We were rather impressed by the Hayward's Psycho Buildings exhibition when it opened back in May, and Londoners appear to have shared our enthusiasm: the show has been packed out all summer. It closes on Bank Holiday Monday, meaning this weekend is your last chance to row a jerry-rigged boat across a flooded sculpture garden or see the London skyline from atop a giant inflatable bubble. The gallery is open till 10pm tonight, tickets are......

Thinking of adding your footfall to the hordes that have already made the British Museum our most popular cultural attraction? Might not want to do it today - there's a strike on. Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) and Prospect are planning to down tweed jackets at 2pm, having been most untickled by a proposed 1.6% pay offer. Management claim the museum will remain open, though access to some galleries could......

Having already proved itself best in London, the British Museum has now ensconsed itself as the most popular cultural attraction in the UK. Elbowing out competition local (Tate Modern) and far-off (Blackpool Pleasure Beach), the 249-year old institution tempted 6.04 million people through its doors over the past 12 months, many to see the warriors of Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Army, who were to be found at ease in the Reading Room. Coming up next......

It's only June, but it'll take an awful lot to topple Sammy Ofer as Londonist's Person of the Year. Having already pledged £20 million for a new wing at the National Maritime Museum, the Israeli shipping magnate has now ensured the full restoration of the Cutty Sark with a £3.3 million donation. The tea clipper, which was gutted by fire last May, has slowly been put back together, but the small matter of funding......

Good News, Dance Fans - London's Big Dance will be going ahead as planned this year. New Mayor Boris had lost no time in appointing a supremo to review cultural events planned by the Greater London Authority, so at Londonist we are pleased to hear that this jewel in the capital's 2008 cultural calendar has not been pulled. We are even more chuffed to get wind that the launch of the countdown to the......

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, proud resident of the handsome World Heritage-listed site that gazes imperiously across the River at the Mammon-fuelled glazed monstrosities of Canary Wharf, today has even more reason to be puffed up with pride. An Israeli billionaire has donated £20 million to build a brand new wing. Set for completion in 2012, the £35 million total wing will comprise a large scale exhibition hall, archive centre, learning space, cafe,......

The tussle over the fate of an east end council block stepped up a gear over the weekend, as a heavyweight "starchitect" and a respected art critic both sided with a campaign to save the building. Robin Hood Gardens, a 1972-built concrete block in Poplar, was recently singled out as a failed estate by local MP and culture minister Margaret Hodge, who wants it demolished. However, it has been defended by Richard Rogers and......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 33. Office Robots Following on from the theme of Office Culture and the influence this can have on how nice we are to each other… this week I started thinking about the actual role we do all day, every day… Now, I realise that lately it's been a very easy thing to take shots at......

Our friends in Westminster have voted that more money from the Eamon Holmes fronted tax on the poor, the National Lottery, can be used to plug the funding gap for the 2012 Olympics. Culture Secretary James Purnell said the £9.3bn budget for the Games (almost four times the estimate that helped win the bid in 2005) is "robust". We doubt it. How has it suddenly become robust? The real lottery here is determining how much......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break? Edokko 50 Red Lion Street WC1R 4PF Nearest Tube: Holborn 0207 242 3490 12pm-2pm, 6pm-10pm (Monday-Saturday) Expect to Pay: £10+ for mains/set lunches (under £5 for ala carte items) Rating: 8 out of 10 We really wanted to give this Japanese restaurant an even higher rating than a solid “8” and perhaps if our expectations had been a little......

The Rainbow is long gone, the Hammersmith Palais now lingers only in the memory and even that good old grubby beer stained shit-hole that is the loveable Astoria is under threat. Gigs are selling out in minutes, replacing restaurants and cinemas as the preferred venue for gormless gobblers to converse after work, and yet the property developers keep their beady eyes focused on every venue lease going. How are we going to find the......

Every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... We recommended memberships to various arty places as Christmas presents earlier this week, but in terms of things you can wrap and place under......

As Londoners we pootle around our fair city doing Londonish things: pretending to read anything off the Orange shortlist, pretending not to read the free newspapers, pretending not to notice how bad the man sitting next to us on the bus smells, rush-rush-rush with our minds usually elsewhere. And then once in a while we focus and spot something unusual, something that hasn’t happened before, or that wasn’t there yesterday. Thus it is with spaces......

Another faith school is ruffling feathers, following on from yesterday's news about the JFS - and this one hasn't even opened yet. The Hindu Krishna-Avanti school is due to open next year in Harrow, north-west London and is causing a certain amount of concern in stipulating that at this point, the school authorities will prioritise applications from Hindu families practicing the religion regularly, mainly needing proof of regular worship at home and at temples,......

Ever stop to wonder about the legacy of romantic comedy ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’? Every other minute of your work week? Well, you’re in luck, as today’s the day that Londonist tackles this very question. Sort of. Mild-mannered examination of love and marriage in the 1990s? Check. Perpetuator of the stereotype of the fumbling, floppy-haired English male? Check. Beyond that, though, the movie’s legacy becomes a bit more jumbled, as evidenced by recent......

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......

Rapha makes clothing for serious cyclists - the couriers, the racers, the hardcore fundraisers pedalling over the Andes. They are also organising one of the most unusual events we've had the privilege of hearing about: this Saturday is the second Rapha Roller Race Culture Clash which is "a four-way clash between teams of bicycle couriers, cycle journalists, media folk and a ‘dark horse’ Dutch team made up of unnamed riders." And before you try......

This weekend column is brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. 24. Llamas As Team Nice and the Niceties Campaign is a year old, last week we spoke of niceties tokens, which is the mechanism that started Team Nice. So this week I thought I would speak a little bit more about Team Nice. Team Nice is an ever-growing group of people (currently just under 1,000)......

New writing theatre company Paines Plough are presenting an absolutely cracking new way to see plays this autumn and making us think that there should be more theatre programmed like this. New writing, an exciting theatre space, a sensible time slot, a hot snack and a drink are all included in the ticket price and you can be on your way having had your culture fix by 8pm when other theatres are raising the......

Good one for Hallowe’en this – although this actual story unfolded a month or so ago. An Asda shopper in Roehampton apparently had a bit of a fright when she opened a bag of ready-washed rocket salad to find a live frog looking up at her. And she was equally miffed by the paltry offer of a £10.00 Asda voucher offered by way of compensation. Now there are several aspects to this story. Firstly, this......

That’s the creative process used by artist Paul Day to produce his landmark sculpture for the station. Or so we choose to believe. Sadly, the facts tell us that it’s really made from conventional modelling techniques, and shows the sculptor in a clinch with his half-French wife, Catherine. The nuzzling pair were today installed on the concourse beneath St Panc’s famous clock. According to Day, the 30ft group ‘reflects the romance that train travel......

Attention, sufferers of controller-thumb and Wii-wrist: the London Games Festival is here to make your condition even worse. From the 22nd of October to the 2nd of November organisers will be laying on talks, music and exhibitions celebrating the culture of gaming. Many of the events are geared towards those in the industry, but there’s also plenty to please the civilian gamer, especially in the festival fringe. And we can’t help but approve of......

Your mother might well have said ‘that you never should/Play with the gypsies in the wood’, and she would probably advise you to give a wide berth to the begging variety in most urban high streets today as well. But this is just so much social stereotyping, and the Romany culture is a rich and interesting one, certainly worthy of more respect than it usually garners. Londonist has exciting news for those of you who......

The Mayor of London wants you to stay up late. Stay up late for the Lates October season. He wanted you to cut back on sleep and catch up on culture back in May when the first Lates season was launched, now it's October, he wants you to check out the things you miss during the day in the big museums and galleries. Have you been meaning to see something at any of the......

As we come to the end of the Jewish High Holy day season, London will be celebrating all things Jewish this Sunday (14 Oct) with the 2nd Simcha on the Square. Designed as a showcase for the UK's Jewish culture and supported by the Mayor of London, Trafalagar Square will be transformed with performances, stalls and lots of really good food from 12 till 6pm. The Jewish Museum will also be on hand with......

The Barbican's love of all things Brazilian continues this week, as it launches into a week-long season of Brazilian cinema that picks up where last year's Tropicalia left off. Cinema of Brazil: Literature into Film, presented in conjunction with the Embassy of Brazil, aims to 'celebrate the bond between literature and cinema in Brazil'. It's a neat idea, allowing curator Adriana Rouanet to cast her eye across the length and breadth of the country's......

We like a funny story on Londonist, and this has had us tittering into our tea mugs all day. One David Gay, of Finsbury Park, is up in the dock accused of using stealth cameras to film up ladies’ skirts. Voyeurs are of course fundamentally pretty sad creatures, and the idea that someone has the power to see into areas which are private or sacred to another individual is, frankly, dead creepy. Clearly this guy......

Sometimes, you've got to wonder how they do it. The ballet dancers, the orchestras, the actors, singers, directors and conductors - what does it take to get them into the state we see them in for the final product? Are there hissy fits, tiaras and tantrums or lots of tea breaks and group hugs after each scene is rehearsed? Open Rehearsal is the weekend to find out and be as nosey as you like......

Modbury in Devon was the little trailblazer and now all 33 Boroughs have got together to ask us the big question: should the plastic shopping bag be banned in London? The stats are pretty shocking. We really do take placcy bags for granted. Over 13 billion bags are issued to shoppers each year which works out at at least 220 per person in the UK although, it actually feels a lot more to us. Unfortunately,......

Months of research and workshops run by writer Justin Young and director Suzanne Gorman have created Moonwalking In Chinatown, an extraordinary walkabout performance which leads audiences through Chinatown in the dusk behind bobbing paper lanterns and a variety of actors and stewards. Four overlapping stories for four simultaneous groups, each led by a different coloured lantern, have to weave through the early evening Soho crowds. The range of characters and multiple storylines and also......