Boris Johnson is backing a plan to bring Routemasters back into action, with electric motors and no emissions, and the reintroduction of drivers and conductors on each bus. With characteristic swiftness, Ken Livingstone has taken opposition to the plan and Londoners are once again torn between the two views on the possible return of the famous big red bus. For a brief set by Autocar magazine, design company Capaco came up with the electric......

Londonist went on a sojourn to Manchester recently, and loved the place. Home of iconic bands, incessant rain, pretty canals, and some of Britain's most interesting modern architecture outside London, Manchester has a lot to offer. If only there were a way to get there that didn't involve spending half your life savings on an overpriced, inflexible rail ticket. Never let it be said that Virgin Trains can't spot an opening in the market.......

Never knowingly underrated - his was the sole photographic contribution to a recent Phaidon book about art history - Canadian photographer Jeff Wall is best known for his imposingly large colour transparencies that evoke scenes from unmade films. For his first UK show since a 2005 Tate retrospective, Wall has filled the lower half of the White Cube in Mason's Yard, SW1 with a selection of his lesser-known black and white photos. Drained of......

O2, it seems, are cornering the market in progressive mobile gadegtry, already having the monopoly on the shiny smart iPhone and now the pilot phase OyPhone. Sorry, "Oyster Wallet" is the much more sensible and meaningless name for TfL's latest technology wheeze which puts your travelcard in your mobile phone and today, 500 Oyster users begin trialling the Nokia 6131 handsets with Oyster embedded. Barclaycard are also in on the trial, charging up the......

This Sunday TfL take over the North London Line. Yes, the service also known as the loony line and infamous for fare dodging and criminal activity on unmanned stations is getting a rebrand. Goodbye (good riddance) Silverlink! Hello London Overground. The long neglected, feared and cursed service that links Stratford with North London and pootles all the way around the West to Richmond is being brought into the TfL fold. It's even getting coloured......

Okay, first of all, the bad news: both the opening and closing previews at the Barbican's London Korea Film Festival are already sold out. Boo! If you were hoping to check out Park Chan-wook's latest I'm A Cyborg, But That's Okay, or the Cannes-pleasing Breath (pictured left) by Kim Ki-Duk, then you're out of luck. The sell-out is testament to the reputation for excellence that Korean cinema has gathered in the last decade, and......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 22nd October 1809: The Croydon Canal, linking Croydon to Deptford via Forest Hill, is opened. Requiring 28 locks to overcome the gradients of the route, it would never become a commercial success, and would be closed just 37 years later. Tuesday – 23rd October 1731: A fire breaks out in Ashburnham House in Westminster, damaging much of the Cotton Library – a renowned collection of Middle English......

Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) is having an unusual autumn. While most performing arts venues start September with a new programme of plays, workshops and special one-off events, BAC is bolting its main doors and sending all those who dare approach through the back door and around each room in the venue for the mind-blowing Masque of the Red Death. We have had a range of experiences in this extraordinary production – and it just......

What would you do for 10p? Probably not a whole lot if you’re like a very tired friend of ours on Saturday night. The lure of saving a couple of shillings failed to persuade her to stay for another drink: ‘Wait a half hour and the bus fare cut kicks in. You’ll even save 20p on your two buses back to Ealing.’ Predictably she chose bed over beer. Buses are now 90p instead of......

We were bored this evening so we took pot luck, browsed the Camden Fringe and went along to the next possible show. And what were we destined for? Traditional fringe fare: a slice of Shakespeare all shook up. Our minds were open. What was definitely not expected was it to kick off with a hip hop dance routine. Not a bad one at that, although clearly not from professional dancers. It made more sense......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Café on the Hill 91 Brixton Hill SW2 1AA Map Expect to Pay: Under £5 Rating: 8 out of 10 Finally Londonist made it south of the river for lunch, and considering how delish and culturally unique our meal was, we’re sure glad we did! Café on the Hill looks like your bog standard London caff, which of course......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

The search for Maddy has hit London. Since the Mayor gave under-16s free bus travel, youth crime on buses has risen 55%. We imagine the graph that Ken will be showing us come election time is the one showing how youth fare evasion is down 100%. Having been on a "fact-finding mission" to see Bruce Springsteen last October, two Croydon councillors are going on an all expenses paid trip to see Rod Stewart in......

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......

If you could release a spoken word album of cabbie stories you would have to advertise it in a K-Tel Hit Parade LP style. It would sound something like this: New from K-Tel, it’s the 100 best Cabbie stories coming to all good record stores! Who could forget such classics as; “You’ll never guess who I had in the back of my cab the other day…” Or the mercurial: “The trouble with Blair is......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways. 33. Newman Passage Where? In the heart of Fitzrovia, linking Newman and Rathbone streets. What? A tripartite affair, with a short cobbled road forming the western and southern stretches, and an alley leading east beneath the Newman Arms' pie room. Newman Passage forms part of the Berners Estate, and dates from 1746. The road stops abruptly to the south, thanks to the post office depot, which......

Mayor Ken has blockaded himself inside a safe house in the country. Why? To escape the hired goons that Shell and BP and Texaco are sending around to break his kneecaps. Ken has signed a deal with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to receive oil relief for the poor of London. Patterned after home heating oil agreements Chavez made with Boston and New York, Venezuela's nationalized oil industry will offer a 20 per cent reduction......

We've always been slightly amused by the word 'oyster'. Following the pattern of trickster and punster, it should refer to one who delights in shouting 'Oy!'. Which is exactly what we say to Transport for London. Today, the BBC revealed that 18,000 people per day are not using their oyster cards correctly, and are thus charged full fare. Shashi Verma, director of Oyster cards, has this to say: If people use the system as......

If revolution ever comes to Britain, we reckon it won’t start with the huddled masses of popular socialist imagination; it won’t be workers rising up, casting off their chains and upending the rotten edifice of the UK’s establishment - nothing so old-fashioned. No, revolution will come from one group of downtrodden helots, oppressed daily by their cruel metal gods: the commuters who travel into and out of London. Who’s to say that some day......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

If you're hiking, consider charging up your iPod, as Seattlest finds out that a man lost during a hike was found by the glow of his iPod. That cleverness seems to be devoid in cops who were using police cruiser instant messaging clients - although we imagine IMs "so are you nakie" to be included in cop shows, just for realism. If only the cops were busting the Hummer-driving jerk who made a poor......

Torontoist visits the site of a new Frank Gehry structure, stalks "the elusive Bahamas streetcar", and watches Tom Green get surgery. Phillyist rejoices in the Phillies' wild card chances, mourns the injuries sustained by Eagles defensive end Jevon Kearse, and goes pirate on our asses. SFist notes that Guns and Roses were in town, that San Franciscans are taking over reality TV, and that the San Francisco Chronicle's skills of original nomenclature could use......

According to London lore, it’s never easy to persuade a cabbie to take you south of the river. Unless that cabbie is Mark Thurbin. He recently accepted a very strange fare from a couple of passengers, which tested his Knowledge to the limit. Far from requesting a short ride to Waterloo station as Mark had expected, Richard Connolly and Steve Shanyaski asked him to take them on a journey taking several days, a journey......

For Crying Out Loud. Will this never stop? In Tim Moore's excellent 2002 book, Do Not Pass Go, there's that lovely story of the cabbie who turns to his fare and says, "London. Great town, this. Or it will be when it's finished." And that's fine, that really is fine. London is a Work In Progress. But this is just taking the piss somewhat. We'd just got through bemoaning the fact that one of......

Every time we attend a festival at Victoria Park, it rains. We’re beginning to think that we’re just bad luck for the area. Our attendance yesterday at the Day One of the Lovebox Weekender was no exception. As we stepped off the bus near the edge of the park, our presence seemed to invoke a light drizzle, which soon pulled itself together and turned into a persistent light rain, to the obvious delight of......

All the highlights from our sister sites around the globe. Torontoist immediately wins our heart by using the word "Jackass" in a headline. In fact, we love their use of it so much that we're going to use it as much as possible throughout this post. For example, it looks like there are Toronto-area jackasses besides those who misuse the sidewalk: look at the crap on sale on Toronto's craigslist. But it looks like Toronto......

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......

This day in London’s history 1984: WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot and killed in St James's Square during a protest outside the Libyan Embassy. She was the first policewoman to be murdered on duty in Britain. The event inspired car insurance salesman Michael Winner to etsablish the Police Memorial Trust and a memorial to WPC Fletcher was commissioned for the square. In 2005, the National Police Memorial was unveiled by the Queen, it stands......

The traffic warden - one of the most hated jobs in London. The hatred is especially prominent in Camden, where a protest will take place against the number of tickets given in the borough. At least 200 cars will encircle the Town Hall, their disgruntled drivers dressed as pirates, to reinforce their claim that parking enforcement is banditry. The oddest display, however, will be a picket consisting of cabbies and local celebrities, including Michael......