It's officially Spring and by Pisces it's lovely out there in the sunshine. Crocuses have been spotted in Highbury Fields so our biggest recommendation for expenditure light trips this week is get to the parks and into the gardens and witness the miracles of the changing seasons. If you're in need of more artificial stimulation, however, and are squirrelling all your spare cash into your ISA before the end of the tax year then......

A fairly quiet time for Londonist music, but this week saw us introduce you to The Wave Pictures on Thursday, catch indie up-and-comers Parka at the Borderline on Tuesday, and suggest you catch "J-Dilla changed my life" at Cargo this evening. Throughout the week, NME favourites play their three week series of Awards shows, and this week sees Babyshambles play Brixton Academy on Monday night, Richard Hawley and Mercury nominated Maps play the Astoria on......

He’s climbed the world’s most iconic structures from the Eiffel Tower to the Petronas Towers. But French ‘Spiderman’ Alain Robert chose a curious challenge during his trip to London yesterday: Portland House on Victoria Street. Here’s the brute. As in, here’s Portland House, not Monsieur Robert. He’s much more gorgeous, see ---> The Gallic climber scaled the 320 ft building as a protest against climate change. On reaching the top, he was arrested for wasting......

So this week, we spent all our money on cold remedies and extra balmy tissues for our beleaguered noses. The plan is to be back and fighting fit by Monday so here are some of the things we could all get up to this week for very little wonga. Monday: Call the BBC Ticket Line on 0870 901 1227 and get free tickets for the recording of Clare in the Community - the radio......

Whilst many, last night, were labouring under the somewhat unreasonable expectations that our national football side might do something a little old school, like win, there was a group of us who went home late with a collective smile on our faces. The aforementioned happy folks gathered at the 229 Club, at the far end of Great Portland Street. There we faced drums that go thuddity thuddity thuddity boom, guitars that go danga danga......

It seems Ken Livingstone isn't content with the new, faster Eurostar, but wants to make London actually resemble Paris. He is proposing pedestrianised, tree-lined streets a la the French capital and even wants to get us our own version of the famous Paris Plage, the artificial beach that takes over the Right Bank of the Seine. For this, the Mayor wants to shut a section of the Victoria Embankment's four lanes from traffic. Other......

Hard-Fi have announced a massive UK tour of arenas throughout the land, including a night at Wembley Arena. They’ll be bringing their tales of urban hell to Wembley on Tuesday 18th December, with tickets on sale tomorrow morning at 9am. For those quick off the mark on their refresh buttons, Bloc Party play Camden Barfly (yes, you’ve heard me right – they’ve sold out two nights at Ally Pally but they’re doing a miniscule show)......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 6th August 1937: Barbara Windsor is born in Shoreditch in central London. She would achieve fame as an actress, notably as a ‘saucy strumpet’ in the Carry On films of the 60s and 70s and later as a major character in Eastenders. Tuesday – 7th August 2001: The Department of Health pays £27 million for a private Harley Street heart hospital, re-nationalising it and bringing it into......

Monday sees Portland, Oregon’s new indie-rock darlings The Thermals play Dingwalls with support from Siberia’s SonicFlyer. Tickets are still available from See Tickets at £8.50 each plus booking fees. Tellison play their “disarming melodies and big-hearted guitars” at the Camden Barfly, with support coming from Encyclopedia, The Xcerts and Gavin Osborn, with tickets only £6 each. Popular Canadian singer-songwriter Feist plays Scala on Tuesday night, though tickets are long gone unfortunately – Scarlet mist may......

Hot on the heels of their demi-donut, MAKE Architects have designed this swish new office block with a rippling glass frontage to stand opposite the Monument, on the site of the dilapidated 11–19 Monument Street in the City of London. The building will contain not only office space, but also a visitor center for the Monument and spectacular public roof gardens that will create a large open space exposed to the elements. At night,......

Londonist's favourite electro-punk outfit Robots in Disguise are headlining Club Eat Your Make Up this Thursday, a new club night which promises sleazy indie and electro-trash in abundance. If the name Robots in Disguise is new to you, then you may recognise them from their numerous cameo appearances in The Mighty Boosh, as The Electro Girls, and The Goth Girls. In fact, Noel Fielding himself is an occasional live-only band member. We've had a......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Benugo Throughout London Average Lunch Price: £5 Rating: 7.5 out of 10 Snoop around the Internet and you’ll find several references to sandwich shop Benugo’s free WiFi. For example, this post by Gavin Bell suggests that other cafés ‘should take the lead from Benugo and offer free WiFi like they offer free sugar’ because the ‘cost per month of......

Loads of skyscraper speculation this week. And we'll say from the outset that all info is sourced from the peerless SkyscraperNews. Go visit. Pop Art Tower for Old Street Roundabout? There it is, pictured. What do you reckon? Bold, distinctive, certainly very different - although the use of bright colours in buildings seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment (one we're sure to regret in 10 years or so). The......

All the weeks highlights from our international sister sites. Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bid's Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues......

London Architecture Biennale and Architecture Week got off to a fine if sweaty start this weekend. We’d particularly recommend ‘Transit’, an Iain Sinclair-narrated short film by Emily Richardson, in catacombs beneath Smithfield Market - spooky, thought provoking and surprisingly deserted when we visited. Here’s our pick of the many events happening over the next couple of days. And don’t worry about missing the football. They’ve thought of that… Monday Blueprint Big Breakfasts: The chance......

Charles Holden (1875-1960) is a man with two careers. On the one hand, he gave us impressive Portland stone giants like the Senate House and 55 Broadway – two of London’s tallest buildings in their day. But the same chap also masterminded the design of 20 or so tube stations – those elegant brown brick affairs best seen on the northern stretch of the Piccadilly Line. These in particular show off Holden’s principles of......

With Download, The Isle Of White Festival and Bon Jovi's Milton Keynes shows all coming this weekend, festival season is well and truly upon us. For agrophobics everywhere else, may we suggest the following for consideration. Tonight: Upbeat, uncynical quirky Brit punky pure pop from Circuits upstairs at the Garage alongside Popular Workshop and LR Rockets. £5 in, doors at 8. Tuesday: From those nice folks who bring you Rock'n'Roll Soul and Health and......

Just two gigs to tell you about this week because we're still pissed that we're going to miss both The Shins on Thursday at Koko and Radiohead at Hammersmith on Thursday and Friday. If you can get tickets to either show, then we highly recommend them both. They may be worth remortgaging your house for. Tonight: Shoegazers amongst you unite, you have nothing to lose but your paisley pattern shirts at the return of......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. On offer this week are a couple of imported events, most notably from the United States and Slovenia, a couple of appearances by Chuck Palahniuk (pictured), a couple of pretty good British authors thrown into the mix, and one new book by the great Jose Saramago... Events Around London: On Thursday (the 4th), Fight......

London before and after seems to be on our minds at the moment. Ever since that week in July that seemed to give with one hand and then took it all away with the other, the people who live and work here have been forced to think about this place with a certain amount of trepidation. What has changed? What will change? What can we change back and what will change forever? Tate Modern......

Friday: Raucous angular noise makers The Victorian English Gentlemen's Club who are neither Victorian, nor English (they're Welsh), nor Gentlemen (two of the guys are girls), but apart from that the name fits, play the 333 Club (333 Old Street) with Performance. Sunday: If The Pipettes don't start returning our phone calls, we're going to have to start stalking Lucky Soul instead. Which means you may find a number of us low knuckled Londonistas......

Chris Martin may have declared to the world that it's sick of him and his band, and hey, who should know better than the gazillion or so people who put his last album to number one in 28 countries simultaneously than Chris himself, but it hasn't stopped him from getting behind the microphone again. At least that's according to andPOP, who claim that whilst Pa Apple was at Abbey Road preparing for a secret......

There can be few buildings in Europe to match the splendor of the Palace of Westminster. Millions of tourists, some of them off-worlders, flock to the landmark each year, even if few actually enter. But a couple of weeks back (and sorry to keep going on about it) Londonist did just that. Our tour of the houses of parliament inspired us to find out more about the architect, Charles Barry. Was this his only......

End of a Tuesday is almost mid week, and since there's been a flurry of activity within the Londonist Music inbox, always a sure sign that the music world is shaking off it's fluffy winter feathers and gearing up for another year of doing damage to our collective eardrums, we thought it was time to catch up with a few friends hanging around various stages over the next few days. It's a little late......

We like to think we're pretty handy in the kitchen here at Londonist. Ok, so we're not a bunch of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls, running around slaughtering lambs and pefecting our organic nettle soup, and we will admit to having the odd takeaway number stored on our mobiles... but we like to think we're doing the best we can with the resources available. There are however certain gaps in our collective culinary knowledge bank, so when......

The Dandy Warhols - Hammersmith Palais Portland's finest strolled rather than rolled back into town on Wednesday night. Playing a nigh on identical set to their Cargo show of a few months back, they still manage to clock in an extra half hour's playing time; languidly drawing out each track, taking their time, taking it easy, displaying a determined bloody mindedness in mainting their laissez faire attitude towards putting on show. So much so......

Londonist is getting particularly booozy lately. Along with our brand new Pub Quiz reviews we've also decided that we need to be featuring a few more of the capital's more glam establishments, just to balance out the pork scratchings you know? And as it's October now, the sun's beginning to wane, and we can feel guilt free about heading into the depths of our favourite drinking holes after work, Londonist thought we'd kick things......

We like magazines. We like free things. So it stands to reason that we'd like free magazines. Or so you'd think. Ok, Vice was required reading for a while there, if only for the novelty value, but their conservative hipster schtick gets pretty old pretty fast (plus, if you don't subscribe you're are pressed to find the thing). Young pretender Good for Nothing was a little bit of a disappointment. There was no doubting......

If, like Londonist, you're incredibly impatient when it comes to visiting websites that are running v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, added to which you have a memory like one of those thingummies through which you sift flour, then you may have tried to download the latest Warchild album on the day of release, only to be frustrated by the downloading experience. Well, this is just a little reminder for you that Help: A Day In The Life......

Right, time to catch up on a couple of gigs from last week. The Duke Spirit - The Portland Arms, Cambridge That's right, Cambridge. 45 minutes out of King's Cross lies one of London's quainter suburbs and for this evening at least, home to The Duke Spirit playing to no more than 150 in the back room of the Portland Arms. A tad fewer then than at their Astoria headline show we thinks. Taking......