Hope springs eternal! Yes, spring has sprung at last, and it couldn’t have possibly come sooner. Sure, it’s supposed to rain all week, but at least it’s warm(ish) rain. Get out there and take advantage of the coming season of rebirth, and don’t forget to indulge in some illicit hugging (see what's on for Sunday). Monday: London writer/filmmaker Daniel Frampton, author of Filmosophy and host of the club of the same name dedicates evenings......

The Germaniaxx Isn't the weather glorious? Stand in the sunshine and it's definitely spring. This makes us happy! This means that we can walk in the park and get about town and not feel miserably wintry and therefore desperate to waste our hard earned on firelit pubs and woolly accessory buying. Well, not quite so much. We are, however, saving up our cash to spend on Creme Eggs and the rebuild Camden Market fund so......

Hackney wasn't very happy that Jacqui Smith singled it out as an unsafe place to walk alone, late at night. We sympathise with Ms Smith as it's not our favourite place to hoik it home from in the small hours but it was bad press nonetheless. Spotting an opportunity to be a local hero, MP, Diane Abbott, bounced back for the borough and organised a late night stroll round the mean streets of Hackney,......

Three weeks into the New Year, probably one week until payday and telly's rubbish (except for new CSI), the weather's grey and the detox is wearing thin. Don't give in to those January blues! Here's what can get you out of the house for not a lot of wonga this week. Monday: This is the most depressing day of the year. We've said it before but we're going to say it again because we......

Pigeons may be flying rats to Ken Livingstone and thousands of other Londoners - but to some, they are war heroes. And worth a pretty penny in portrait form. Oil paintings depicting the birds who flew back and forth during two world wars, acting as spies and messengers have been sold at auction for astonishing prices. Sold by Bonhams auction house, the eight oil paintings were purchased mostly by an unnamed buyer who placed......

Londonist spent all of its money this week getting drunk at its 3rd birthday party. Hopefully, you were one of the many people who decided to join us. As a thank you, London On The Cheap is back (hurrah!) showing you what fun and fabulous free stuff you can entertain yourselves with next week: Sunday: We had an extra hour today so you get an extra day of news from us. Out to Lunch......

Well, we hear you say, haven’t you reviewed this event already? Shouldn’t you get another hobby, say crocheting? Fun as crocheting may be, after one Londonista’s outing to the Red Death Late Nights following her participation in The Mask of the Red Death at BAC, this Londonista decided to try to see if one could attend the Late Night extravaganza without having seen the previous show. Would it be as fun as crocheting*? Well,......

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......

Since we announced to the world that all round top London icon and friendly bear, Paddington, is headed for Hollywood, there's been a resurgence of interest in our marmalade munching mate. What with all those late night botox parties, coke fuelled awards scraps and high class hookers just around the corner you'd have thought that what old Paddington slaps between two pieces of bread would be the least of anyone's worries. But now revered......

Just out the Van: Autumn is definitely upon us - time to start wrapping up at home with a good book. Or you could throw caution to the (nippy) wind and head to Book Slam next Thursday to bask in the warm glow of literati (gliterati?) including Sarfraz Manzoor (reading from his memoir "Greetings from Bury Park"), Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Netsayi, and poet Polar Bear... Next Thursday at Neighbourhood, £5/£6, 12 Acklam Road, W10 5QZ,......

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......

If, like us, you’re exhausted and skint after the bank holiday weekend and just not up to taking advantage of all the fun things London has to offer this week, here are a few things you can watch and listen to from the comfort of your front room. On TV, Londonist likes: Thursday, 30 August Robbie Coltrane: B-Road Britain (ITV1, 21:00-22:00) Robbie Coltrane takes to the roads and travels from London to Glasgow using......

Sprawl's always-interesting Interplay festival returns to The Spitz tonight with the fourth instalment in its ongoing series of digital art collaborations. For over a decade Iris Garrelfs and Douglas Benford's collective have brought us events from some of the most exciting names in contemporary experimental electronic music, with past Interplay rosters including Jan Jelinek, Frank Bretschneider and Pole. Focusing on collaboration in the hopes that "unlikely - like - minds meet each other and......

We could labour the much-loved line about running away to the circus but we're not going to. We're just going to say that this looks like an absolutely cracking season of international contemporary circus in the extraordinary Roundhouse space. Having already filled it several times over with amazing large scale shows since it opened last summer, the Roundhouse in Camden continues to bring freaky, fun and fabulously full-on shows to London. For Circus Front,......

Tickets are going on sale at the moment for a lot of the Autumn gigs, so be sure to get your diaries out for this little collection of gems to catch soon. Everyone loves the Manic Street Preachers, and they've just announced a new full UK tour, where they'll be playing Brixton Academy on Tuesday 11th December. They're on sale slightly later than other tickets at 9:30 on Friday. KT Tunstall brings her own......

With the popularity of monthly late night events at Tate Britain and the V&A, is it any wonder that other museums want to get in on the act? The latest addition to the fold is the Museum of London, which will be holding its first late night opening tonight. They haven't entirely got the hang of it - it'll all be over by 9pm - but the principle of the thing is sound. With......

You might recall us raving last year about theatre company Punchdrunk's performance of Faust in a disused warehouse in Wapping. We loved the way they occupied the whole building, encouraging visitors to wear masks and walk among the actors as they wordlessly played out the story. You could choose to stay in a room and wait and watch as actors drifted in and out, or follow actors around as they carried out their routine.......

OpenStreetMap is a map of the world created, like all the best things, by amateur enthusiasts. Farting in the general direction of professional mappers, these collaborative cartographers prowl the streets collecting GPS data and building up their wiki-based map. We caught up with charter-in-chief Steve Coast, to find out why they're bothering. So what's it all about? OpenStreetMap exists because map data is very expensive in the UK. It's owned by a monopoly provider......

Sadlers Wells' annual Flamenco Festival brings a whirligig of colour, passion, drama, guitars, stamping and really big flouncy dresses to London between 23 Feb and 3 Mar in a welcome bid to remind us of sultry hot days and sunny Spanish sexiness. Highlights of this year’s festival include the remarkable Granada-born dancer and choreographer Eva Yerbabuena; flamenco’s star vocalist and the singing voice of Penelope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar’s film Volver, Estrella Morente; some......

There is almost nothing more upsetting than a life-size wax replica of a person. Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, famous since the 19th century for its Chamber of Horrors, now features a life-size wax figure of Christina Aguilera. The songstress's exhibit also features a karaoke-style microphone that allows visitors to sing along with Christina. The wax statue does not move its lips, of course. It just stares at you. The waxwork is costumed as in......

Another great crime flick at Firecracker this evening, this time from Johnnie To and one night on the streets of Hong Kong with the Police Tactical Unit. This is a standout movie - the opening sequence is an instant classic as protagonists run into antagonists and seemingly insignificant extras step up and push the film where you least expect it. It's grim, it's funny and it's exciting - exactly the kind of flick you'd......

It's been a good week for pissing off the neighbours. Firstly it was a couple of ickle pussy cats in Camberwell, now it's the thought of thousands of James Blunt fans roaming endlessly across London's green and pleasant spaces, high on spritzers and Sainsburys' bacon crunchies. Let's face it, London isn't Worthy Farm, probably looked a bit like it once, but isn't likely to do so again (unless TMFB has his way). So if......

The Victoria and Albert's storming Late Night series is a much anticipated monthly event: every last Friday of the month sees the museum being taken over by specially invited organisations who use the space and sometimes the existing exhibitions for their own creative business. One memorable Late Night saw the whole ground floor covered in wool - loops of yarn were draped over statues pilfered from abroad and the textiles exhibits seemed to bleed......

Anyone who's ever idly channel-hopped the digital channels of a late night will sooner or later stumble across a programme which purports to be a documentary but in reality is a simple excuse to show some people having anything other than vanilla sex. Sit through enough repeats and you will go blind encounter a character by the name of George McCoy. McCoy is responsible for a guide to the oldest profession as practised in......

Hmmm. The London Assembly's ideas for alternatives to late night drinking may not be particularly inspired or original, but there are other things to see and do in order to avoid the pub - such as the Leicester Square funfair. Traditional rides and attractions will abound in the West End and indeed offers an excellent alternative to drinking, and you can have all the fun of being drunk in the West End without being......

The London Assembly, gawd bless 'em, has come up with an idea that has already been thought of and is already in practice in a stunning attempt to bring fresh ideas to the stale-as-yesterday's beer debate on the Licensing Act. As of Thursday this week, bars and pubs who have applied and gotten permission to stay open beyond the 11pm closing time will start their new hours, and in an effort to drown out......

As promised we've been hunting around to try and find you a few things to do this Halloween, and we thought we'd better try and cover all the 'spooky' London walks you've got to choose from. London Walks has a good reputation as one of the better tour organisations in the capital, i.e they weren't established solely for the reason of stitchng up the tourists, and luckily they've got a whole load of special......

Ever since Al Jolson opened his gob in the Jazz Singer the worlds of cinema and rock'n'roll have become inextricably linked. You're going to have to go with us on the Jazz Singer rock'n'roll analogy but you know what we mean. Almost 100 years later and we have movie stars wanting to become rock stars (Lyndsey Lohan anyone???) and rock stars wanting to become movie stars (Gene Simmons and half the cast of Singles).......

As week eight of the nine-week Proms festival begins, perhaps your endurance is beginning to flag a bit. Perhaps the Royal Albert Hall is becoming a bit over-familiar, the queues are starting to seem a bit more torturous, and you're beginning to look forward to things like having to buy tickets in advance, and paying more than £4. If that is the case, one name should help keep you going through this week: Bo......

After a slump last week, the Proms ignite like a Roman candle starting tonight. (And in case you were wondering, the Pärt concert was exactly as uninspired and unrevealing as we feared in terms of programming, and excellently sung as we expected. Gubaidulina's piece on Saturday gets a big thumbs up.) Tonight: Hélène Grimaud. So, we already declared that Leila Josefowicz was the Monika Seles of the violin, but there's no better way to......