Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. La Bodeguita Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre SE1 6TE Nearest Tube: Elephant and Castle 0870 011 3810 Monday 12:00 noon - 5:00 pm Tuesday - Thursday 12:00 noon - 11:30 pm Friday 12:00 noon - 2:00 am Saturday 12:00 noon - 3:00 am Sunday 12:00 noon - Midnight Expect to Pay: £8-15 for mains (£5 two course lunch deal)......

There are just too many good events around town this week for us to narrow our picks for certain nights. Thus we present you with multiple options and leave that difficult choice to you. In the meantime, we’ll be brushing up on our science fiction in an effort to figure out how to move quickly from event to event. The solution? Teleporting. Clearly. Monday: writLoud returns to RADA tonight. We like this event, as......

Though Boris Johnson's campaign team may have trouble waking up in the morning, the man himself is not lying down when it comes to outflanking Ken on public transport. His latest initiative is for a network of express buses in south London. The nattily named "London Orb" would offer an alternative to overcrowded rail services, running express bus services between key locations and interchanges that are tough to traverse by train. BoJo apparently dreamt......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 25th February 1900: The first tube station to be known as ‘Bank’ is opened, effectively replacing the old ‘City’ station and providing a link between the Waterloo & City Railway and the newly extended City & South London Railway (now part of the Northern Line). At the same time, nearby King William Street station is closed. Tuesday – 26th February 1797: The Bank of England issues its......

A series celebrating the talent of our friends over in the Londonist Flickr pool who make our site look pretty with their fabulous photographs. Here, they introduce themselves and share their favourite London shots. I was on Oxford Street, when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I'd originally gone to do some shopping, but ended up spending the better part of an afternoon taking photos of Londoners next to an abandoned......

39. London UFOs Part Five In the summer of ’67 in South London, three witnesses described encountering a black craft with a luminous yellow glow hovering around fifty-feet from the ground. The object suddenly descended, beaming an orange light to the soil, as there suddenly appeared a weird hairless humanoid with webbed hands, which soon re-entered the object that then took off. During the winter of 1967 one of London’s most impressive UFO sightings......

If you were inspired by yesterday's interview with competitor Olivia Brown, you might want to go along to this weekend's Winter Swimming Championship at the Tooting Bec Lido, the largest fresh water swimming pool in Europe, to find out more about the joys of an outdoor dip. The festivities start today with registration, practice and media activities. The competition proper opens on Saturday at 9:10 am with the first of 95 heats of 25-metre......

This weekend 670 swimmers from 21 countries will converge on the Tooting Bec Lido to take part in the international Winter Swimming Championships 2008. The event, which always takes place in an unheated outdoor pool, is being held outside Finland for the first time ever. Olivia Brown, a member of hosts the South London Swimming Club and entrant in three of this weekend's races, took time out from training to tell Londonist why she's......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. PETITOU 63, Choumert Road, Peckham LONDON SE15 4AR Nearest Station: Peckham Rye PHONE NUMBER: 020 7639 2613 9am – 5.30pm, Tues – Sat; 10am - 5.30pm Sun. Expect to Pay: £5 - £6 for a ‘main course’ Rating: 9 out of 10 Time for South London to get itself on the lunch menu. Petitou is an absolute treasure nestled......

Brian Haw arrests 24,000 police for protesting at Westminster. Prisons in London are less popular than ever. We learn the costs of free travel for kids. A touch of glass is coming to South London: Crystal Palace is soon to rise again. Pilot finds God on the way to Heathrow. Fortunately God also seems to have found the pilot, as no harm was done. Is this the real life? We Will Rock You, the......

You wouldn’t think Jacqui Smith scares easily. In her time as Home Secretary she’s dealt with car bombs and blazing jeeps, and she’s lately been facing down a bunch of mightily annoyed cops. But in an interview appearing today in the Sunday Times, Jacqui revealed that she wouldn’t dare walk down a London street alone at night. Would she feel safe walking alone at night in, say, Hackney, east London? She looks alarmed: “No.......

There's some bickering occurring in the London Assembly over just how much crime is occurring on London buses. While Tory transport committee chairman Roger Evans is saying that crime levels have risen on buses, Labour Assembly members John Biggs and Murad Qureshi are contesting this, accusing Evans of scaremongering and twisting the findings in the transport committee report to provoke fear and support prejudices. Biggs and Qureshi have produced a separate report that backs......

London’s councils have agreed to fund more green projects. An awfully large black market DVD ring has been busted in South London. Patients of the Epsom and St. Helier NHS Trust are undoubtedly seeing red today – theirs is officially the meanest hospital in Britain. The boys in blue have come up with a grand idea in Bermondsey – lure troublesome teens off the streets with free Xbox/Playstation access. Golden Globes in the offing......

One of the most thrilling aspects of live comedy is surely its intimacy. When you watch a big act in a small room, a charming comic can make you believe that they are there just for you, as if the jokes they tell were being told exclusively for your pleasure. There's a new club in town that is trying to go one step further. Anthology is a night in Portabello Green W10 which does......

Every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... How do you get people to cycle more? Ken would like to know I'm sure. Well, let's hope someone buys him some Green Knickers......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 17th December 1983: An IRA car bomb explodes near Harrods in Knightsbridge, killing six people (including three police officers) and injuring a further 85 Christmas shoppers. Tuesday – 18th December 1890: The world’s first ‘deep-level’ electric tube line opens, connecting Stockwell and King William Street. As we mentioned last year, the City & South London Railway would later become a part of the Northern Line as we......

Euston is chosen as the site for a shiny new medical research centre. Heads involved in the Menezes case have started to roll. The results of the mayor’s latest jolly - freebies for Indian businessmen. Hospitals in South London not as clean as they should be. This time it’s dirty instruments. Where there’s a will, there’s not always a way. The government likes the Tate. The mayor’s equality dude is under investigation. Londonist is......

Although not quite a snowy Sunday night in Prague as depicted in the above photograph by Touch co-founder Jon Wozencroft, last week was a substantially chilly one in South London. Thanks to the Atmospheres Festival, however, we were able to derive much warmth from the ambient music, field recordings and, well, ale present at the events. As we previewed recently, London-based audiovisual label Touch closed their year of 25th anniversary celebrations with a week......

South London is conspicuously not in the heart of modern London theatre land (although we have got the Globe – nah-nah-na-nah-nah). But we do have a good few worthy theatres (as well as the Globe). And one of the best-loved and well-used is the Oval House Theatre in Kennington. There’s all sorts of good stuff on there, but this Londonista is very pleased that ‘The Persian Revolution’ is putting an appearance there on its......

The week ahead holds much excitement for fans of the outer sonic limits as London-based audiovisual label Touch continues celebrating its 25th anniversary with an entire week of gigs, discussions and workshops in South London. Founded in 1981/2 by Jon Wozencroft and Mike Harding, Touch has since grown to become one of the world's most respected sources of experimental electronic music. Through the consistently high-quality sounds it releases and the striking visual aesthetic with......

Swimming pools are dangerous places. That's why they have all those rules. You know: - No bombing - No ducking - No heavy petting Etcetera, etcetera. Keep it safe. Don't drown. Well, it seems that drowning may be the least of your worries at a couple of our South London facilities. They need some new pool rules... In Morden: No reversing over pedestrians in the swimming pool car park In Thornton Heath: No cars in......

The judicial system never ceases to astonish us. We learned this week of the tale of a South London boy of twelve who has been slapped with a rap for Grievous Bodily Harm following improper use of an elastic band during some class-time high jinx. This follows another recent episode when a Lancashire lass was fined £40 and threatened with an ASBO for crayoning a single letter on a neighbour’s wall. Anyway, the poor little......

Once again South London demonstrates that it is at the forefront of cultural hip and happeningness. This year’s Elefest (at the Elephant and Castle - duh!) is as bright and sparkly as ever, with a range of events covering almost every conceivable cultural medium. Londonist is just really sorry that this article didn’t go up two days ago, as it means we have missed the first two days. Hey ho. We particularly like the......

A punning headline that doesn’t quite work is our stock in trade. Such is the case here, where we want to highlight a band of enthusiasts who seek out tales of London’s mysterious and arcane. The South East London Folklore Society meets every second Thursday of the month at The Old King’s Head - down one of those pokey little alleys off Borough High Street. Next Thursday (13 September) Rob Stephenson will talk about......

It's a different, puzzling and frankly bizarre world in the bingo hall; the little slips of paper, the special pens, the stream of what sounds like nonsense coming from the chap at the front which only the initiated are able to translate into numbers... still, it is a world of winners and losers, of champions and inspirational figures. Even figures that stand below 5 foot tall have an indefinable streak of success running through......

Except they’ve moved to a tip in Croydon and are decidedly less furry than their 1970s incarnation. When Channel 4 advertised for volunteers to participate in a prize eco-challenge, most of the respondents were anticipating the jungle, or polar icecaps perhaps. What they actually ended up doing was living as modern Borrowers on rubbish for three weeks. Literally. They were plonked in a municipal refuse dump in South London and told to get on with......

That's right, the DLR has been going for, if you can believe it, 20 years today. This seems like forever for this Londonista's favourite mode of transport around London. So where did it all start? Well Londonist took a little light rail trip down memory lane. Way back in the 80s, it's hard to imagine but the Docklands were a no man's land in London. (No one came in, no one went out.) This......

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......

We've only just finished telling you tales of dragons flying over London. Now they're sailing our seas. Well, dragon boats are anyway. Not just any dragon boat. This boat just happened to break the world record for crossing the Channel, helped by a woman from South London. Dicky Robinson from Wandsworth helped the all female 'Sisterhood' team sail to victory. They're now the first all female team to sale the channel in a dragon......

The five images above were all contributed by members of the SkyscraperCity forums. Good, huh? Well, some of them are. We'll be giving prizes to the top three, as voted for by you. Yes, we're getting ever more like a desperate TV channel. Coming soon: Shark Week. To be followed by great battles of WWII. To register your vote (and you can vote for more than one image), go to our archive page and......