It was somehow appropriate that Bill Oddie should be in attendance to witness the final display of England's finest young songbird on the eve of her maiden migration to the winter warmth of Texas and California. Laura Marling closed her brief national tour on Sunday night playing to an audience entirely composed of purchasers of the lavish Songbox version of her debut album, "Alas, I Cannot Swim" in a performance at the Union Chapel......

Ah, the transformative powers of education. Last week, we saw the kiddies philosophizing. This week, we learn of prison inmates dramatizing. And this isn’t just any kind of dramatizing, nor is this just any prison: This is Shakespeare as performed by the inmates of the California State Correctional System, in collaboration with the London Shakespeare Workout Prison Project. Forgive us our naiveté if upon spotting this photo we weren’t immediately reminded of a scene......

lol Scientology courtesy of Joe Lee They came, they saw, they protested. And trolled Scientology IRL. Meme-heavy but fun, good-natured and above all peaceful, the hordes of Anonymous donned their V masks and descended on the sites of the Church of Scientology, at Blackfriars and at Goodge St. The 'organisers' of the protest - although Anonymous is more an anarcho-syndicalist commune than a top-down hierarchy - professed themselves thrilled with the turn-out, which ran to......

SFist worried over drugstore chain Walgreens celebration of Black History Month.Gothamist was surprised that apparently New York City is the fourth most miserable city in the country, after Detroit, Stockton, CA, and Flint, MI.Shanghaiist finds out what the Chinese think of Hilary and Obama.It was with a healthy amount of schadenfreude that Phillyist reported that former Eagle, and now Cowboy (ew), Terrell Owens owes the Eagles a significant wad of cash.Torontoist is two weeks......

As you all know, Londonist doesn’t just enjoy sarcastically mocking aspects of our fair city. No, far from it – we also like to help people out from time to time. So, we were only too pleased to offer our help when San Francisco-based artist and comedian Marc Horowitz contacted us to assist him in setting up his forthcoming show at the Hayward Gallery. Not one to run from a challenge, Horowitz has agreed......

Today, in the evening, Led Zeppelin are showing us a whole lotta love by bringing it on home. Instead of going to California, or even over the hills and far away to Kashmir, their first reunion rock and roll concert for 27 years is happening at the 02 venue on the Greenwich peninsular. In real heartbreaker news, Londonist read the physical graffiti (OK, bit weak that one, we know) a bit too late – there......

Oh, that Jude Law! Grown women swoon and keel over at the mere mention of his name. Men grind their teeth and glower with untrammeled jealousy when glimpsing his visage on a magazine cover or film poster. Such is his star quality. Those brooding yet boyish eyes. That elegantly receding hairline. He really is quite something. While he's a big Hollywood movie star these days, Our Jude does love to hang out in his......

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the......

Londonist got the big scoop of the week with what may be the first images of notorious street artist Banksy in action. They also got on a runaway train without an operator provoking a response from the transport authorities. Elsewhere, London's answer to Central Station is about to open for business, and Londonist got a sneak preview. Meanwhile, spooky goings-on beneath London Bridge, where a cache of skeletons provided an apt story for Hallowe'en.......

As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts -- okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles -- now that's a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude's landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in Venice......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

It used to be that the wealthy, with their high powered jobs that meant they couldn’t make it home in time to walk the dog, paid someone to do it for them. They got all the perks of having a dog without having to actually put on wellies, throw sticks and bag turds. The world’s gone topsy turvy though and, apparently, the wealthy animal lover about town now wants to pay someone else for......

London has undergone a mass exodus. Unnoticeable to some, devastating to others, the actors, directors, stage managers, comedians and dedicated followers of fringe theatre are negotiating their way north to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, leaving a distinct lack of entertainment down here. Seeing this as an opportunity rather than a threat, the plucky Etcetera Theatre and Liberties Bar in Camden are hosting London's miniature version of the Scottish theatre revels and are proudly presenting......

It wasn't so long ago that London-based "social music revolution" website Last.fm was bought out by American media behemoth (no, not the band) CBS. We asked co-founder of Last, Martin Stiksel what it meant for the site - and what on earth is going on with Paris Hilton ... What does the CBS deal mean for Last? Apart from £140m, of course. It means we get the muscle behind us to do all the......

We all know that London property prices are shockingly expensive. But just in case you were in any doubt about it, Halifax, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, has released new figures that leave little room for debate. The average price of a home in London is now £313,122. In the rest of the South East, that figure drops slightly to a mere £259,904. That means that the average home is now above the level at......

Governor of California and Austrian über-man Arnold Schwarzenegger will be travelling to London on Sunday to meet Blair, reciprocating a visit Blair made to America's most populous state last year where the pair announced a trans-Atlantic alliance to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Obviously, Arnie has experience of dealing with such global problems before, namely the T-1000, a super terminator that could morph into anything that it had had physical contact with. The T-1000 wanted......

This Day In London’s History 1916: Prolific actor Eric Christmas is born in London. OK, so it’s slim pickings this week in terms of interesting London-related events that have taken place on this date. But we did discover that the wonderfully-named Eric Cuthbert Christmas was born on 19th March 1916 in London, and in the absence of anything more interesting occurring on this date in London we thought we would find out a little......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an ideal......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,......

I reviewed Kristin Hersh's spellbinding album preview show at the Arts Theatre last time and on Tuesday night I got the opportunity not only to watch her perform a powerful acoustic set with The McCarricks but to meet her in person. We had quite a chat... First of all how are you, how are the shows going, are you enjoying yourself? I haven't had any shows really because it's a promo tour. I'm about......

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Londonist wants you to know where to......

We love it when someone paints mysterious lines on the tarmac. Ooo, we love it. But not so Gary Caulson of Chingford. He recently had a soul-crushing experience upon returning to his car. During Gary’s one-week absence, some cunning paintsmith had daubed double-yellows beneath his vehicle. And then left three parking tickets totalling £240 by way of admonishment. It is absolutely ridiculous. When I saw what they had done, I was just incredibly frustrated.......

Right now, as we’re typing these words, we’re listening to the music that is streamed from the website of blues musician and London Underground busker Stephen Dale Petit. Normally, we would venture an opinion that despite Mr Petit’s obvious musical proficiency (Eric Clapton apparently thinks his music is “lovely”), this type of music isn’t entirely our beverage of choice. Usually we might suggest that this genre may be better aligned to our parents’ tastes.......

This just popped up on Metafilter: One of the great Radiohead tracks and drummer Phil Selway’s favourite song on “The Bends”, “Just” combines self-loathing lyrics, a particular viscous guitar riff and middle-eight to die for. For his cover Mark Ronson not only enlisted the help of the formidable Daptones horn section (The Dap Kings) but Alex Greenwald, the lead singer of Phantom Planet (best known for “California”, the theme to “The OC”). Here's the......

Three men in their early 20s were stabbed in the ticket hall at Holloway Road Tube station last night. One is serious but stable with stomach injuries. The other two have cuts to their hands and arms. One man has been arrested. A reporter for the Daily Mirror has been arrested after trying to land a job at Buckingham Palace. The farce surrounding the rebuilding of the Royal London hospital and St Bartholomew's is apparently......

You, our faithful Londonist readers, did so well with the previous installments of this little game, in which we have asked you to identify the London location of videos featuring Kylie, Coldplay, and the Chemical Brothers, that we thought we'd give you a bit more of a challenge. (As always, post answers or other reactions in the comments.) Madonna, Madonna, Madonna! We don't even need to make a joke. You can come up with your......

Following the bombings and attempted bombings of the last month London has seen a a rise in reported hate crimes including both verbal and physical assaults as well as criminal damage to buildings including Mosques. According to Scotland Yard there were 269 "religious hate" crimes, compared with 40 in the same period last year. Such attacks spiked just after both the 7th and 21st of July and while we were expecting those of little......

Having predicted that violinist Leila Josefowicz would wear something stunning for her two Proms performances, we were momentarily taken aback when we first caught sight of her walking onstage to play the Bruch concerto in the Royal Albert Hall last Saturday. A simple turquoise skirt, paired with a sky-blue... camisole? That couldn't be right, could it? Ah but look again... that's no camisole! It's a fantasia of pleated chiffon, which extends in the back......

If you missed the NorthSouthEastWest photographic exhibition at the Science Museum earlier this year then you should definitely try and catch it in Trafalgar Square this week. The project, which is currently touring the world, brings togther some of the world’s top photographers to "to spell out the effects of climate change on the lives of ordinary people". Thankfully, this is not just lots of pictures of ice-caps. NSEW takes a much more diverse......