So very many opportunities to take advantage of this week in London! Summer's in full swing, and there are more outdoor festivals, gallery shows, lectures, film screenings, and general merriment than we know what to do with. Get started with this round-up for those light on the pocket jingle-jangle. Monday: Fancy yourself a BobCat? Heard all the rare B sides, own all the bootleg vinyls? Perfected your famed 3-pints deep gravelly-voiced rendering of 'Blowin'......

If you're getting tarted up tonight to ride the tube and have a public booze in style then here's an idea of where to take your gladrags when the drinking ban comes into force at midnight. Bring Stuff are having a Black and White masked ball till 3am at Ruby Blue, Leicester Square. You'll miss free entry because you'll hopefully still be on the tube at 10pm but it's £10 thereafter so you might......

Happy Birthday Buddha! There was much celebration in the form of bright colours, music, dancing and ritual in Leicester Square this weekend to mark the birthday of the founder of Buddhism, Sakyamuni Buddha in 623 BC in what is today Nepal. The tradition is to bathe the Buddha and light incense and candles as symbols of purification. It was a family friendly event with lots of friendly Fo Guang Temple volunteers guiding old and......

The Sex remains the same, but the City was a less familiar one last night as four glamorous ladies and a retinue of A-list stars stepped out on the red carpet, not in New York, but in London's Leicester Square. Sarah Jessica Parker and pals (or not-quite pals, if on set tension rumours were true) rolled up for the worldwide premiere of the Sex and the City movie last night, sporting rictus grins and......

And the livin’ is easy: the weather’s been divine, and summer is here at last. There is the compulsion to spend every possible moment outdoors (Pimms preferably in hand), as it’s London after all and you never know when the good meteorological fortune will end. To that end, welcome to an al-fresco themed London On The Cheap week – get out there and take proper advantage of the next week of forecasted warmth and......

"Ashton Kutcher hits London", scream the headlines. If London knows what's good for it, we'll wallop the wearily handsome waster back just as hard. To what do we owe the pleasure of Demi Moore's toyboy's visit? Yes, it's the premiere of What Happens In Vegas, yet another rom-com vehicle designed by the overlords in Hollywood to whet our grimy little lives with a touch of romantic intrigue. You know the sort of thing -......

Yesterday, Leicester Square was overrun by pigeons. And no, they weren't trying to dispute their 6th-most-populous-garden-bird ranking from yesterday. Best of all, nobody had to run screaming with paper bags held over their heads because these birds were paper. The 5,000 origami pigeons were part of a marketing stunt for HSBC and China Design Now. Printed on their insides were some Chinese artwork, information about the China Design Now exhibition, a map of how......

Random events with no purpose make us giggle - so we're very happy to report that the glory of Leicester Square will be invaded by a bunch of people designed to scare and amuse the tourists this weekend. Yes, those funny folk at Mobile Clubbing are back with... PILLOW FIGHTCLUB! Your mission this Saturday (22 March) is to show up in Leicester Square with a pillow hidden in a plastic bag. At exactly 15.03,......

It's late and you're somewhere near Leicester Square. You want to sit down and rest those dance-weary feet - or like Londonist, you are a glutton and you're looking for some dessert. Head to Café Ciao with its range of gelati displayed and giant plastic ice cream outside. Their dessert menu is full of concoctions like these pictured but if sweet treats aren't your thing, there's a menu of savouries though we haven't visited......

What happens in a Tube station when all the passengers have gone home? Why do Tube workers carry cards about rat piss? And why isn't standing on the right of an escalator necessarily a good thing? Londonist finds answers on our latest nocturnal investigation. Some of London's busiest Tube stations are in a mess. Missing tiles and chicken-wire cornices are a familiar site, especially at King's Cross and Leicester Square. It's a case of......

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......

The Chinese New Year Celebrations in Soho are undoubtedly one of the highspots of London’s cultural calendar, and this year there’s a load of extra stuff (some would say hype) going on ‘cos of the Beijing/London Olympic connection. Last year’s ceremonies were the biggest outside China, and this year’s look set to be even more impressive. So here’s a special Londonist round up of where to see and what to do…. 6th February: kick......

Photo courtesy of The Sizemore McCabe Project It's not difficult to spend money in London as just leaving the house seems to remove a fair amount of cash from the average wallet. But for those with a less than average wallet, it can be a bit of a challenge to spend in a less than average manner. Silly money deserves silly spending after all. Introducing... The Cinema Suite at the newly refurbished InterContinental Hotel, one......

The Guinness Book of Records names London’s Lyle’s Golden Syrup the world’s oldest branded anything. We love him dearly, but God forbid that Beckham ever gets the urge to go into politics. EVEN MORE private records stray. Anarchy rules. Strange magnetic fields affect London City Airport. We just love Dean Koontz. It seems even London ZOO has to do a stock-check. Farewell Leicester Square - well, as you know it, anyway. Public consultation on......

The legendary girls from St Trinians had their premiere last night in Leicester Square. St Trinian's is the 2007 film of the 1950s film series is getting certain bits of the press excited, with a cast that features Rupert Everett in drag, Russell Brand twatting about with no noticeable change of costume or persona, Colin Firth striding about being humourless and lots of attractive women playing schoolgirls. Celia Imrie and Anna Chancellor both have......

Hundreds of fans flocked to Leicester Square last night for the London premiere of The Golden Compass. Fans who braved the slightly rainy weather were treated to glimpses of stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, along with the thirteen year old star of the film Dakota Blue Richards and director Chris Weitz. Based on the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, Northern Lights, the film has been the subject of much......

Four weeks till Christmas! Argh. Funds are all focused on present buying and getting through the party season but we still want to go out and about because the heating isn't working properly at home. We can't afford to go and see Gandalf drop his trousers in King Lear but, thankfully, there's lots of cheap and interesting stuff about as usual. Monday: Start the week with an event truly in the spirit of London......

Oh, that Jude Law! Grown women swoon and keel over at the mere mention of his name. Men grind their teeth and glower with untrammeled jealousy when glimpsing his visage on a magazine cover or film poster. Such is his star quality. Those brooding yet boyish eyes. That elegantly receding hairline. He really is quite something. While he's a big Hollywood movie star these days, Our Jude does love to hang out in his......

Oh dear. The poor old Swiss Centre on Leicester Square seems to have gremlins in its giant billboard. Weren't they supposed to have demolished this place by now? Thanks to Walid Al Saqqaf for the image.......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Wahaca 66 Chandos Place WC2N 4HG Nearest Tube: Charing Cross, Covent Garden, Leicester Square 0207 240 1883 12pm-3:30pm, 5:30-11pm (Monday-Saturday) 12pm-3:30pm, 5:30-10:30pm (Sunday) Map Expect to Pay: Most dishes cost around £3.50, platos fuertos (bigger dishes) around £8 Rating: 8 out of 10 “Tender, marinated pork served with smoky black beans, green rice and pink pickled onions.” That’s pork......

Doherty not taking drugs shocker. Winehouse beehive inversely proportional to levity of mood. Serious blaze closes Leicester Square. Banksy works reach almost half a million pounds at auction. He can't compete with Allah, a copy of whose Koran fetched $2.3 million at auction. Image courtesy of Andy Wilkes via the Londonist flickr group.......

Doc Rogers lives and works in the heart of London's SoHo – he's currently a creative technologist for an advertising company and a keen blogger. 1/6 – I have to spend a lot of time surfing the world wide web for work, so I often stumble across interesting sites and blogs that are London-related. Today it's all about the maps, possibly not the most exciting of topics I know, but there are some cool......

We’re gob-smacked we are that Brits have a bad bed rep. As far as the eye can see, quite literally, we’re about as randy as a canine on heat. Sexual sighting number one: freshers strip during freshers week – now that sure is an original way to make friends (although the residents of Kingston might argue to the contrary). Sexual sighting number two: Swedish porn at the ICA. This really qualifies as six sightings,......

We Brits love our birds and animals. We love to shrinkwrap their body parts and burn them on bbqs on a Sunday afternoon, we love to take them for long walks in the park and we love to watch their majestic beauty on BBC documentaries with a Sigur Ros soundtrack. What we won't countenance is letting the little buggers run free in our green and grey and pleasant land. They do tend to shit......

Almost time for the London Film Festival again! This year the event is opened by David Cronenberg's London-set Eastern Promises - Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen following up A History of Violence with this violent tale of Russian organised crime, penned by Steve Dirty Pretty Things Knight. One to watch for sure. Closing the festival is the new Wes Anderson movie, The Darjeeling Limited. In between there are some 180+ feature films and 133 shorts,......

It was pointed out to us, when we posted last week about rugby pubs, that somewhere else had done it better by team. Well yes, they had, but they'd got a bit lazy after the home teams and our closest European friends and bunched the rest of the world together. We know that London is the most diverse city in the world so we've made it our mission to find you, whichever rugby nation......

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......

Yes, you did read that right. Yesterday an undisclosed number of Zombies swarmed Leicester Square to break yet another world record. Now, to break the world record, this implies that there must have been a record in place already. Indeed there was. Last year a total of 894 Zombies descended on Pittsburgh last year. Unfortunately, these Zombies aren't real. Sorry to disappoint. No, as convincing as some of them were, it's really just people......

When Westminster City Council took on the free newspapers London Lite and The London Paper, Londonist was fully supportive. Tired of the masses of papers scattered around the city at the end of each day, the Council asked that Associated Newspapers (owners of London Lite) and Rupert Murdoch's News International (owners of The London Paper) take responsibility for the amount of rubbish they were creating and install 150 newspaper recycling bins around Westminster and......

Westminster City Council is making a stand against free London newspapers London Lite (owned by Associated Newspapers) and The London Paper (owned by Rupert Murdoch) not because the City Council is tired of the two types of non-news offered in the many, many copies distributed each day, nor are they taking an official stand against the irritating assault course of newspaper distributors outside each major tube and bus station but because there is just......