Celebrating The Olympics: Hackney Style

This was supposed to be a rather different blog post, an in-depth and personal probing exploration into whether it is possible to separate corporate sponsorship from the purity of enjoyment of sport in the middle of 3 fenced off big screens in Victoria Park, East London. That post may come, but my material changed very suddenly today when I innocently sought to take a picture of what looked like some garishly dressed, golden-bedecked hairdressers, styling a young girl's hair to the backdrop of thickly pumping hardcore/trance, and was very quickly with coy and at the same time grandiose gestures, invited up to experience the 'styling' of Osadia, a street theatre group based in Barcelona since 1996 striving to push the boundaries of interactive, street entertainment and the extent of participation and ownership in that art through their performances.

Especially in the last few years, I've been trying to be more confident and let my inner-American out. We are to a great extent defined by how other people react to us and how we provoke those reactions and I enjoy sometimes exceeding the expectations of the kind of American people think I am. So instead of shrinking into a corner with my plastic bottle of what will remain an unnamed Dutch beer, I decided I was game. What I was game for I didn't realise until about 20 minutes of styling, a round of applause and a crying child who wanted to know why I had changed so much later. I will admit, along with that brazen American stepping up to the plate or stage as it were, there was wild anxiety, which got slightly wilder with each step this fascinatingly fetishistically dressed performer took, because if you want hair this good, believe me, it is a long and involved process. I thoroughly enjoyed the result though as I became a part of the continuing artwork with various Park-goers striding up to take my picture or have a picture taken with me. 

Ah, the price of celebrity. Pictures don't lie. I felt like someone or something different. Wicker Man crossed with Puck the mischievous fairy via Ziggy Stardust. Alas, I would have loved to have kept the look for longer, but the wonderful and lamentable thing about the carnivalesque is that you can only transcend your identity and the boundaries of it for the duration of the carnival. Leave it and you become a spectacle on a Hackney street, with some awed, some cat-calling, some scoffing, and some speechless. 

That was my Olympic experience today. I saw Katie Taylor, from Bray in Ireland, the same town my wife is from, win gold in women's boxing. And I left Victoria Park, East London, blazing loud green and pink.   

                              

Something More For The Weekend

Good Friday, gentle folk. More street art to beautify your next couple days, straight from Clapton Passage, E5, Hackney. An Olympic borough. I like the carnivalesque feeling these pieces convey. Wonderful, wild, masked and just on the far edge of transgressive. Puts me in mind of this wonderful piece from The Daily Mail of all places about East End political street art hero Banksy's most iconic pieces recreated with real people. Check it out. 

Speaking of, The Olympics have turned out to be quite an exciting spectacle, especially the opening ceremony with Danny Boyle's sneaky plea to remember the great triumph of nationalized medical care that is the NHS. When the Democrats were campaigning hard to get 'Obamacare' through congress, the Republicans worked very hard to bring willing Tories over on all-expenses paid flights I'm sure (or at least claimed expenses) to whinge about the NHS that they probably never make use of anyway, but I've definitely had better experiences with the NHS and heard less horrific tales than the chilling stories I've heard from friends and family about medicine in America. 

And the complaints from my compatriots on twitter about 'leave it to the British to politicise the Olympics'. Politicisation of the Games began from at least 1988 when heavy corporate sponsorship was dragged in to resurrect a lurching moribund tradition. 

What do your weekends have in store for you all? I'm pretty busy and pretty excited. We've got lunches packed and we're off to brave this mildly, partially sunny weather to picnic in Haggerston Park and see the Games on the big screen. Yesterday, my son told me he was watching France vs. New Zealand in the Velodrome Cycling. 'I hope France wins,' he said. 'Why is that?' I asked. 'Because they have blue on their sleeve,' he replied, quite matter-of-factly. That's the kind of basis for an allegiance we need more of. Because they've got nice colours in their uniforms. 

I'm also immersing myself in nostalgia. I always get nostalgic around American accents and tonight, I'm seeing Savage in Limbo, by John Patrick Shanley, performed by The Planktonic Players in The Camden Eye. The play encompasses the stories of five disillusioned New Yorkers. Jaded New Yorkers. Stories about home. I can't wait. 

Taken from The Planktonic Players blog. 

And tomorrow, I sojourn west, to West London that is, to be interviewed by OnFm about my opinions on Team USA, The Olympics, and my ongoing struggle to become a successful writer in this vast sea of opportunities. If you happen to be travelling through West London between two and three, tune in to 101.4 on your FM dial and see what you make of my first appearance on the radio. 

Have a magnificent weekend, one and all. 

Something on Being Starstruck for Olympic Opening Weekend

We are steeped in Olympic fever in London. Soon, the games will be nigh impossible to escape unless you are under a rock somewhere. The first thing I've noticed, being American myself, is the increase in the number of compatriots flooding this great metropolis. Even spotted Al Roker of The Today Show filming on the grounds of The Tower of London the other day when we were busy being tourists in our own city. I felt ambivalent about crowding in to get a few snaps and say hello to the man. He always seemed like such a big presence on the TV when I was growing up and yet, I never really spent a lot of time watching him, so was it  the American propensity towards being star-struck within spitting distance of celebrity that kept me circling like a distant satellite hoping to get a glimpse?

It certainly seemed to be this tendency for the crowds gathered outside the green in front of William The Conqueror's original White Tower, many of whom spoke with pronounced North Atlantic twangs. I've never had many brushes with personages of high public profile. I met Michael Stipe when I was 15; stalked him half a block down South Street in Philly just to interrupt him while he was ordering coffee to tell him that I was going to see him in Veteran's Stadium and that he really inspired me. Swoon.

Al Roker doesn't have the same sort of appeal, but then neither does approaching celebrities any more. English and Irish people tend to be a bit superior to the phenomena, but then I do too and I wonder if it's just because I can see the silliness in it. I suspect most Americans do, but that there's something about a TV crew that brings out delirium in people. I tend to think it's programmes like The Today Show that cement our great picket-fenced village and make us feel like we're all having coffee together with Al and the gang, which you can see the magic in. It's almost Rockwellian.

Here's the link to the interview they filmed with a Yeoman Warder that day. It did manage to make me slightly homesick, in a scoffing superior, I kind-of-wish I was in America sort of way.

We are going to try to get to see the Opening Ceremony on the big screen tonight in Victoria Park, which is a ticketed event, a fact which raises great ire in my soul. I get more and more apprehensive about big events that, with increasing frequency, fence off public spaces. I'd like to think it doesn't just stem from the fact that I don't have a ticket, but tickets, really? To go to Victoria Park and watch something on a big screen? I'm sure there will be plenty of Heineken and McDonald's tents, and as of this morning, with no more tickets being issued, it is possible to get in, but not guaranteed, another reason to check out the apparently much more open looking Haggerston Park events, or find something else spectacular to do with your weekend.

Should you be in East London -- and if you are over for the big you know whats then you will be -- There is a fantastic little place that you could check out at 51 Chatsworth Road, just up from Homerton High Street, called Creperie du Monde. I've reviewed here for the Hackney Hive. Well worth checking out.

However it is that you choose to spend your time, do make it magnificent.

The London Olympics: A Survival Guide For Visiting Americans

Photo taken by Paula Hughes

1) Avoid talking out loud. There's not enough space in the whole of England.

2) Sew a Canadian flag into your backpack.

Only kidding. We never pretend to be Canadian anymore.

And in point of fact, since 2008, our likeability capital has increased significantly enough so that we don't really have anything to fear in public anymore.  I've been overseas long enough to remember the dark days when Dubya's simian visage was the face of America to the world and we were seen internationally as a rampaging, war-mongering cowboy. Gone are the days when sympathizers and descendants of Churchill would secret us away under floorboards so that we could say the pledge of allegiance in dark corners. No longer do we find ourselves hiding in abandoned junkyards patriotically playing baseball and furtively eating Crackerjacks. Thankfully, since a cool, worldly dude became president, the foreign exchange rate in popularity and positive reactions is quite favourable.

Having said all that, we may be fans of Downton and Doctor Who, but we are not yet a nation of world travellers and try as McDonald's, Coke and Westfield Shopping Centre might to make the Olympic village into USA lite, there are probably still some Olympians, their families and other visitors who still might want to travel out into Londontown. It is in this intrepid exploratory spirit that I offer a few tips and pointers to help you get through the next couple weeks.


Beware of Sarcasm

You make friends with some Brits. You get along rather well with them. Splendidly. Famously, in fact. So much so that they invite you out for a night on 'the razz' and you're not quite sure what that means but it could  involve neon and fetishes or it could just be a few drinks and a few laughs. You meet your new mates and as you are about to step on the tube to head to the West End for your first stop on what promises to be a night of frolics and fun, you check with Gemma/Nigel to make sure your dress or shirt looks fab or sexy or 'all right' (in the case of Nigel) and your new Anglo-Saxon friend turns to you and says, 'yeah' and walks onto the waiting tube train. It could be a short, clipped yeah, or it could be a nano-syllable too long, but it's a noncommital yeah, a clearly ambiguous affirmation, the kind of 'yeah' delivered with a half-smile enough to convince you that you've got lipstick on your teeth or a major cliffhanger, but I couldn't be bothered to tell you. Just strike out all night and then wonder why at the end of it all; this noncommital 'yeah' is not delivered with exaggerated Chandler Bing emphasis. No one's said to you, I'm sooo  not liking that top or you should sooo  go back to the hotel and change right now. It's much more subtle and something so tiny that it leaves doubts in your head so niggling that they grow and grow until Oxford Circus when you are either ready to claw your friend's face or give the guy a good bite of a knuckle sandwich and set him straight.

Before you do, slow down. Cool your jets, tiger. Remember that you are in the United Kingdom. Sarcasm and Irony are the official languages of state. You don't get off the plane at Charles DeGaulle without so much as a 'Parlez-vouz Anglais?' and you shouldn't walk around merry old England of Madame George and roses without expecting the most deadpan sarcasm you've never heard. Chances are, your friend just wants to get on the tube quickly because he or she fears that if it begins moving it will not stop and will mercilessly rip part of his or her body as it passes into the next tunnel and chances are you look fabulous, but you will find yourself in a plethora of situations in which you have to be a bit more acutely aware of context than you might otherwise be on the other side of the pond.

Hearts, Minds and The Danger of Assumptions


Try to avoid remarking to locals about how much good the Olympics is doing for the area, for London and for Britain in general. It's a bit of a sore point. The Brits do love to complain, bless 'em, but this time you might forgive them for it. The official drink of the Olympics is produced by an American corporation; the official caterers to the Olympics are an American fast food chain and corporation; the official chocolate of the Olympics is British owned by American multinational, Kraft; the official beer of the Olympics is Dutch. It appears to the British public as though either the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG), have gone out of their way to intentionally and perversely ignore British business interests. British businesses are finding their deliveries of stock are getting later and later, their customers are drained by Westfield and one local bookshop owner has stated that she has made more from the Anti-Olympics publishing boom than the games themselves. These events are not benefiting the British or local economy and British business owners will not thank you for it.

However, if you do want to win over the hearts and minds of the indigenous peoples of this island, there is something you can do. Hop the train to Hackney Wick, Homerton or Hackney Central (there isn't anything in Stratford unless you are from New Jersey and you like that gritty, industrial, Mad Max sort of thing, which I can say being from New Jersey and must clarify as 'humour'). Get off and walk down the street. Having trawled through the archives of my blog first, you will already know as you are walking that there is an array of fine eateries and coffee shops that will serve you a nicer soft drink than Coke (Victorian Lemonade or Elderflower Cordial?) a superior coffee and finer lunch than you will find in McDonald's (Apricot chilli jam and cream cheese on toast or crepe filled with goat's cheese and walnuts?) and a finer pint of British beer at a local pub than Heineken will serve any day (East London Brewery is particularly nice, found on tap at The Clapton Hart). You don't have to go to Hackney just because I live here and I like it, but be careful to avoid assumptions about the coziness of familiar brands.


Londoners Stand on The Right

When I first moved here, I was amazed by the fact that Londoners use escalators for the purpose for which they are built: to increase the speed of your ambulatory movement downwards or upwards, which is brilliant. I get the impression in recent years that people think the same does not apply to escalators in shopping centres, but it does. And I would have thought that with a nation of health-obsessed gym members like us, we'd take full advantage of a free public stairmaster, but I tried to start the trend in America of continuing to walk on an escalator without stopping or letting yourself laze like a human mannequin on display, but for whatever reason it never took. I kept getting the dirtiest stares when trying to pass others up mid-conversation. Like good drivers though, Londoners walk on the left and allow a slow lane for tourists, but use the slow lane and stand on the right and do not be surprised if you are trampled for not doing so.

Remember, London is Still Keeping Calm and Carrying On

School's out. It's true. There are no teachers attending work or students attending school. But bankers still carry briefcases dutifully into the City of London. Nurses still don their scrubs when they get into London Bridge or The Royal Free. And estate agents (someone has to do it) still do up their Eton Knots and don their pinstripes in the hopes that the economy will pick up. But Londoners like to get to work efficiently and they like for you not to obstruct the progress of their city as it forges on in daily toil.

So if you have not mastered the ticket machines at tube stations, step aside and ask an attendant. Don't try and be a hero. Do not try and figure it out at rush hour with the trader behind you seething because he is already 33 seconds late and on his second machiatto. If you do play at these heroics, do not be surprised when you turn round, triumphantly pleased with yourself at having figured out how to purchase a zone 1 single only to find a hulking green monster who's just ripped genuine Armani and is now ready, with the rest of the commuters, to rip into you.

I would say this applied during peak times, but in the next few weeks, peak times are twenty four hours a day. So, be mindful of others around you.

Get Off The Beaten Path For Once

There are some obvious things you are looking forward to doing on your London bucket list: seeing men in large funny hats swap shift, paying too much for a black cab, gawking at strangers from atop a double decker bus, that sort of thing. Think for a second though. This city wasn't planned out like most American cities, grid-like and structured, it evolved and sprawled and reached out and stayed where it was or kept moving or got bombed out of existence only to rise like the phoenix all new and mansion-block like.

London is a savage beauty. I love it for its raw, gruff, bracing multicultural sense of 'live and let live'. One thinks of the line from Yeats: 'A terrible beauty... Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.' That unapologetic, Londonness is also its charm. Bit like New York that way. Don't expect saccharine. Expect frowning and friendly.

There are so many hidden nooks and corners that if you allow a day or two just to get lost, the dividends are amazing. When they ask you if you saw poet's corner, you can say, 'No, but I walked around the Catholic Church in central London used by the KGB as a dead-letter box during the Cold War and wrote the opening chapter to my first spy thriller.' When they ask if you stood in front of Big Ben and took a picture of yourself smiling, which is something no one in London ever seems to do, you can say, 'Yeah, but I found walking around a recreated 17th Century Huguenot house, with a narrative that ascends with you through five floors, way more enthralling.' Again, it doesn't have to be The Brompton Oratory or The Denis Severs House, but find some corner of this city that few others have bothered with and find some memory to cherish and take back with you. You're traveling over a thousand miles, some of you for the first time, perhaps some for the last. Make sure you do something that will stay with you, not something you could have done if you stayed at home.

A couple good places to look for the unusual and out of the way in London are:

@UnusualLondon

Insider London

and

Secret London

Enjoy your stay.

Something for the weekend

Weekend post! Weekend roundup? Something for the weekend? It's been a bit of an eventful week, so thank you for reading. I do feel like this thing has finally got some momentum going. Many thanks for all the tweets and for having a look and commenting. Whatever it's supposed to be called, here are a few things to tide us all over and chew on for the next couple days.

We Americans also celebrated our 236th birthday as a country. I think we're looking pretty good for it. To celebrate, I went out to the launch night of Islington's newest chic bar, Rattlesnake, designed and owned by Paul Daly, who also did Zigfrid Von Underbelly in Hoxton Square. Rattlesnake is an American style bar with a difference. Check out my review of the place here at The Hackney Hive. Let me know what you think of the place if you happen to check it out. 

Congratulations to Madame Fromage, doyenne of the Philadelphian Artisan cheese scene, on completing her manuscript  for The Di Bruno Bros. Cheese Guide based on the delightful Di Bruno Bros. Cheese Cave, at which my brother, Paul Lawler, the former local cheese impressario of Philly, worked for quite a while. I can't wait to read it. Makes me hungry for good-quality cheese. Time to hit Hackney Home-made or Chatsworth Road this weekend, me thinks. 

Photo copyright of Todd Stregiel 2012

Finally, a bit of London Street art. On my road. Clarence Road if you must know. Home of the 2011 London Riots. Yes, Hackney is that edgy and Bohemian. Every bit of MDF covering a building is a canvas for our locals. I really like the way a gaze is turned outwards. It subtly implies that there is something behind this face, which there is (a building being renovated, probably end up a chic flat at the end of it all) and turns its gaze on the passerby in the street.

If you do happen to pass through Clapton in Hackney on Saturday, check out Millfields Community School Summer Fete, where you can see and buy children's art and where my beautiful and talented wife, who runs the Artbash blog, will be presiding over the display of student creations from Arts Week. Check out Artbash for the results. Really astounding what you can do with kids and creativity sometimes. 

Whatever you are doing, have an inspiring couple days and do stop by and let me know if you get up to anything wonderful. 

The Best Coffee in Hackney

I'll admit, I was surprised when Pacific Social Club opened its doors for business. Not much of the gentrification process in Hackney surprises me any more. I expect street markets to pop up out of sewer grates nowadays, but not on Clarence Road. Not my Clarence Road. 

Community-oriented, friendly, dirty and noisy, Clarence Road always felt when I first moved here just a bit edgier than Lower Clapton Road, probably because it's emptier most of the time and it's not a street with a lot going on. There are businesses, newsagents, convenience stores, bric-a-brac, Merry-go-round, but posh coffee shops? Not here. Until June of last year when Liam Casey and Nico Atwater opened up Pacific after overhauling the space formerly occupied by Lokat's motor spares. 

Since its opening, Pacific Social Club has created an inviting space that has rapidly established itself as a feature of the area and is going some way towards making Clarence Road a destination for more than just riot tourism. 

The coffee is superb and unmatched anywhere in Hackney. Machiattos are flawlessly executed, flat whites are the subtlest, smoothest blend of coffee and milk, as only the bona fide Antipodean baristas (my last flat white there was made to precise perfection by an amiably chatty Kiwi called Matt) can do.The atmosphere is vintage with wall to wall vinyl covers behind the front counter, pastels and gentle, breezy dashes of turquoise and whites whimsically reminiscent of, appropriately, the South Pacific in the 1950s.

We're taking the boy to Legoland this weekend, but if I were sticking around, I know where I'd be getting my Saturday and Sunday morning coffee. Pacific Social Club will soon go a long way towards making this humble thoroughfare quite a desirable destination. 

Speaking of beer...

Years of disillusioning experiences have made me suspicious of pubs with city postcodes, even ones that are in Hackney but also within close proximity to The City of London. Too many bankers, having just spent 12 deregulated hours ravishing the economy showing up in their jeans and t-shirts, their 'casual' clothes and well, just stinking up the place with testosterone and bleeding all the atmosphere out of  a room. 

The Old Red Cow is a breath of fresh air. Wide variety of beers from all over the world and to satisfy any and every thirst. I decided to stay local and try The Kernel Pale Ale, an uplifting bevvy from a brewery based formerly around London Bridge, notes of grapefruit and sunshine sprinkle down the palate with not a wisp of unpleasant after taste. Sprightly ale with a hoppy sense of fun. Also on show were Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale on tap and a Red Cow Belgian Pilsner. It's nice to see high quality American beers on tap so close to the 4th. Puts me in mind of home. 

So, if you do happen to find yourself in The City of London this weekend and you are hankering after a drink to slake your thirst should the sun shine down on London in the next 48 hours, angle yourself towards Barbican and The Old Red Cow. Lovely atmosphere, lovely beer. 

The nearest tube stations to The Old Red Cow are Barbican or Farringdon. 

The Clapton Hart: Heralding an era of Restoration

I'll admit, I was sceptical. I, along with many other local community members (that's what I'll call the rumour mill) had heard that the old Clapton Hart building, that crumbling boarded up edifice standing up until recently undecorously at the mouth of the Lea Bridge Roundabout, was going to be taken over by a pub franchise. And when you say pub franchise, I think 'Wetherspoons' and there is no quicker way to restore the rock-solid reputation of Murder Mile circa 2002 than to plop a chain pub like Wetherspoons right at the roundabout. I lived across the street from the Wetherspoons on Roman Road Market in Bow when I first moved to London. Looking out the window was better entertainment than any reality TV show any night. And on Saturday nights, it was like that old American fly-in-the-wall, or corner of the squad car as it were proto-reality TV show, Cops, complete with drunken brawling, police vans with vested officers spilling out, pinning down drunken disorderly offenders on their stomachs, knees pressed to their backs, pressing a promise to be good out of each of the inebriated, cider-filled customers to frequent the establishment. Sans guns of course. This was the East End of London. The local gendarme are nothing if not a little civilized.

I digress.

It is this term 'franchise' and my wife's lukewarm review of the place on its opening night what made me apprehensive before my own visit with a couple of friends last Tuesday. Luckily, the new Clapton Hart could not be further from that cookie cutter chain pub that we have become accustomed to seeing on British high streets. Antic Ltd, who also run the Stokey favourite The White Hart, have taken over the decrepit building that used to house the pub of the same name with a notoriously dodgy past. They seem to have set out to restore the interior of the pub as sensitively as possible, bringing it right back to as close to vintage as possible, having taken the retro looking block capital sign from the outside of the building and brought it in. 

The Hart has created a spacious and inviting atmosphere that manages to feel welcoming and contemporary while at the same time kindling a sense of old Hackney circa 1891. 

And that's to say nothing of it's choice of beers. I was suitably impressed that they carried Tottenham-based Redemption Fellowship Porter, a fruity and smooth, but not overly sweet brew that I last had at the Pig's Ear Beer and Cider Festival when it was in The Round Chapel. 

Somerset-based Blindman's Buff was a lighter, more seasonal beverage, 'a proper bitter' remarked my friend Dom upon tasting, but I was most impressed by the Jamboree ale, with hints of citrus and summer washing all the way down the palate. I was as impressed by its provenance as by its taste though. It seems very easy nowadays for a pub to put Meantime or St. Peter's on tap and call themselves local and organic. I very much like Meantime and St. Peter's, but the beer buyer at The Clapton Hart has clearly worked hard to find beers that we haven't seen in all the other organic gastropubs popping up in Stokey or Islington or Hackney-Wick-Upon-The-Marsh. Jamboree Ale comes from the East London Brewery in Leyton just down a shot on the dastardly, daren't-traverse-it-on-a-dark night, Lea Bridge Road and they're producing sensational beer. Fair play to them and to the Clapton Hart on a great sourcing job. I am a bit surprised and frankly a bit disappointed in The Hackney Citizen with finding fault for just this aspect of our new watering hole. 

Clapton is a very different place even from what it was in 2008, when last this place shut its doors for business. We're seeing more and more signs that we are closer and closer to that affluent and civilised merchants' village of the 18th Century here where we can trust our neighbours and our neighbourhoods for our children to grow up in. May The Clapton Hart be a further sign of that restoration.  

The Clapton Hart is just at the top of Lower Clapton Road and can be reached via the 48, 55, 38, 254 or 106 and is well worth making time for.

Cheese Superheroes: The Dark Knights of Cholesterol

It was always a bit disappointing to me to find when I ventured abroad that the American Cheese that I had grown up on was known in England and Ireland as 'processed cheese slices'. It makes sense when you consider how diabolically poisonous Kraft American Cheese tastes, but it's also made me want a little more out of my cheese.

Thankfully, I've recently found the saviours to any and all cheese crises: The Dark Knights of Cholesterol. I first discovered 'Ian and Gian' of Fratelli Formaggio a couple weeks ago at Hackney Homemade Market and was overcome by their selection, their general amiability and their willingness to serve you up as many tastes of as wide a variety of their cheeses as possible. On that visit, I picked up a mild, creamy honeyish cheese from the Emmental Valley near Bern, called Aarewasser and spent several mini-eternities savouring the beautiful flavour.

The only difference with yesterday's visit was the location, the Chatsworth Road Sunday Market, and my choice of cheese. Again, John, one half of the Dark Knights, was only too eager to provide me and the patron next to me with taste upon taste of cheeses ranging from sensationally loud to subtly beautiful and one that was creamy, ripe, and apparently illegal in several countries. I was most impressed this time though with an 18 month old pecorino from Southern Sardinia, with a lovely texture and hints of smoke and nuttiness that kept hitting the tastebuds minutes after savouring.  These guys have a knack for sourcing magnificent cheese and bringing it to the markets of Hackney. Long may they continue to do so.

You can find these guys and their delicious dairy merch behind St. John's Church and beside The Narrow Way at Hackney Homemade all day on Saturday and on Chatsworth Road Market all day Sunday.

Gentrified Hackney Revelry: The Clapton Festival 15-17 June

My Jewish colleagues, a number of them from Hackney old East End Jewish families born and bred in Clapton only to later drift north to Boreham Wood, expressed no small amount of shock at my plans to enjoy The Clapton Festival this weekend. And it is funny how much Hackney has changed.

From a village adjacent to London where wealthy merchants came to buy big houses and retire (so, the Essex or New Jersey of the 16th Century then?) to a run down borough best known for its high incidence of knife crime; rough, cheap, 'bohemian', 'ethnic' area with 'a lot of character' to gentrified destination for the hip and famous. Now the cool seems to be spreading and with it the decent coffee shops and some of the fun too. Some people have complaints, but I have to say, the effects, on balance, seem good for Hackney, which is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to The Second Annual Clapton Festival. The other is, there really will be something on for everyone, so if you're passing East or not, but in London this weekend, make time. There may be scoffing and a bit of 'far from that I was rared' from those who know Hackney of old, but you won't regret it.

Not Your Typical Rainy Day Out in London Town: St. Paul's Cathedral

The wonderfully imposing structure of St. Paul's, standing since 1710 when it arose from Christopher Wren's imagination, still glowering austerely down over The City of London

After eight years of living in this ever impressive metropolis, I finally climbed up to the top of St. Paul's on Thursday. 

We arrived at the cathedral rather late and it's a bit of steep climb into your pocket just to afford admission at £15 a pop, which struck me as rather strange given that it's part of a Christian institution and given that there was such a public outcry when the Occupy Londonmovement 'prevented' worshipers and tourists from enjoying the grandeur of the great edifice. A cynical person might think the loudest outcriers were cityites attempting to rid themselves of any guilt pangs they felt about the act of trudging to and from the freemarketeering that brought one of the world's mightiest economies to its knees, endeavouring as it were, to sweep any reminders of unpleasant truths out of the bastion of beauty added to the world that sits amid the tax collectors. I digress. 

We arrived rather late and were debating about the worthiness of the price and the idea of walking across The Millennium Bridge to The Tate Modern when we decided, well how many St. Paul's Cathedrals are there in the world? As it happens, the price turned out to be worth it because here's your cheap living in London tip of the day: Gift Aid the money you pay for your ticket, and it turns into a reusable ticket for a year. Is there enough grandeur, enough humbling enormity in the heights of the dome, stunningly forward thinking imagination in the design and famous people buried in the crypt to make you want to go back for a second, third and fourth visit? Certainly, and I am glad I paid the price for it. 

But I am not great with heights. Fortunately, I decided to bite the bullet and not let my jittery sense of vertigo stop me form one of the most breathtaking sights in all of London. As with the CN tower in Toronto nine years ago, the nearest children to hand were braver than I was when we reached the top and there was a small glass in the floor from which you could see all the way down to the Cathedral floor. Of course, the nearest child this time around was my own, but at least I haven't passed this particular anxiety on to him. 

The vertigo-inducing view from the top.

And the view at the top was awe-inspiring. And humbling. Say what you like about old London town. There is a fierce and terrible beauty in those rows of slate grey emanating stories told and untold, generations upon generations of that wonderfully gruff mixture of peoples that make up this city. 

 I feel civically and globally obliged to mention that there was  protest the day we went. It was led by a group called Jews forJustice for Palestinians. I felt fully in support of the protest as they were protesting against an insidious Anglo-Danish company called G4S, a company that is contracted by the government to deport asylum seekers. 

The protest was also supported by The Boycott Israel network, about which I feel deeply ambivalent. I get the fact that the state of Israel has some deeply unsavoury policies, especially amongst hardcore Zionists, but I also know from having worked with Jews now for six years that, oddly, not all of them are Palestinian-hating hardcore Zionists and the Israelis who are most likely to be the exceptions, the liberals, the intellectuals, the open-minded Palestinian sympathizers are also the ones who are likely to be the actresses, actors, and academics who come over here to speaking engagements or to bring over productions of The Merchant of Venice in Hebrew and who are going to suffer because of boycotts. It just seems like a classic example of organisations making enemies out of exactly the kind of people to whom they should be reaching out. 

Divine Revelation Under The Arches: Coffee Is My Cup Of Tea

Last Monday was Shavuot, the Jewish festival celebrating the bestowal of the Torah on God's chosen people. I work at a Jewish school and the school was closed for the day. As a gentile and not one of God's chosen, I had the day free to enjoy the rare appearance of the London sun shining down and bestowing its blessed warmth on all God's creatures. 

My wife and I, footloose and child-free for the day, aimed to lunch at The Happy Kitchen, which we'd heard so much about but had always found difficult to locate. As it happened, last Monday was no different for us. We searched and searched the arches around that little paved tributary of London Fields letting out all the sun worshippers on these rare, bright days and found The Happy Kitchen bakery, which by all accounts is still doing lovely gluten-free cookies and cakes and ended up lunching at E5 Bakehouse, sitting amidst the buzzing atmosphere full of bright young self-made stylistas of Hackney, enjoying an unusually delectable chilled pear and pea soup.

However, the real epiphany came after lunch when we decided to head to somewhere else for iced coffees. A couple doors down, where The Happy Kitchen used to be, we found Coffee is My Cup of Tea, where we were promptly served deeply luxurious iced coffees that cooled us as we sat outside and sipped in the afternoon sun. The inside was bright, airy and full of clean bright whites with welcoming, railway arch industrial chic about. Sadly, I cannot speak for the menu, except to say it was full of organic classic looking Spanish-leaning savouries and richly tempting cakes and muffins that I am looking forward to trying on my next visit. But if you are ever in need of some divinely inspired iced coffees on a warm day in Hackney, Coffee is My Cup of Tea does not disappoint. 

London Cycle Diaries: Irony on Romford Road

I cycle the length of Romford Road nearly every day, newsagent-lined, paan-spit splattered, multicoloured, aroumatic thoroughfare that it is. But I have to come from Ilford, just East of London, a suburb that looks something like a low-key Paterson, New Jersey, complete 60s/70s era low rise tower blocks of offices filling the place with upright oblong shapes, and a moderately sized mall (or shopping center/re).

The most efficient way to enter onto Romford Road from Ilford is to first careen down a road called  Mill Hill into a tunnel so narrow that space only allows for one car at a time and so dark that you never know what will meet you on the other side: the light  still red, sedans and smart cars waiting in readiness or the oncoming grill of a BMW with which you are about to have a close encounter. Once safely through the tunnel, you ride up to a traffic light, beyond which you can either join the traffic and turn left back into Ilford, or pass one lane and turn right into what looks like a labyrinthine mess of wide pot-hole speckled concrete paths, one of them being an entrance ramp onto the A12 motorway. The trick is to go right, past two busy roads that allow cars into Ilford from the A12 and continue right onto the exhaust-fume-fogged Romford Road, safe in the knowledge that you are out of any danger of being criss-crossed by two trucks and a hatchback. It is a bit of a daunting spot.

So it's no surprise to me that in waiting at that light, I first witness a cycling accident in London.

I wait at the light between Mill Hill and Romford Road, keenly observing the traffic when I see a bright yellow blur zoom past from left to right heading in the same direction in which I am about to go. I see the blur slow down near the entrance ramp, enough to recognize that he is in fact a very professional looking cyclist who seems to have just taken a detour from the Tour de France, complete with spandex and sponsors on his top, but through the cacophony of horns and engines, and the interlacing of Cadillacs and Puegots, I can only just about make out that he starts to sway, like a circus man balancing on a unicycle. Balance is not in his favour and he topples to the ground, just near enough to the A12 to be in the way of oncoming vehicles.

This is it, I think. Time to prove what a good Samaritan I am, what a good paid-up member of the brotherhood of cyclists I am. Tragic and sudden though it seems, I've been waiting the whole two months that I've owned my little urban fold-up to prove my mettle to other two-wheeling travelers.

The light turns and I speed round to the right, slowing down as I near my bicyclist brother-in-wheels. Alas, he's surrounded by the time I get there by a whole village of seeming Samaritans, and so I say breathlessly, even as I'm slowing my bike in readiness to spring to action, 'Has anyone called 999?!'

A bulky Eastern European man with a shaved head, turns to me with vague interest and gestures towards his bleached blonde wife, also standing by the side of the road and says, 'She's on the phone to emergency services now.' Right. Good. Glad I've established that. I look around to take in the rest of the scene now that I've gained a closer position on the concrete island between the entrance ramp and Romford Road.

Our cyclist is sat on his bottom on the road, legs spread, elbows and knees scraped and bloody, otherwise looking not generally harmed, but dazed, periodically shaking his head in an effort to clear any disorientation. Hovering over him is a middle-aged Spanish woman, offering him his water bottle. Beside her are her curious son and daughter, looking on with unashamed amazement. About three feet to the side of them stands the father, squat, proletariat and noble, every once in a while asking the man if he is all right. I seem to be the last Samaritan at the scene, but it's okay. I'm sure I can act as a witness.


The cyclist seems to shake his head free of any remaining wisps of confusion enough to look up into the Spanish man who is currently crouching down furrowing his brow. With a veritable international community of concerned citizens looking at him with utter sympathy, the cyclist says to the Spanish man, 'You caused this!' It takes a minute for anyone to register what the up-until-a-minute-ago-victim of the situation has just said, perhaps because the accusatory tone, more than anything else, shocks the air itself, but we all stand rigidly still, the wind from passing cars gently whooshing by. Cyclist continues, 'That's right. You were in the wrong fucking lane, mate. You caused this.' Possibly through sheer awkwardness and an inability to articulate what any of us are feeling, or not feeling, I think we all turn the other way, unable to face the accuser. I also think I can see our collective sympathy leave us and rise up like a haze of smoke in the smog-filled air.

'You shouldn't have been turning there. You un-der-stand?' he shouts, clearly convinced that this foreigner doesn't and has obviously passed his driving test in a country with poor road safety standards, with all the patronizing bigoted vitriol of the a card carrying member of the British National Party. 'You fucking caused all this!' All of us begin to recover our senses.

'You still want us to call emergency services?' asks Eastern European Man.

'Yeah,' says the cyclist, 'the police, on him.' Blonde Eastern European lady stays on the phone looking a bit confused and helpless. Yellow-shirted cyclist sits resignedly, arms crossed, awaiting the local constabulary so that he can have the satisfaction of testifying to a middle-aged Spanish man crossing his path on a busy road in Ilford, having lost all the sympathy in one breath that he could ever generate for himself in one accident. The Spanish man blinks uncomprehendingly at his wife. I'm sure he understands English perfectly, but can't understand what's going on. I begin to look for an out, worried that I may really be asked to be a witness when, in truth, I only saw it distantly and could hardly make anything out when it happened and certainly didn't see any motorists cutting any cyclists off.

'You know,' I begin to say to Eastern European Guy, who is still looking frustrated and confused at having now to call and wait for emergency services for the most ungrateful cyclist on the planet, 'I only saw things from pretty far back. To be honest, I'd make a pretty poor witness.'

He shrugs. 'Go ahead.'

'You sure?' I ask.

'Sure. No problem.'

I look back towards the cyclist, now shaking his head and swearing under his breath, and I shake my head myself, thinking I am late for work, and that perhaps Good Samaritanism is over-rated.