There are worried mutterings coming from cab-land tonight. A pretender to the black cab throne has emerged – a new vehicle, with a new shape. Mercedes is going for black with the development of a specially adapted Vito Taxi, and their proposals are not enjoying a smooth ride. Now let it straight away be known that this Londonista is a die-hard traditionalist, and a complete dumb broad when it comes to car stuff. The sort......

Ever been in a position of directing your Black Cab driver to your destination? Now's your change to test your true knowledge tonight at the London Transport Museum's Knowledge Quiz. Quizmaster Derek O'Reilly from the Knowledge Point School will pose four sets of six questions with the themes of curiosities and history, famous Londoners, capital culture and city routes to challenge your A-Z acquaintance and London geekery good and proper. Kicking off at 18.45......

The Boys (of the International Olympic Committee) are back in town . And everything’s looking peachy. Boris may be a bit short of funds for Crossrail. Pete Doherty seems to be able to play football. Is there no end to his talents? Walthamstow Race Track is going to the dogs. Well, actually, and very sadly we might add, it’s been sold to developers The mystery dude who spent sixty million on paintings last week......

We fell in love with Black Cab Sessions the moment we first heard of them. How could we not? Taking a drive around the best city in the world (okay, we're biased, yes) in a design classic with some of our favourite bands rockin' out in the back seat: it's exactly how we'd like to spend a lazy afternoon. Since we generally are unable to scrape together enough coins to even steal sideways glances......

Whatever happened to BLACK cabs? courtesy of wimbledonian's Flickrstream London cabs are the best in the world according to a poll of worldwide travellers. The ubiquitous Hackney cab is not only an instantly recognisable symbol of our city but the source of much stereotyping, tipping bemusement, drunken rambling and Knowledge bashing but we're all pretty fascinated by this legion of London savvy, chat ready, roving chauffeurs with their orange lights and comfy back seats. Black......

We hope you’re standing up for this: A KCL study finds that sitting on your arse all day contributes to the ageing process. Whereas regular exercise apparently makes you look like Elle MacPherson. In a wholly uncorroborated and unscientific study undertaken in the last 5 minutes, Londonist notes that the rockstar lifestyle isn’t so bad an antidote to ageing either. Our evidence: 56-year-old Sting and 62-year-old Eric Clapton, who will headline Hyde Park’s Hard......

The fashion world has been in a glitzy hooha this week as Karl Lagerfeld, AKA The Count (cue: one, one supermodel; AH HA HA HA HA!") jetted in to much celebrity fawning for a posh nosh ding dong at Nobu and the first ever Chanel show in London. Those who know are hailing the Brit chic collection as beautiful, sumptuous and decadent and intimating design influences from the original Duke of Westminster, the Tudor......

Well, ish. It's been announced that drivers of three thousand cabs now have the choice to use a new biofuel fuel mix. Each driver that opts for it will get their mitts on a nice green sticker to proudly stick to their windscreen. A handful of cabs parked next to City Hall this morning for a photo opportunity to celebrate. Or it might have been to chauffeur certain London Assembly Members around, we're not......

No matter what your opinion of the 2012 olympics, we're now all helpless to stop it and we won't be able to get away from it for five years so in a Stockholm Syndrome-like way we should all come to love our captors and get excited. After a video treasure hunt across the web, today the branding was launched. How was it to represent London? Would it be all beefeaters and black cabs? The......

The House of the Orange Monkey chronicles the adventures of a very special tourist. Mr Monkey is one of the few simian visitors to our city. He certainly makes the most of it, exploring the parts other tourists cannot reach, and writing up surprisingly useful field notes. We caught up with him to ask a few questions. 1. Tell us a bit about yourself I'm a pocket sized beanie monkey living in the north-west.......

We don't often use Fox News as a news source (who does?), but it's that time of year when the dumber stories start floating to the top of the news streams like gas bloated corpses and no one does dumb like Fox. Here we have that old chestnut - crap left behind in Black Cabs: One cabbie reported a man leaving his drunken girlfriend behind in the cab as a "tip" for the driver.......

A few distinctive London eyefulls have been awarded icon status. Westminster Abbey, the tube map, red telephone boxes, Wimbledon and the Thames itself have now joined previous London icons Big Ben, Routemasters, Brick Lane, Notting Hill Carnival, The Globe Theatre and The Tower of London. The full list can be seen here. The idea is for the icons to develop into a vibrant portrait of England. The 21 additions, which also include English weather,......

Whenever we travel we try our best to forget about London - as much as we love the city it is nice from time to time to escape the daily grind, the Standard's doom & gloom and the unpredictable weather. But London is everywhere. Even moving left some 5,500 miles we still run into Routemasters and black cabs. There are two old doubledeckers here - the second actually adjoins the 'pub' and acts as......

We always figured that cabbies had hidden depths. They have such a deep understanding of any subject that they are never shy at coming forward with an opinion on the world's ills. Plus a few years back an Ig Nobel prize was awarded to research that showed taxi drivers to have a larger hippocampus compared to the rest of us (that's the part of the brain associated with navigation in birds and animals). So......

Want to know what Ken Livingstone's definitive statement about the future of the capital's transport system was earlier this week? We are all breeding like rabbits and you have to build the trains. That Ken Livingstone...sex mad. Honestly though, is that it? That sounds like an excerpt from some strange x-rated version of Thomas the Tank Engine, not a serious and far-reaching transport policy. Come on Ken, you can do better than that: Mrs.......

Do you know roughly how many black cabs there are in the city? About 21,000. How do we know this? Well we just read this article on carmaker Manganese Bronze's decision to begin production of the black cab in eastern China. The venture "will increase the appeal of our iconic vehicle around the world", chairman Tim Melville-Ross said in a joint statement announcing the news. The deal has no implications for the future of......

Following the success of Masters of Horror in which acclaimed horror movie directors were given a slice of TV to play with and the 'hey it wasn't so bad, but lacked any Soul' remake of Salem's Lot Americans have been treated to a new series with the rather long title of Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King. It sports a decent enough cast (William H Macy leads one episode) and films......

What's the difference between a black cab and a licenced mini cab? Well there's the cost, the level of conversation, the space in the back, the additional copy of the A to Z and of course the no stopping in a red route rule. We only know this because we read today about the Hackney mini cab driver facing almost £1,000 in fines for stopping in red routes. Something that the black cabs can......

Londonist has been playing We Love Katamari all weekend. All weekend. This game is like crackburgers with extra cheese served up on a plate of M&Ms. While we did have perhaps a little too much fun rolling over Tower Bridge and Westminster before tackling Godzilla, by Tuesday morning we had decided that enough was enough. It was time to turn to serious matters and drop the joy pad in favour of something a little......

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Londonist used to be svelte enough (and poor enough) to travel everywhere by bicycle. We could pretend that this was something to do with also keeping healthy but since our route used to take in the whole of Oxford Street, behind ageing Routemasters and black cabs belching their diesel fumes, the contents of our hankies used to tell us our lungs were not......

Let's go out onto a limb here and say we don't really understand the appeal of wanting to be a wizard. There's the rubbish clothes, having a broomstick between your legs, having to go to boarding school, pointing small sticks at people in a threatening manner... why so many kids find this interesting is beyond us. Now being a SPY... that's something different altogether. Lots of explosions, car chases, gadgets galore and barrels of......

Yesterday we reported on a debate which had taken place in the House of Lords that included some rather unexpected superlatives regarding the 'iconic' black cab and particularly their "extraordinary and hugely admired limited turning circles". Now that post got 5 comments, which isn't bad for an article on turning circles. So we did a bit more digging and it turns out our turning circles were under threat! According to Transport for London a......

We love a good mock funeral as much as the next guy, but the one in town on Thursday seems a bit thick headed. Undertakers are to stage a mock funeral in west London in protest at the £8 congestion charge which, they say, is killing off business. They say the toll is pushing up the cost of dying as mourners are forced to pay if their cortege crosses the London charging zone. Killing......

Remember back in November last year we reported on the development of an arcade-style game which put you in the driving seat of a London black cab? Well we know you've been chomping at the bit, just dying to get your hands on what is undoubtedly going to be the game of the year, so here's the latest. According to reports in the geek press, London Taxi Rush Hour will be available for download......

We want! We want! We want! London is often at its prettiest under snow - that way you can't see the grime, BNP stickers and occasional axe wound. But now we don't need to freeze to see London as it should be thanks to Eboy! And by London as it should be we mean of course skinny dippers in the crystal blue Thames, Tower Bridge menaced in a cute way by giant squid and......

First they came for the RouteMaster, and I did not speak out, because I was not a RouteMaster. And now, the Evening Standard scare headline says it all: BLACK CABS UNDER THREAT. Well, that headline would "say it all" if "it all" meant "an utterly overblown piece of scare-mongering crapola of the standard we have come to expect from the Standard". The story is this: Transport for London have gone insane. They have locked......

Right Guv, that'll be £16 and a Powerbook please It seems that Londoners have come out on top yet again. This time we are the best in the world at forgetting to take our expensive gadgets with us when we are getting out of taxis. According to The Register, in the last six months alone "63,135 mobile phones (an average of three phones per taxi), 5,838 PDAs and 4,973 laptops" have been left in......

Londonist has always considered Black Cabs a quintessential part of the London experience, right down to the door locks clicking on and off everyone time you stop at the lights; but in April they're going to get a little touch of Bangkok. This doesn't mean they're going to start shooting ping ping balls out of their exhaust pipes but it does mean that passengers will be able to haggle for their fares prior to......

Forget GTA: Sand Andreas. The sun's too bright, everyone and his dog owns a gun, and they drive on the right for God's sake. No, if you want a real, virtual driving experience (does that make sense?) then you have to come to London, and that means getting your hands on The Getaway: Black Monday. Released on Monday 12, Black Monday has once again been developed by Sony's team in Soho, but this time they've......

The Londonist isn't one to scare easy, but news that London Mayor Ken Livingstone is out to "increase his powers" sent a genuine shiver down our spine. Not content with wanting to collect every major sporting event known to man with the fervour of a single, 35-year-old, action figure devotee, Ken is hell bent on eliminating all smoking in London. To achieve this he is pushing the Government to pass additional powers that will allow......