With onsite restaurant, posh vending machines dispensing champagne and gin and tonic, the Zetter’s also a rather eco-friendly option with its own bore-hole to conserve water. Summer rates start at £155 per night.

Zetter Hotel, St. John’s Square, 86 – 88 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1M. + 020 7324 4444; www.thezetter.com

Hazlitt’s and The Rookery
Hazlitt’s have two boutique hotels in London. Both are equally as ritzy as the Ritz but avoids the mega hotel’s large-scale pomp and pageantry – it laid back elegance (and close proximity to late night bars and restaurants) ensure it’s packed out during London Fashion Week. Expect wood panelled rooms, four poster beds, open fires and impeccable service from a young, friendly staff in three Georgian houses on Frith Street, Soho or a sister site in Clerkenwell. Double rooms start from £149 per night, and some deals include a glass of champagne, a travel card and breakfast in bed.

Hazlitt’s, 6 Frith Street, Soho Square, London W1. + 020 7434 1771; www.hazlittshotel.com

Yotel
Some might think Japanese capsule hotels would turn off visiting Anglophiles, but a new UK company have opened a hotel using the guidelines of a British Airways first class cabin. Well-designed luxury rooms have Wi-Fi, room service, a full bathroom and all the trimmings. In fact, Yotel claim there’s as much in just 7 square metres as you would find in most 4 star hotels. Currently only at Gatwick Airport, but with plans to dominate London, Yotel’s a wise choice for in-transit travellers with crack-of-dawn flights. You can even book a Yotel cabin for an hour or two to relax on a stopover.

Yotel, London Gatwick Airport South Terminal, London. + 020 7100 1100; www.yotel.com

Hoxton Hotel
“The best value hotel in town” said The Guardian on the Hoxton’s opening in 2006. Unerringly comfortable, fun and cleverly designed, it’s packed full of personal touches like fresh milk, a free Pret-a-Manger breakfast, Pear and White toiletries and a pop-up local map. But it’s the location and price that astound. Slap bang in London’s hippest neighbourhood, the Hoxton offers a flight-like booking system where you can snag a small room from as much as £59 per night, to as little as a shockingly cheap £1.

Huxton Hotel, 81 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A. + 020 7550 1000; www.hoxtonhotels.com

London30.com
Accommodation site London30.com offers access to countless small budget hotels that (almost) always cost no more than £30 per night. Choice of location is excellent and London30 promise an attention to detail only found at small hotels and guesthouses. Visitors might find the rooms a little bland or dated and some lack a basic en suite. Still, it’s an incredibly cheap option (especially if there’s no room at the inn at the Hoxton Hotel) – best for those on a very tight budget: those Kate Moss for Topshop jeans aren’t going to buy themselves.

www.london30.com

EAT/ DRINK

Much has changed in London’s approach to cuisine and service. British chef’s no longer boil pizza or toil over offal puddings, but instead have upped their game – celebrating traditional British fare and presenting it with a contemporary twist and a toothy smile. Still, a European influence is undeniable and you’ll find clever restaurants throughout the city catering to this wider market. With Indian food as the UK’s unofficial national dish, Londoners prefer to wash it down with beer and you’ll still find the legendary British boozer peppering every locality. With countless gastro-pubs, late night arty bars and an unexpected petting zoo/restaurant of the year, you’ll fall in love with egg and chips all over again.

Brick Lane
The UK’s unofficial national dish has its London home on Brick Lane. Known to some as Banglatown, the area is the city’s focus for its large Bangladeshi community and excellent Anglo-Indian cuisine. Choose almost any of the cheap and popular restaurants and cafes, bring your own beer and finish off with cheesecake from a 24-hour beigel bakery, proud remnants of the area’s Jewish heritage. Alongside traditional boozers playing Northern Soul or large, hip bars such as 93 Feet East or the Truman Brewery (hugely popular at weekends), you haven’t really experienced London until you’ve swaggered down Brick Lane at 3am with poppadom crumbs in your swoopy fringe.

Brick Lane, London, E1.

Andrew Edmunds
Soho’s darkest secret, Andrew Edmunds is a tiny, typically Soho restaurant. With simple, modern but rustic European cuisine on its small and ever-changing menu, its dim candle-lit interior makes it a hit with first time daters and regulars from the literary world (who often dine in private members’ rooms upstairs). You must book in advance and try and charm your way to a table at street level or you could be banished to an even darker basement and, with Soho’s salty history, Lord knows what goes on down there.

Andrew Edmunds, 46 Lexington St., London, W1. + 020 7437 5708

Bonnington’s
For just £10 and an unshakeable love of bohemia, Bonnington’s deliver a three-course vegetarian meal in a charmingly ramshackle restaurant with mismatched furniture and dribbly candles. Run by a local co-operative, chefs appear on rotation creating exciting menu variations. Bring your own booze, Birkenstocks and dreamcatcher earrings and, if great vegetarian food isn’t enough for you, Thursday night is vegan night. Only for the brave. For a more central vegetarian location, try the excellent Mildred’s, opposite Andrew Edmunds on Lexington Street, Soho.

Bonnington’s, 11 Vauxhall Grove, London SW8. www.bonningtoncafe.co.uk

Hackney City Farm
Who doesn’t love stroking a giant drooling pig before tucking into a hearty breakfast sandwich with fried bacon and HP sauce? Frizzante at Hackney City Farm in east London offer wholesome breakfasts and lunches, impromptu ceramics classes and sheep shearing demos for locals and visitors alike. Voted Best Family Restaurant in London last year, its close proximity to East London’s popular Sunday markets make Hackney City Farm a haven for three-wheeled pram pushers, craft circle lovers and trendy locals who find stroking rabbits and an espresso the perfect hangover cure.

Hackney City Farm, 1A Goldsmiths Row, London E2. + 020 7729 6381; www.hackneycityfarm.co.uk

Flat White
Quite simply the “best coffee in London” – at least that’s what the world’s most stylish man, Tyler Brulé, claims to be Flat White’s USP. Perennial coffee snobs, a group of ex-pat New Zealanders and Australians decided that enough was enough: they reanimated London’s dire coffee industry with Flat White: a tiny, noisy and hot café on Berwick Street Market in Soho. Popular with local film and TV industry stalwarts, Flat White also flip waffles, serve glittery fairy cakes, hippy teas and the chance to eavesdrop on stylists, movie producers, record store geeks and the private lives of its attractive staff.

Flat White, 17 Berwick Street Market, London W1. + 020 7734 0370; www.flat-white.co.uk

The Dolphin and Bardens Boudoir
With Shoreditch full to the brim, London’s very-late-night bar scene tends to spill out into the darker parts of the city. Our Local Hero Jonny Woo recommends The Joiners Arms, a local gay bar cruelly taken over by fashion upstarts, but Paperplane like to go a little further. On first glance you might not think much of the Dolphin’s large bar area, crude tiled murals and tiny stage, but in the early hours of the morning, The Dolphin is one of London’s most popular late bars, populated by a unique mix of boozy locals and trendy creatives screeching out inappropriate pop hits at the bar’s frequent karaoke nights. Up in north London, the infamous Bardens Boudoir holds the same enviable late bar title with regular off-centre indie club nights in a cavernous, sweaty basement.

The Dolphin, 165 Mare Street, London E8. + 020 8985 3727

Bardens Boudoir, 38-44 Stoke Newington Road, London N16. www.bardensbar.co.uk

The Easton
Ah, the gastropub: once a rarity in a city populated by traditional boozers and greasy spoon cafés, but no longer. Public bars have been ripped out and reworked with designer wallpaper, Belgian beers and blackboard specials. If gastropubs are a necessary evil, then it’s probably best to steer clear of the national chain bars and choose wisely. That’s why the Easton’s a perfect choice. A favourite of designer Alexander McQueen, the ex-strip joint is hidden away in deepest Clerkenwell, a hit with weekday hipsters who seem to like its unselfconscious interior with stacks of school chairs, a few old bikes and ruddy-faced local journalists from The Guardian newspaper.

The Easton, 22 Easton Street, London WC1. + 020 7278 7608

The Rivington Grill
…is ‘fucking beautiful’, or at least that’s what a sculpture screams from the wall in white neon (a piece by local artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster). It’s hard to disagree. Serving up excellent pro-British fare from small, independent producers and creating typically British dishes, this restaurant isn’t exactly cheap, but it’s a perfect example of modern British cuisine. Still, it would be a mistake to think that the Grill was without humour. The menu is full of domestic delights such as fish fingers and mushy peas, Barnsley lamb chops with bubble and squeak and suckling pig with broad beans and pea shoots. Check out the Grill’s sister restaurant on the river in Greenwich (part of an arthouse cinema) or stick to the popular Shoreditch original.

The Rivington, 28-30 Rivington Street, London EC2. + 020 7729 7053 and 178 Greenwich High Road, London SE10. + 020 8293 9270; www.rivingtongrill.co.uk

The Seven Stars
The Seven Stars has been proudly pouring pints for 400 years. One of the few local buildings to survive the great fire in 1666, things have hardly changed in this tiny, characterful London pub. With a unique lunch menu of herrings, cold meat salads and the odd oyster, you can buy peanuts (measured out into a brown paper bag), real ales and some great wines. Look out for the campest cat in London: a sulky tom forced to prance around wearing a ruffled Tudor collar.

The Seven Stars, 53 Carey Street, London WC2A. + 020 7242 8521

PLAY

Londoners work very hard but, thank goodness, they play even harder. After 2000 years of boozy taverns, markets and festivals, the party starts on Friday afternoon and rolls into Wednesday the following week. From summer picnics in iconic parks, five-storey high modern art, rambling vintage markets, street food festivals and award-winning boutiques to world-class club nights like Boombox and No Romance Without Finance, London’s a playground of sights, sounds, smells and stolen bikes. Follow the masses to the city’s world famous department stores with their art galleries, tea rooms, champagne bars and a shrine to Di and Dodi, or slip off into the side streets with the Walk Walk Walk collective who guide you through a secret, hidden London of abandoned pubs and chip shops.

The Markets
Betamax pornos, Happy Meal toys, organic grain-fed beef, fairtrade coffee and fake Chanel handbags: London’s markets choke up the streets with vintage tat, stolen goods and BBQ chicken wings. A weekend ritual, Londoners and clever tourists dress up and hang out on Portobello Road, Brick Lane, Broadway Market or Columbia Road, checking out odd bargains, but mainly, each other. On Saturdays, Broadway Market caters for bourgeois foodies with local produce, juices, vintage accessories and two excellent pubs, The Dove and The Cat and Mutton. Portobello is London’s most iconic, grown-up market with an emphasis on antiques. On Sunday’s head to Columbia Road, a tiny, local flower market, open from 8am to 2pm, with spin-off yards selling collectables and coffee, and then there’s Brick Lane, the lifeblood of the East End with vintage furniture, attic tat, retro stores, galleries, beigel bakeries and other unexpected morsels. Bike been stolen? Buy it back on Brick Lane for twice the price.

Broadway Market, London E8. www.broadwaymarket.co.uk, Portobello Road, London W11. www.portobelloroad.co.uk, Columbia Road, London E2. www.columbia-flower-market.freewebspace.com, and Brick Lane, London E1.

Tate Modern
Look at the size of it! When Tate Modern opened its doors in 2000, the gallery became the fourth site for a group now known simply as Tate. The UK’s national museum of international modern art, the Tate Modern is a monolithic ex-power station straddling the Thames. Approached on a footbridge from Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Tate Modern dominates the skyline with a blank brick chimney emitting a ghostly purple glow. Check out the Turbine Hall’s jaw-dropping exhibits that traditionally use up all of the area’s five stories, and permanent collection pieces by Louise Bourgeois, Dali, Francis Bacon, Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol. A new £215 million extension to the gallery is planned to open in time for the Olympics in 2012, so expect a little Tracey Emin-like scaffolding if you visit before then.
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1. + 020 7887 8888; www.tate.org.uk

Park Life
Visitors to London may have heard a thing or two about grey skies and inclement weather. Sure enough, the capital doesn’t boast a tropical climate, but it ensures more than enough summer silliness to make up for it. At the first whiff of sunshine, Londoners rip off their shirts and take to the park. Dotted with huge, sprawling public spaces and secret gardens, London life revolves around a series of mature parks. Check out Hampstead Heath, with its lush forests, Kenwood House and slimy swimming ponds (packed out in warmer weather), a favourite picnic spot of Karl Marx, or Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the largest but least-used public square in London, thought to be the inspiration behind Central Park in NYC and features in a dramatic scene in Dicken’s Bleak House. Hyde Park houses the Serpentine Lake (where a team of swimmers traditionally jump in through the ice on New Year’s Day), Speakers’ Corner and huge concerts, from the Rolling Stones in 1969 to the White Stripes in 2007. It’s illegal to spark up a BBQ in most Royal parks, but it doesn’t seem to deter hundreds of Londoners, flipping burgers and getting sunburned in the summer sun.

The b Store
Roughing up London’s genteel Saville Row is Kirk Beattie and Matthew Murphy’s boutique, b STORE. In a few short years, b STORE has attracted a community of loyal locals who carefully pick from the left-field design pieces swinging from b STORE’s rails. With a hugely popular footwear range in metallic and painted leathers and pieces from Cosmic Wonder, Bernard Willhelm, Siv Stodal and Bless, Kirk and Matthew have recently introduced their own collection. The perfectly simple and sharply cut ‘b menswear’ has been a hit, even with the ladies who appreciate its witty, unisex look. With unrivalled personal service - friendly and low key in an area of London known more for its stuffiness – and perfect edit of fashion, no wonder b STORE won ‘Shop Of The Year’ at the British Fashion Awards 2006, something the b-boys are naturally rather proud of.

b STORE London, 24A Savile Row, London W1. + 020 7734 6846; www.bstorelondon.com

No Romance Without Finance
Cleverly billed as a “creative salon” for boozy artistic types, London’s No Romance Without Finance parties attract a unique mix of dressed up (and dressed down) scene stars. Set up by Australian/London fashion label Antipodium, for all its pomp and fizz NO RO is a surprisingly intimate, upbeat party for friends, wastrels, and the NO RO go-go boys but with star DJ sets from New Young Pony Club, Ajax or Vogue’s Emma Elwick. With a healthy dollop of wit, a recent party fell on the eve of the UK’s national smoking ban: NO RO marked the momentous event with a giant pack of Marlboro Lights burning up the dancefloor. Screaming a “yes!” to swigging champagne from the bottle and a “no!” to attitude, NO RO is London’s anything goes club night. Constantly changing location and theme, check out www.myspace.com/antipodium for details of the next secret ‘do.

Boombox
Hardened Londoners will roll their eyes at this choice, but love it or hate it, club night Boombox deftly marks the city’s return to its traditional eccentricity. From its inception in 2006 (a reworking of another night, Family), Boombox has attracted scores of international fashion celebs, art school undergrads, transgender teens and drag devotees. With a door policy that excludes almost anyone (especially those with Hoxton fin-type haircuts, bad shirts or fancy dress - distinctly different from ‘real’ dressing up), the ‘Box’s first birthday party tempted Roisin Murphy, Giles Deacon and Katie Grand through its doors. Still, it seems Boombox has reached breaking point and could change name and venue again in coming months.

Keep your eye on its next incarnation at www.myspace.com/familylondon.

Can’t get in to Boombox? Try a little original cool at Nag Nag Nag (at Ghetto, 5 Falconberg Court, London W1. + 020 7287 3726; www.ghetto-london.co.uk.

Hoxton Bar and Kitchen, 2 Hoxton Square, London N1. + 020 7613 0709

Walk Walk Walk
“An Archaeology of the Familiar and Forgotten” is the subtitle of Walk Walk Walk, an ongoing, participatory art project with a guided walk at its core. Check out fine art graffiti, abandoned pubs, Hackney on a midwinter night and the best (and worst) chip shops in E8. Artists Gail Burton, Serena Korda and Clare Qualmann set up the project in 2005, finding that walking one anothers’ routes of their local neighbourhood meant they would see new sights, spaces and places they might never have encountered. Walk Walk Walk’s events are on an occasional basis only – if you miss their next tour of hidden London, you can always follow one of the routes listed online.

www.walkwalkwalk.org.uk

Departmental
Londoner’s love to shop, but being a little lazy, they like to do it under one roof, with their culinary and artistic needs catered for at the same time. London’s department stores are world famous, and rightly so. From super contemporary to neo-Baroque and tourist schmaltz, London’s department stores are an experience in itself. Check out Harrods, still the playground of sheiks and American tourists (who come to pay their respects to a backlit, water feature shrine to Di and Dodi); its neighbour Harvey Nichols whose Fifth Floor bar is still Absolutely Fabulous; Selfridges, the most shockingly contemporary where stock is crammed into its youth wing so designer collections and art-based events have room to breathe; and Liberty, a smaller, more intimate store created from the timber of two British naval ships in the 1920s. Finally, Dover Street Market is Rei Kawakubo’s superstore housing a huge range of unique design including taxidermy exotic birds, Alber Elbaz for Lanvin, Dior Homme and pop art Lady Di tees.

www.harrods.com, www.harveynichols.com, www.selfridges.com, www.liberty.co.uk, www.doverstreetmarket.com


DIARY

June: Wimbledon Not the awful Kirsten Dunst movie but the sporting event itself, visit in June and enjoy almost three weeks of international level matches, shock injuries and revved-up sports celebs. A London sporting institution, watch closely as men sweat over men and women with tree-trunk legs grunt at the Umpire. Top it all off with a class of Pimms and strawberries and cream.

July: Art Car Boot Sale Tucked in neatly behind the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane is London’s premier art event, the Art Car Boot Sale. London’s best contemporary artists set up stalls to drink gin and sell the strangest things. 2007 saw art celebs like Gavin Turk, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin (who either didn’t show or refused to come out of a black-windowed Volvo) and Jessica Voorsanger whose fan-o-gram stall was a hit: anyone could be nominated to be mobbed by a band of screaming fans and become an autograph-signing celebrity for a fiver. “I love your graphics!” screeched one excitable pre-teen.

August: Field Day The trend of huge music festivals taking over the city’s public spaces has been welcomed by Londoners who are getting used to seeing acts like Blondie and Chromeo in their local park. The larger festivals like Wireless and Lovebox are complimented by Field Day, a cute, indie alternative. Styled like a psychedelic-themed traditional UK summer fete, the 2007 festival included Erol Alkan, Justice, Bat For Lashes, barn dancing and welly-wanging.

October/ November: London Film Festival With British Cinema still an oxymoron, London might not seem to be the heart of the international film community, but that doesn’t stop the world’s cinematic elite attending the London Film Festival. Expect an exciting programme of new works and classics from international filmmakers including the world premier of David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, an exploration of London’s Russian mafia.

2012: Olympics Not strictly an annual event in the capital, nevertheless Londoners are preparing for the 2012 Olympics with feverish excitement. With its nu-rave style logo, there are Olympic-themed events throughout the capital in the years running up to the big event. The games mark a newfound optimism in London and obvious incentive to smarten up overdue architectural projects and rail and bus links. Sustainability has been carefully considered and, although work on the Olympic Park hasn’t strictly begun, a few unlucky toads, newts and eels have been moved safely to new homes. Phew!