Whilst the Londonist crew spend an awful lot of time online, we love creating real life events and experiences where we can interact with and entertain our readers. 2012 has been a great year for real world activities - here are some of our highlights:
The Olympic Walk: twenty readers, contributors and friends turned up to walk from White City to Wembley to Stratford in May. It was one of the hottest days of the year and we hadn't planned the route properly, yet the majority of us made it to the Olympic Stadium by sundown and a lucky few were taken on a tour of the nearly finished, practically deserted Olympic Park. One of our number can boast that they are the only person in the entire world (probably) to have taken spirits onto the Park (some weird rum concoction that the security guards were confounded by).
The Londoner Challenge: M@ went all Paxman on us when he hosted the Londoner Challenge at Museum of London in July, definitively proving that South London is best - at least at answering London trivia questions - in the process.
A-Z pub crawls: we got through nine instalments of our 26-part series to complete a London pub crawl for every letter of the alphabet, discover our readers' favourite boozers in each area and hopefully meet them on the crawl on the last Monday of the month. To date we have completed:
- A = Angel
- B = Brixton
- C = City of London
- D = Dalston
- E = Euston
- F = Farringdon and Clerkenwell
- G = Greenwich
- H = Hampstead and Highgate
- I = Isle of Dogs
Keep an eye on the site for news of J in January.
Pub quizzes that weren't in pubs:
- Charles Dickens quiz at Foyles
- Liquid History Thames quiz at the National Maritime Museum
- End of Year quiz at Boxpark - if you didn't make it, try the quiz questions here.
Exhibitions:
- Sense the City photo project with London Transport Museum
- The London Look photo challenge with Horniman Museum
Appearances by Londonist M@ (at least, some of them):
- The first Spacetacular! at Roxy Bar & Screen (see below for forthcoming January show)
- Stories Of The City With Craig Taylor @ Museum Of London Docklands
- London's Alleyways and Passages @ London Transport Museum
- Ultimate Guide to Secret London with London Transport Museum @ 55 Broadway
And here are things to book for 2013:
- London Underground: Past, Present and Future a panel discussion featuring Londonist M@ and other experts at London Transport Museum on 10 January
- Spacetacular! a space-themed variety show with Helen Keen and Londonist M@ at Leicester Square Theatre on 27 January
Here are more ways to interact with us online - Londonist is all over the virtual place:
- Subscribe to our two daily emails. The morning email (7am) offers around a dozen ideas for things to do in London today, plus a fact of the day and our really quite unusual weather reports. The evening email (5pm) summarises all the articles published on Londonist that day.
- Facebook: with daily photos, questions and frivolity not normally on the main site.
- Twitter: Could you be our 100,000th follower of @Londonist?
- Google+: More random stuff about the capital.
- Flickr: Share images of the capital with other Londonist readers.
- FourSquare: See where we’ve been hanging out, and read our tips on bars, cafes and venues.
- iTunes: Subscribe to our weekly podcast, Londonist Out Loud
- Amazon: Got hold of our ebook yet? For less than the price of a pint, you get 10 unusual pub crawls around London, each with a hand-drawn map.
- Pinterest: pretty things. London things.
And if you've got an idea for a non-pub based quiz, a stupidly long, whimsical walk or a challenge, outing, activity or party in London that fits with Londonist's style for 2013 - let us know: [email protected].
Photo of Olympic walkers at Wembley by McTumshie
