Once long ago, Mama Londonist wasn't happy with little Londonist and wanted to give us an earful. However, Londonist had got married to this other blog with a trendy hat, a silly double-barrelled name and a penchant for perverting the course of justice. Soon, Londonist was being photographed with its nose full of white powder and its hair all over the place, not in it's usual 'beehive' style as was fashionable in those days.......

Londonist is all for environmentalism. We even clothe the Londonist baby in non-disposable washable cotton nappies and take all our groceries home from the organic food shop in a bag made of woven hemp. We wash our hair with a cuttlefish and row everywhere. However, when we heard that a low-carbon Olympic flame will light up the 2012 Games, we weren't impressed. We want a big old dirty flame. This is the Olympics! Let's......

Curious and curiouser: we got a tip-off from a mysterious source that the District Line had a distinct lack of advertising over the weekend. Could this have anything to do with Buy Nothing Day, which took place on Saturday? Those baffling adverts coyly suggesting you need more fibre in your diet - or maybe it's oestrogen or hair that you're lacking - all seemed to have disappeared, leaving the carriages refreshingly blank and clear.......

You can get packed into a club playing bad techno any weekend, but it’s not often that you get to party like it’s 1859. Saturday’s White Mischief, themed “From The Earth To The Moon”, was an evening envisioning the future as the Victorians imagined it (well before George Orwell came along and scared the crap out of us). The crowd was split between those in standard club dress and those who went all out......

With bonfire night just around the corner, Parliament must be getting a little nervous. Unblinking beady eyes will no doubt be focused on Southwark Crown Court today where Brian Haw takes on Sir Ian Blair over the removal of his placards way back in May 06. No updates as yet but yesterday the BBC reported a master stroke of anti-terror logic in that Haw's camp could present a terrorist target. More specifically that Haw's......

This weekend saw the Europe's first RumFest at the Royal Horticultural Hall, Victoria. One very unremarkable looking bottle went on display: one of the four remaining unopened bottles of Wray and Nephew rum, distilled in Jamaica, whose contents may date back as far as 1915. It is estimated to be worth a staggering £26,000. That's several horribly expensive, yet truly authentic Mai Tais. You'd think organiser, Paul McFadyen, would have felt like protecting his star......

Fancy something completely different for the weekend? Next weekend that is? Howzabout a preening and prancing, full-blooded Persian pop concert? We thought that might grab your attention, for one reason or another. Most Londoners tend to forget that for every ex-pat community living in London, there is a similarly ex-pat music scene catering for them. Well, this is what a lot of Iranians do for entertainment… And because Iranians are a funny bunch, after six......

22. The Thornton Heath Happening During the 1930s and 1970s several ghosts besieged residents of Thornton Heath, Croydon. The case was investigated in 1938 by researcher Nandor Fodor, who claimed that the victim of the poltergeist was in a sense possessed by the spirit of a murderer, stating that the visions and nightmares she’d been having were in fact memories of something akin to a past life. The case was never solved, as various......

Londonist appears to have spent all of our money on excellent but expensive gigs and over priced taxi fares this weekend. So once again, we've got no money. No, before you ask, we haven't ever heard of budgeting. We don't need to budget when there's all this exciting free stuff to be done this week: Monday: With so many other cool kid bars around in East London, the Rhythm Factory doesn't get written about......

Encased in a Victorian style, full length white dress complete with puff sleeves, high neck and crayon black scrawls, hair all crazy curls and mad bag lady styling, PJ Harvey revealed an endearingly warm and ditzy personality behind her astonishing set list at this very special show at the Royal Festival Hall last night. Chatting away to the audience between songs in her tiny, warm, West Country voice and sniffing into the microphone she......

20. A Chronicle Of Oddness Reaching the twentieth episode in the Saturday Strangeness is somewhat of a mini-milestone for me, and so to celebrate the capital’s frequent bouts of weirdness, here’s a brief catalogue of high strangeness pertaining to the weird, wonderful and downright sinister which has plagued London for the last twenty years. January 1987: Location – Stanmore A domestic cat named Peppi goes for its usual stroll around Anmer Lodge old folk’s......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 24th September 1917: A zeppelin drops a 50 kilogram bomb that lands just outside the Bedford Hotel on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, central London. 13 people are killed and a further 26 injured. Tuesday – 25th September 1818: The first human-to-human blood transfusion is performed at Guy’s Hospital. Previous blood transfusions had used animals’ blood. Wednesday – 26th September 1850: The first stretch of the North London......

In a week of transport woe, we've all felt a bit shortchanged. The exact scale of shortchanging due to the Tube strike has been explored already and yet more controversial financial consequences of protesting have been unveiled. It apparently cost £7million to police the Heathrow climate change protest in August and it was the Metropolitan police who paid up. The protest required 11 days of security in about 16,000 shifts which is quite a......

In the UK, Joe Rogan is probably best known for playing Joe Garrelli in the sitcom NewsRadio, as a presenter on the American reality show Fear Factor, and as a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. What us Londoners may not be aware of is that Joe is also a prolific stand-up comedian, gigging regularly to huge audiences around America for over fifteen years. He mixes traditional stand-up with political satire, a dissection of......

Fundraising events, for whatever cause, should always try to be novel and attention grabbing if they're going to reap the quids in. Londonist keeps up with the best of them. Lately, we've had the vet in a dog bowl, the bunny rabbit taxi and bid for a date girl. All excellent ideas to varying degrees. However, we've yet to come across a scheme that beats "Beards for Battersea". Yes, staff and volunteers from Battersea......

BAA are cutting 2000 airport jobs. Because the major problem with Heathrow and other pull-out-your-hair-ports is the unwieldy number of staff clamouring over each other to help you at check-in and baggage reclaim. New trains are too heavy for their tracks. Or is it that new trains are overcrowded with far more passengers than they were designed to carry, thus causing the damage? And it's only the trains to the south. Everyone knows that......

Clouds were billowing over Park Royal yesterday afternoon when a blaze broke out in a warehouse. The fire took hold quickly and spread to two neighbouring companies, triggering the widespread evacuation of the area. It took 20 fire engines and over 100 firefighters to bring matters under control, and the area was still smouldering and pretty much sealed off this morning. The cause of the fire is still being investigated, but it is believed to......

Confusion Over the past few weeks we have been speaking to a number of different people involved in politics. MP's, councillors, people with strong opinions and people with no political opinions. Basically, you are either really into politics or you're not. There are not that many people who sit on the fence on this point. A lot of people are not interested in politics because they find it confusing and intimidating. This apathy is......

The Proms are a marvellous institution. Remarkably diverse musically, accessible, world class and - crucially - cheap as chips, they are the soundtrack to summer in London and we are privileged to have them on our doorstep. It was with an eager step that we hied ourselves to the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday afternoon for the sold-out 48th Prom, despite the glowering sky and hint of rain in the air. Arriving at around......

11. The Weirdest Creature! It was a sunny day in October, the year 1878, when a naturalist and London Aquarium employee named Mr Davy exhibited his unusual beast, whilst on an afternoon stroll. Many onlookers and passers by gasped at the bizarre form, a creature most certainly unknown to science and described at the time as, ‘a living cube’ – standing two-feet in height, being two-feet in length and bereft of abdomen, with its......

How many weeks after a smoking ban is implemented does it take before the wrath of the smokers results in violence? The answer is three. A trio of men at a south-west London club were seen fleeing the scene after James Oyebola, a former British heavyweight boxer, was shot in the head and leg. Oyebola, 47, had confronted the men about smoking at the club, Chateau 6 in Fulham Road. He was taken to......

We all know the teeth-grinding, hair-pulling inconvenience of needing a ticket to board a bus then finding that the ticket machine has been vandalised and won't dispense the expensive little slip of paper that the driver doesn't look at anyway. A good citizen will cross the road or go further along the route to find an unvandalised, working ticket machine. We commend those good citizens. Barnet Council tries to fine them instead. Office manager......

The one-man protest that is Brian Haw, the only demonstrator allowed to air his views inside Parliament Square, may find himself surrounded soon. Instead of police circling him, however, it may well be other placard-waving peaceniks. Newly-minted PM Gordon Brown has called for a change in laws squelching the public’s right to protest within the grounds immediately surrounding Parliament. Currently, demonstrating in this area without prior police permission is prohibited by the Serious Organised......

The London Review of Breakfasts checks out the Breakfast Club in Islington, and they are impressed with the Full English (plus some) that they get for 7 quid, even though it's the tiniest bit burnt. Russell Davies of the very aptly named eggbaconchipsandbeans laments the end of that very classic cafe, the New Piccadilly. Be sure to check out his Flickr group for photos of the New Piccadilly through the ages. One of the......

The big day has arrived! I couldn't be happier that never again in this country will I have to play a gig in a smoky room, but it is going to be interesting to see what side effects the new smoking ban has. Scaremongers are predicting that less people will go to gigs if they can't smoke and that the people who do go will keep going running during the performances to smoke. Now......

Hooha over very expensive council corporate suite at the O2. But Bon Jovi christens it with "hair rock". Motorist hides gun between buttocks in Tooting. But local newspaper fails to spot 'Shooting craps' pun potential. At Wimbledon, if the rain doesn't get you, the snipers will. Madonna adds a sixth London home to her collection. Image courtesy of Chutney Bannister via the Londonist flickr group.......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

How many hogs does it take to cleanse a whale? No, it's not a Zen koan. The glorious Victorian temple to murdered animals that is the Natural History Museum is cleaning up the whale exhibit in its Large Mammals Hall - using hog hair bristle brushes! But why hog hair brushes? There are many reasons, but mostly it's because using tiny, peculiar implements to clean the largest animals on Earth looks really impressive and......

Just once in a while, wouldn't it be fun to go to a club night and still be able to hear yourselves think? Actually have a conversation? Somewhere where you can still have a dance, but don't have to push your way to the bar and then be ignored by a barman for half an hour? If so, look no further than Rocktronica. A weekly 'club' night that should serve you perfectly. OK, so......

Buttoned Down Disco is a phenomenon that's been going for a couple of years now, you join a mailing list, they tell you where and when the next party is and people turn up and rejoice to a funky mix of indie, cheese, pop, and everything in between. Buttoned Down Liveshow is a monthly event, sort of like the Disco's younger sister. 4 bands and an all night barbecue for £5. It's great! We......