Contributors

M@ is probably the most London-obsessed person in the world, reaching parts of the capital others can’t reach, while mixing up slogans from beer commercials. In the cause of exploring London, he has waded along the buried River Fleet, spent the night in a haunted plague pit, caught a lung infection by climbing Soho’s tallest steeple and walked along the tracks beneath Leicester Square at 2am. M@ has lived in Blackheath, Borough, Greenwich, Weybridge, West Hampstead, Fortune Green and now Chalk Farm.

Lindsey grew up on the London to Brighton commuter route and wound up in the capital by academic misadventure. 
Now resident on the upper rungs of the Green Lanes ladder her favourite things include Sadler’s Wells, Waterloo Bridge, artsy fringe happenings and George’s Caff. Sidestepping into Londonist with a dance preview in early 2007, she was editing by Christmas and has been addicted ever since.

Dean hails from a small outpost due south of the River Thames, an 
unmapped speck of greater London famed for a bowling alley, a Sixties
 office block and little else. His lifelong dream is to buy a farm in 
Patagonia and raise pygmy goats, but until that happens he can be found hovering around Hackney telling any poor fool in earshot about 
the holistic benefits of swimming in London Fields lido on a cold
winter’s morning.

Rachel was born and brought up in Leeds but made a break for the capital at the dawn of the Millennium. She’s lived in Golders Green, Camden and Muswell Hill, and now resides in Hither Green. She likes weissbier, is terrified by the size of her backlog of unread books and is on a mission to spread a love of parkin throughout the south (it’s a cake.) Her favourite bits of London are Greenwich, the view from Waterloo Bridge, Konditor and Cook and the British Museum – and not just to use its loos. You’ll find her furiously pounding the keyboard about booky stuff, comedy and anything that piques her delicate lefty sensibilities.

Sally hides her Essex origins remarkably well, notwithstanding a fondness for cockles and a tendency to dance round her handbag when out clubbing. For the last fifteen years or so she has been living in and loving Peckham. In fact she is pretty smitten with most of London, although she has recurring nightmares about the North Circular. In between writing her third book and blogging, she runs a very silly, bright yellow corner shop and interferes with her husband’s import business. Her interests include food, and cats, and yoga, and owls, and red wine. Sally’s icons are Silent Bob and Modesty Blaise.

Chris would like to tell people that he hails from London, but his American accent would betray such a flagrant lie. However, when he first moved here in 2001, he felt disconcertingly at home. Currently residing at the western front of the East End (otherwise known as Clerkenwell) Chris is a freelance writer/photographer who enjoys foraging for new lunch spots and trying to keep track of the bewildering London art scene. Learn more.

Dave grew up in one of the southernmost suburbs of London, but he doesn’t like to admit it, having spent most of his adult life living on the Isle of Dogs and, more recently, in Clerkenwell. His favourite parts of London include Greenwich Park, the South Bank, Holland Park and the British Library – forming between them the four corners of an irregular concave inner-London quadrilateral. His interests include good beer and mild pedantry. Dave joined Londonist at the beginning of 2006, contributing anonymous nonsense about pigeons, bogeymen and lap-dancing clubs. Several years on, he’s still hanging around, poking his nose into various trivial or beery postings.

Hazel was born and raised in London (Zone 1) and, apart from a distressing three year enforced exile to a university town, has lived in London all her life. Along with many rambling, incoherent tales of her early days as an irregular food, arts and news contributor for Londonist before becoming an Editor in May 2007, she has a long and varied tale of growing up in London following theatre, art, culture and anything with obscenities in the title, or naked people painted purple doing improvised dance. Her main interests are experimental performing arts, live art, art installations, cultural festivals, unusual food and craft activities.

Beth was born as a country bumpkin and adopted London as her home town in 2000 after moving to Alexandra Palace. The next few years were spent shuffling about between north and east London until she discovered the outer reaches of the Central Line and alighted somewhere near Epping Forest amid the sound of cow bells and Range Rovers. News, transport and motoring are her favourite things to write about but she has also developed a thing for flash fiction. She also likes cars, the seaside, films and reading books. She’d like to like going to the gym but actually prefers to sit in the garden with a G&T.

To a boy under a duvet in the commuter belt of the 1980s, the voices of Robbie Vincent and Clive Bull on LBC (‘on the line is Babs from Bermondsey’), the Radio 4 shipping forecast (‘Cromarty, Forth, Tyne’) and traffic updates on GLR (‘backed up to the Hangar Lane gyratory’) seemed like incantations from another dimension, a big pulsating dimension called London, where everything that mattered took place. Now older and hairier, NQW is a writer and broadcaster, and the power behind Londonist Out Loud, a weekly show all about London, in which he gets to cast some spells of his own. When not exploring London with a microphone, NQW is to be found running groups for writers (in Brick Lane, the Strand and the South Bank – see website), or holed up in café somewhere, tapping away at a laptop, talk radio burbling away merrily in his ears. Listen to Londonist Out Loud on iTunes.

Franco was born in the northern outskirts of Enfield but has since migrated inland. London has been part of his life now for longer than almost anything else: any band, any other city, any girl. When not being a dark, swarthy Sicilian stereotype, he can be found exploring London’s cultural underbelly especially fringe theatre, cabaret, comedy and burlesque plus the occasional restaurant

Ben moved to London a few years ago having grown up on the South Coast (Chichester, to be exact – pretty, Roman but not a lot going on) and gone to Uni in Portsmouth. After a short while living ‘behind’ Goodge street in a very central but slightly illegal kind of a way, he found a home in Kennington and loves its closeness to just about anywhere, its great transport links, the plethora of pub options, and the fact that it’s a little bit quieter than Goodge Street.He’s slightly food obsessed (read: greedy) and more keen on sherry than it may be wise to admit. He “works” as a freelance food writer with a few webby bits thrown in for good measure. He’s definitely a ‘south of the river’ person, but would be loathed to go too far.  Citing Lower Marsh, The Cut, East Street Market (off Walworth Road) and The South Bank amongst his favourite places he’s (shock horror) not adverse to a bit of Elephant & Castle either.

Amanda is a displaced American who has been replaced into Brooklyn. While playing her epic game of Mornington Crescent, she writes about bands you should go see since she can’t. When not writing about London gigs, Amanda is usually still writing about music, listening to new music, and probably drinking tea.

Reared in Devon, Jemma always had her heart set on the sparkly streets of grubby London. Now she runs a community Hub in Westminster, makes strange choreography (often in trees), tutors for the Royal Academy of Dance and teaches spinning. She has explored much of London through frequent house moves and all manner of jobs, including managing a gym in Spitalfields, lecturing at Laban, maintenance therapy for disabled children, and coordinating older people’s dance for Open Age. Some things that float her boat are immersive performance and dance, visiting other continents, being near water, cosy cafes with good vegetarian food and second hand markets.

Tim lives in Brixton, works in Angel and cycles pretty much everywhere inbetween. Working in the arts by day and as a journalist and blogger by night, he is interested in all things cultural, especially classical, jazz and world music. He is also interested in scribbling about all aspects of city life, from architecture to local politics. Tim’s favourite bits of London include the Brockwell Park lido, the Saponara deli in Islington and the Old Royal Naval College.

John has been an honorary Londoner for three years, after leaving his Welsh border hometown on an ill-advised quest for a Dick Whittingtonian fortune. He’s lived North, South, East and West but has since realised that North London is the one true way. He likes writing (mostly about film and music), cycling, swimming, loose leaf tea, Parliament Hill and Samuel Smiths pubs.  Also, he finds writing about himself in the third person a little disconcerting, if not excruciating.  So he’ll stop now.

Jonn grew up in Romford, spent four years on the Old Kent Road and now lives in Islington, so in the event that Britain ever has a class war is properly screwed. He scrapes a living writing about politics and the public sector, and has contributed to titles including the New Statesman, the Guardian, the First Post, and Smoke: A London Peculiar.He writes for Londonist mainly so that he can pretend that walking around the city staring at bits of it counts as ‘work’. He enjoys theatre, roof gardens and long and rambling political arguments. He recently fell in the River Cray. But he doesn’t like to talk about it.

Caroline grew up reading books about London and was delighted to discover that the truth is indeed stranger than fiction. She loves many things about the capital and is particularly interested in its history, art, opera, food and drink, although she tends to find that most of the former can almost certainly be improved by the addition of the latter. Her favourite London moments have been flying down the Thames in a helicopter, seeing 20,000 semi naked women heckle soldiers at the Chelsea barracks and rowing around a sea of punch on a giant rubber garnish.

The teachers at David’s Teesside school said nothing sensible would come from listening to those noisy indie-pop records and writing silly stories. They were probably right, but a former career as a full time DJ and being a freelance music journalist has been a lot of fun for him. When not listening to, writing about and talking to (often terrible) bands from his Islington home David tends to eat cheese, drink London gin and procrastinate. Since moving here in 2007, David has scoured nearly every venue to find the new Pulp. He hasn’t yet, but isn’t planning on stopping, and he’s still amazed people actually let him write about it, including The Line of Best Fit, Quietus and The Independent. A real-life trained journalist, he knows shorthand and everything.

Currently based in Shoreditch, Ruth is on a one woman quest to find the best scotch egg in town. The only distractions from this are meandering around the city’s many galleries, finding comedy in strange places, and running up the equivalent of a small country’s national debt in the odd cocktail bar or two.

‘Johnny Fox’ studied Theatre at Lancaster University and Journalism at City before realising there was no money in either profession and concentrating instead on interior design for investment banks.  He lived and worked in other cities including Singapore, New York, and Moscow but has been a committed adoptive Londoner for thirty years.  Living in Docklands is a perpetual anticipation that some infrastructure will eventually emerge or that the Jubilee Line and DLR will work one day, but the bend of the river seen on approach into London City Airport still gladdens his heart.His urban passions include theatre, singing, consumer terrorism, wine, architecture and London’s dark underbelly, and he’s written for everything from The Pink Paper to The Architects Journal. Here’s his personal blog.

After emerging from a village in Somerset James was packed off to
 the city for university, setting up home in pre-Olympic Stratford. He
 scraped his way into Zone 1 a couple of years ago and has no plans to 
leave. In 2009 he crossed the river – the jury is still out.Being one of the few people in the world interested in economic history 
James joined Londonist when the credit crunch kicked off – the chance
 to blog the UK’s first recession was, he thought, too great to miss. James enjoys, cycling, watching, eating and listening. A fun weekend out is a 
trip to to an unusual council estate and he pushes children out of the 
way to sit at the front of the DLR.

Jonathan loves sandwiches more than life itself. He’s made it his mission to find London’s best sandwich since sliced bread. He lives in Brixton and works on Baker Street. He is the Sandwichist. So if you come across an amazing sandwich you must let him know as a matter of the most extreme urgency. Jonathan also writes a food blog called Around Britain with a Paunch

Arriving during the storm of 1987, this Caer Urfa-born writer lived in a burnt-out Clapham squat before sharing a Nunhead house with a Russian dissident who dubbed Gorbachev for BBC News. Decamping to Fitzrovia in the early 90s he lived and worked in a series of former fashion warehouses that he used as photographic studios, enjoying two decades in the hedonistic swansong of an area that is now a corporate building site. With the advent of digital imaging, text became the medium for this most mercurial of practitioners, whose recent fine art involves paragraphs describing photographs never taken. After extended periods in Africa, Asia and the Americas, working with BFBS in Brunei/Belize and undertaking missions with the UN to dictatorships such as Niger, this ‘anagrammatical enigma’ now writes about art, food and travel, sharing his life with Etruscan fetish artist Porcelain Broad in Dalston.

Tom comes from the South Warwickshire countryside, but decamped to London in 1996 and now lives as close as is legally permitted to the platforms at Streatham station. He spends a lot of time walking in, across, around, over and sometimes under London has written a book about it, ‘London’s Lost Rivers: A Surface-Dweller’s Guide’. He also greatly enjoys theatre, which he reviews for Londonist; folkish music, which he reviews elsewhere; galleries, the Tube, cricket, maps, second-hand bookshops, and municipal libraries. He is also an urban policy researcher and freelance research consultant.

Helen is freelance writer, editor and journalist, with a particular interest in the arts, the urban, the wild, and London.  She works with words, audio, photos and film from a lovely studio in Angel.  She mainly writes about theatre and food for Londonist, and is especially keen on anything involving puppets and eco eating.  Helen’s also rather into rooftop gardens and urban nature and her first book, which is about both these things, was published in June 2011.  She recently helped create the Londonist’s very own edible garden on an Old Street balcony.

Tom is the author of Tired of London, Tired of Life, a website about things to do in London. His previous jobs include being a researcher in the Houses of Parliament, driving a white van man and working in the Armed Forces Medals Office. He was born in the South Cotswolds, and now lives in South East London. During his time in the capital he has lit Britain’s largest bonfire, seen the Queen five times, and been awarded second place for performance in the Notting Hill Carnival. He is a member of the Old Tripeoneans of Hampden-in-Arden.

Libby resides in Shoreditch and has almost shed all traces of her
Cheshire roots. She likes sampling the best food London has to offer, but often forgets to keep any in her fridge. She has worked in dance education for more years than she likes to believe and has been writing about dance for almost as long – mainly to legitimise her unhealthy addiction to Michael Clark. She began London life as a Labanotation teacher (google it) and now can analyse movement at an alarming rate. Her favourite things are cheese, prosecco and chips, high-heels and dance (hazardous if combined).

Victoria was born and raised in Edinburgh but turned traitor to her lovely homeland as soon as she damn well could, the filthy turncoat, firmly ensconcing herself in London’s beguiling bosom. Now a denizen of Shoreditch (with the oversized cable-knits and battered brogues to show for it), she is a freelance writer and sub-editor. She can usually be found making vague stabs at gracefulness in a ballet studio, stuffing her face with baklava, or anywhere there is free wine.

Nicolas arrived from his native France (the bit where they make wine and mustard) in July 2000, as part of the ongoing colonising effort started in 1066. Although well aware that English is little more than badly pronounced French, he had taken the precaution of studying the language at university before getting himself kicked out of the country (mostly for being by far too un-French). The sad and corny truth is that Nicolas fell in love with London a few years before his migration after spending a week walking the streets of this hallowed city. It was like coming home. And so it passed that sarf London became home. During the intervening years, Nicolas has been singing with the London Gay Men’s Chorus and has flexed his political muscle by getting involved with his local LGBT network and LGBT History Month.

Cat has lived south of the river all her life, except for a brief sojourn in Venezuela, and has long given up trying to ever get a taxi home. Drawing a veil over an unhappy decade at the chalkface of inner-city education, she now works as a freelance journalist and radio producer and is grateful for the distraction Londonist affords from the vagaries and sordid real-politik of world news. She loves London’s art galleries and secret spaces and anywhere along its rivers and canals, and the fact that living in London means there is not a single hour of any day of the year where you can’t find, somewhere a drink, a coffee and a packet of fags.