The subject of the Museum in Docklands' latest exhibition should require no introduction from Londonist. Since he first struck in 1888, Jack the Ripper entered into London folklore as much as Dick Whittington, Pearly Kings and Queens or the 'Don't be a sinner, be a winner' bloke on Oxford St. What this impressively serious exhibition does, however, is remind visitors that underneath all of the London Dungeon gore, Jack-the-Ripper tours and bad-taste T-shirts, lies......

The year was 1959, and in an often overlooked corner of Hackney, one of the world's most recognisable Hollywood beauties was bringing just a touch of Californian colour to a peculiarly English affair: a budgie show. Jayne Mansfield, living in London while making the film Too Hot To Handle, was invited to the All Saints church in Haggerston in September 1959 to help judge the East London Budgerigar and Foreign Birds Society show. Michael......

If the idea of going to the country over the weekend is just a bit too involved, heading over to Old Spitalfields Market today might be able to give you some illusion of escaping the big city. Though billed as "the Countryside Comes to Spitalfields," it's really more of fancy foods and a few barnyard animals. There are a handful of penned-in furry friends for kids and adults alike to give a friendly scratch.......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Wick Café 28 Felstead Street E9 5LT 0208 533 7575 6am-5pm for (Monday-Saturday), 8am-4pm (Sunday) Expect to Pay: around £5 for amply piled dishes of vintage caff favourites Rating: 9 out of 10 This tea peddling East London greasy spoon, where the only thing more high viz than the vests of the chowing workers is the specials signage adorning......

There’s nothing like an outing to Hackney to start the mind whirring about gentrification. And we can think of no surer way to start an argument than to wander into an unreformed East End boozer enthusing about all the new construction and upscale shops popping up in the neighbourhood. The term gentrification was actually born in Islington. It was coined in the 60s by sociologist Ruth Glass, who noticed the phenomenon of middle-class people......

Even on its quietest weeks, London is something of a happy haven for bibliophiles such as ourselves, though we may be doing nothing more than perusing one of the city’s many lovely bookshops. This week, however, we’re in a veritable book geek heaven, as the London literary scene goes all glittery, playing host to some major names and fantastic events, leaving us tongue-tied and weak at the knees. Do we gush? Very well then,......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Franco’s Take Away 67 Rivington Street EC2A 3AY Nearest Tube: Old Street 0207 739 0231 6.30am-5pm (Monday-Saturday) Expect to Pay: £5 or less for a substantial amount of food Rating: 7 out of 10 Despite its seemingly hidden location (and Erol Alkan’s musing), this Italian (cum East Ender) sandwich bar is hardly any secret. Indeed, random queues can form......

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......

Every month, the folks at Fancyapint? get together to vote for their top ten favourite pubs. These are recently visited pubs that for one reason or another (the ambience, the booze, the company) stuck in their collective memory. Kindly, these booze-savvy Fancyapinters have decided to share their latest picks with Londonist and all our readers. Cheers! Here’s the current list from Fancyapint? in no particular order of merit. They assure us that all ten......

From the government department for investigating blatantly obvious things - a public consultation into whether learning English helps immigrants feel more at home. Spend the money on the courses, you twonks. BBC names rising music stars for 2008. Don't get too excited. Watch out for our Listen Up! posts instead. Market "intelligence" firms gathering data on public health predict that residents of deprived boroughs, Tower Hamlets, Southwark and City & Hackney are likely to......

We're very excited. After years of overdosing on the American cop/detective/legal thriller franchises it looks like we're finally getting our own. Law and Order's crossing the pond. Of course, we'd prefer CSI but beggars can't be choosers. We love The Bill but its East End beat patrol and trademark frontline grit put it at the other end of the entertainment scale to L&O which deals with the more cerebral end of arrest and trial,......

From the outside, you wouldn't guess anything was going on behind the peeling, Georgian facade at all but inside, what was once called "the handsomest room in town" was graced by equally handsome Hugh Grant and the luscious Helen Mirren as part of a fundraiser to raise awareness of the ever worsening plight of Wilton's Music Hall. Earlier this year, Wiltons hit the headlines when it was listed in the World Monuments Fund top......

The 2012 Olympic Games may seem a long way off, but the pressure is starting to mount on the proposed developments for East London. In addition to building a shiny new stadium, the Olympics is meant to be an opportunity to provide more jobs, improved transport, and 9,000 new homes (of which half will be low-cost). While the Overground is now servicing Stratford and due to hook up to the East London Line in......

Isn’t it too early for winter? You’ll risk hypothermia if you’re outside this week, so stay in and watch the telly. Isn’t that really the best option? On TV, Londonist likes: Tuesday, 20 November & Wednesday, 21 November The Eight Hundred Million Pound Railway Station (BBC2, 22:00-22:30) The next two parts of this series on the brand spanking new St. Pancras station look at the race to finish the station on time. Apparently, the......

Close to 300 cases of measles have been reported to City and Hackney Primary Care Trust over the last 5 months. It is thought that the outbreak is directly linked to increasing numbers of parents deciding against the MMR vaccination for their darlings in the light of the well publicised but now discredited research which linked it to autism. With hundreds of spotty kids sickening in East London direct action is being taken by......

That's Tony Cowards's wish as he brings his one man stand-up show to The Offside Bar in Islington tonight. Tony, originally from Suffolk but now living in our very own East End, performed his hour long "Festival of Football" at the Edinburgh Fringe this summer where he mixed tales of supporting Ipswich Town with a selection of unusual football headlines and a sideways look at what it means to be a football supporter these......

Even with the spectre of hazardous drinking looming over us, pubs are still our favourite places to be, so we were delighted to be invited along to the Fancyapint.com London pub awards 2007. Fancyapint has awards in 2 categories. The reviewers' awards are based on their dedicated team's experiences over the year and a bewilderingly scientific system of tick boxes. The visitor awards are based on a not wholly scientific but ingenious manipulation of......

Anybody who's spent an afternoon walking around Upper Street, iBook in hand, trying to log on to Islington council's "Technology Mile" service may smirk, but a new report says Londoners are the most wifi-happy people on the planet. According to the Wi-Fi Hotspot Index, networks set up by the likes of BT and The Cloud in London account for one tenth of the UK's wireless usage, and just over 1% of the worldwide total......

The statisticians are at it again. Trying to connect A-B but, just for fun, popping into every shop along the way. Sketching trends with a pencil as there is insufficient data to ink them in. Reading significance into very little. Missing the point. A new survey by the University of East London has produced a map portraying religious segregation in the capital, which concludes that religion is a bigger dividing factor in the city than......

If you've just landed a last minute date for tomorrow and were wondering where to take them to impress them with your urbanity, sensitivity, culture, quirkiness and cool then we've got something for you. Wilton's Music Hall (old, delapidated, threatened Victorian icon) is hosting Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (atonal, landmark song cycle) by Transition_projects (contemporary, experimental arm of resident opera company) and a world premiere by young composer Ryan Wigglesworth (cutting edge kudos), featuring a......

In part two of our follow up to last year's article on which player's our Premiership clubs should buy we cover Tottenham, West Ham and Fulham. Click here to see yesterday's piece on Chelsea and Arsenal. TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR What was the problem position? Left wing. What did the club do about it? Like rivals Arsenal over their goalkeeping situation, not much. Indeed, Spurs eventually sacrificed England world cup winger Aaron Lennon to the ol'......

Yesterday we began giving you our thoughts on value-for-money selections for your Premiership fantasy football teams as you take the plunge entering Londonist's league (code number: 319926-64249) or one of the countless others on offer with the 2007/8 season getting underway this weekend. In the second and final instalment of our musings on the subject we'll soon tackle the remaining London teams, followed by those from around the country, but first, as promised in......

Roding foreboding - East End river's flood defences may be inadequate. Pensioner dies after being pelted by by kids. Man ploughs car into group of girls. The nightclub owner who's openly flouting the smoking ban. There's always one. DLR to get longer trains. Image courtesy of onionbagblogger via the Londonist flickr group.......

Hey, check me out - I've got my own account for the Londonist blogging software! Look, my name's at the bottom and everything! This level of trust is genuinely almost too much for me to handle. What if I accidentally reveal that the editor's a shoplifter, or I write something that offends all our readers with big, big chins? Also, I'm used to blogging using LiveJournal, a website renowned for angst and misery. So......

Nestled somewhere between the Novae Archaelogical Site, Bulgaria, the Darbush Tomb, Eritrea, the Capitanes Generales Palace, Guatemala and 96 other gravely endangered world monument sites sits an unassuming East End Music Hall. Wilton’s Music Hall was included today on the World Monument Watchlist of 100 Most Endangered sites for 2008. The watchlist raises global awareness of monuments of significant artistic, architectural, historic or social value that require urgent attention; without which they will disappear.......

Wenlock Arms 26 Wenlock Road N1 7TA Tel.: (020) 7608 3406 Nearest Tube: Old Street Sick of the endless identkit plastic pubs full of plastic people drinking plastic drinks that plague London, we are always up for an unusual and authentic old fashioned boozer with good beer and local colour. The Wenlock Arms is about five minutes' walk from Old Street tube station, and nestles behind some intimidating council tower blocks and past an......

There are no memorials to the five victims of Jack the Ripper in the East End. But there's little danger of the sites being fogotten. Each year, thousands take a tour of the little-changed back streets where the Ripper persued his grizzly hobby. Over the weekend (we think), dedications have appeared on the walls of at least two of these sites. Hanbury Street has gained a stenciled memorial to Annie Chapman. The Corporation car......

The first rule about East End Brawl Club is... Drunk man ends up on church roof. No, it wasn't the Bishop of Southwark. Tina Turner to perform at the Natural History Museum. Can anyone think of a gag here, cos we're really scratching our heads. Bungle leaves council with four members (headline unconnected with the camp bear from Rainbow) Tehran gets fleet of London tour buses. Image of Regents Park bandstand courtesy of Baroness......

Now that Cedric’s had a chance to recover from the awfully big excitement of the Clissold Park windfall, our regeneration rabbit is about to go hippety hoppety flop eared over news that Silvertown Quays has had the go ahead from Newham. This means that there will be a massive, mixed use development at the Royal Victoria Dock in the East End, full of shiny new houses, offices, workspaces, green spaces and all those positive......

Playing a gig as a solo musician can be quite a strange experience. Rocking up to a dingy pub on your own with just a guitar for company can be at once isolating and liberating - you may miss out on the friendly banter of bandmates and friends but it certainly seems to make dealing with calamity easier, as I experienced last Tuesday night. The pub in question - Leonard's on Northampton Road, EC2.......