This blog post is all about registering with Technorati.
This links to my Technorati Profile
Friday, 11 July 2008
Royal Crescent fights new Bus Route
The Royal Crescent Residents Association is fighting a plan that would see a second bus route passing through the their Grade II listed environment.
The southern half of the crescent has become somewhat of a rat-run for speeding traffic and there have been two deaths and two serious injuries at the junction with St Ann's Villas in the last nine months.
The cresent used to be zoned as a residents-only road. The campaign aims to not only halt the new bus route but also reroute the exisiting 295 bus service to make the crescent quieter, cleaner and safer.
more: TFL's plans for new bus route.
The southern half of the crescent has become somewhat of a rat-run for speeding traffic and there have been two deaths and two serious injuries at the junction with St Ann's Villas in the last nine months.
The cresent used to be zoned as a residents-only road. The campaign aims to not only halt the new bus route but also reroute the exisiting 295 bus service to make the crescent quieter, cleaner and safer.
more: TFL's plans for new bus route.
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
To The End Of The Line
Here's an excerpt from To The End Of The Line - a blog by Ian Jones, which is a tour of every London Underground station...
Stepping out of Holland Park you can, ahem, smell the affluence. The building itself seems to exude a certain well-to-do mentality. It's eerie to emerge here just one stop on from the pell-mell patchwork of communities that is Notting Hill. And you can forget your currency exchanges or taxi cab firms sheltering next to the station; here they have a nutrition clinic.
Read the Central Line: Bond Street to Ealing Broadway in full.
Stepping out of Holland Park you can, ahem, smell the affluence. The building itself seems to exude a certain well-to-do mentality. It's eerie to emerge here just one stop on from the pell-mell patchwork of communities that is Notting Hill. And you can forget your currency exchanges or taxi cab firms sheltering next to the station; here they have a nutrition clinic.
Read the Central Line: Bond Street to Ealing Broadway in full.
Shepherds Bush Roundabout, Blue Thing Explained (finally)
Having stared at it on and off for nearly 10 years, I thought I knew what this odd looking thing was.Plonked on the edge of Shepherds Bush roundabout, like some giant chemical toilet, I always thought is was simply a solar-powered water feature.
Sun shines, blue water cascades. That simple.
I've also heard many people explain it away as something Thames Water built to reflect the level of water available in London's reservoirs.
But that's not it either. It is called the Thames Water Ring Main Tower (this title may have caused the confusion) and was built in 1994 to celebrate the completion of a giant ring main which serves London.
It is actually a (wait for it) fifteen metre high barometer. So now you know.
Congestion Zone
Modern life is rubbish. It makes no sense and costs a fortune.
It’s sinister too. This picture shows how people are greeted as they arrive at the bottom of Holland Park Avenue. Creepy C-Charge cameras.
The oddities of Ken Livingstone's and Capita’s Extended London Congestion Zone are many.
Take these beautiful camera poles. The Royal Borough threatened legal action when these were put up, given their ugly, menacing appearance in one of the few parts of London that cares about its street furniture.
(Building with consideration and sympathy, with sense of harmony and human scale is quite the vogue at the moment. You only have to look at the Shepherds Bush Multiplex shopping centre to know this.)
This is odd too: there is often a C-Charge van parked on Holland Park Avenue, monitoring the congestion, presumably. And occupying a traffic lane to do this. The irony.
If you are rich enough to live inside the C-Charge Zone and own a car, you are entitled to a residents discount. And the discount is amazing. For just £4 you get a full week in the zone.
Given a travel card is £5.30 per day, where’s the incentive to leave the car?
The rich stay rich. The poor of Shepherds Bush and beyond get poorer (It's £8 a day for them, no discounts).
Some people are being persuaded to leave their cars at home… as evidenced by the growing number of bikes. I'm one of them.
This is all very encouraging but then have you tried to secure your bike anywhere near Holland Park tube station on a working weekday?
You can’t unless you get there before 6am or bring your own bike rack. There are bikes attached to trees, foot-scrapers, discarded children.
You can't really ask people to get out of their cars but not provide alternative solutions when they do.
It’s sinister too. This picture shows how people are greeted as they arrive at the bottom of Holland Park Avenue. Creepy C-Charge cameras.
The oddities of Ken Livingstone's and Capita’s Extended London Congestion Zone are many.
Take these beautiful camera poles. The Royal Borough threatened legal action when these were put up, given their ugly, menacing appearance in one of the few parts of London that cares about its street furniture.
(Building with consideration and sympathy, with sense of harmony and human scale is quite the vogue at the moment. You only have to look at the Shepherds Bush Multiplex shopping centre to know this.)
This is odd too: there is often a C-Charge van parked on Holland Park Avenue, monitoring the congestion, presumably. And occupying a traffic lane to do this. The irony.
If you are rich enough to live inside the C-Charge Zone and own a car, you are entitled to a residents discount. And the discount is amazing. For just £4 you get a full week in the zone.
Given a travel card is £5.30 per day, where’s the incentive to leave the car?
The rich stay rich. The poor of Shepherds Bush and beyond get poorer (It's £8 a day for them, no discounts).
Some people are being persuaded to leave their cars at home… as evidenced by the growing number of bikes. I'm one of them.
This is all very encouraging but then have you tried to secure your bike anywhere near Holland Park tube station on a working weekday?
You can’t unless you get there before 6am or bring your own bike rack. There are bikes attached to trees, foot-scrapers, discarded children.
You can't really ask people to get out of their cars but not provide alternative solutions when they do.
Up the HPA - Mister Pumpkernink’s Pizzeria
Being partially unemployed recently I’ve had time to consider the cheesy enigma, smothered in a claggy tomato paste of puzzlement, wrapped in a soggy calzone of intrigue that is the riddle of the continuing existence of Mister Pumpkernink’s Pizzeria, 116 Holland Park Avenue.
To start with, it seems so utterly out of place nestled between Lidgate’s (purveyors of the finest organic meats, poultry and game direct from Prince Charles's Highgrove estate), sPeck (the fine Italian Deli, kitchen and wine shop) and Daunts (a bookshop where you’ll often see authors browsing, as well as signing).
This is a famously well-heeled neighbourhood, so who’s eating at Mister Pumperninks?* Surely not Michael Winner.**
The place sells pizza by the slice, humanely sparing you the burden of discarding a whole one.
They make a sort of bastardised deep-pan / soiled mattress hybrid. Toppings are reminiscent of certain scenes from Platoon.
I’m not being a snob about Pizzerias. A good pizzeria is fine thing to have. And here’s a fact: Pizza is cheap to make and very easy to make well. You almost have to be wilfully kack-handed to muck it up.
An average small town in Italy might have 10 to 20 pizzerias. In each you’ll get delicious pizza for about £2.50 (that’s per pizza, not per slice as you’ll find at Mr P’s).
He’s a leprechaun. He sits on a pumpkin. He has a pet rat… all classic Italian associations that Pizza Express and Zizzi’s must feel foolish they overlooked.
The use of the rat I feel is a particularly bold allusion to the reality of their operation. It’s so direct, so honest. I bet the Saatchis drive past and slap their foreheads saying, “A little Irish man and vermin. They trumped us finding the new direction. We should retire.”
* Turns out it’s school kids. Mystery solved.
** I bet he puts on a big bib and orders in half a dozen.
To start with, it seems so utterly out of place nestled between Lidgate’s (purveyors of the finest organic meats, poultry and game direct from Prince Charles's Highgrove estate), sPeck (the fine Italian Deli, kitchen and wine shop) and Daunts (a bookshop where you’ll often see authors browsing, as well as signing).
This is a famously well-heeled neighbourhood, so who’s eating at Mister Pumperninks?* Surely not Michael Winner.**
The place sells pizza by the slice, humanely sparing you the burden of discarding a whole one.
They make a sort of bastardised deep-pan / soiled mattress hybrid. Toppings are reminiscent of certain scenes from Platoon.
I’m not being a snob about Pizzerias. A good pizzeria is fine thing to have. And here’s a fact: Pizza is cheap to make and very easy to make well. You almost have to be wilfully kack-handed to muck it up.
An average small town in Italy might have 10 to 20 pizzerias. In each you’ll get delicious pizza for about £2.50 (that’s per pizza, not per slice as you’ll find at Mr P’s).
He’s a leprechaun. He sits on a pumpkin. He has a pet rat… all classic Italian associations that Pizza Express and Zizzi’s must feel foolish they overlooked.
The use of the rat I feel is a particularly bold allusion to the reality of their operation. It’s so direct, so honest. I bet the Saatchis drive past and slap their foreheads saying, “A little Irish man and vermin. They trumped us finding the new direction. We should retire.”
* Turns out it’s school kids. Mystery solved.
** I bet he puts on a big bib and orders in half a dozen.
Classy Old Kensington McDonald's
Forget the Henry VIII suite at the Excalibur Hotel, I think I've just seen the classiest thing of all time. McDonalds, Kensington High Street has a player piano.It's actually a £15,000 Roland Grand piano, left alone to play crappy midi files, pianola-style, in order to lend an air of sophistication in twinkling room full of teenagers and council sweepers slurping up sugar and fat.
Having witnessed this, I know it's going to be difficult to sleep tonight as I mentally wrestle with this concept.
[drifts off thinking] ...There are people in the world who can't afford to eat, there's a £15,000 piano in High Street Ken McDonalds. [dribbles a little into pillow] There are people in the world who can't afford to eat, and yet there's a £15,000 piano in High Street Ken McDonalds. [deep snoring] There are people in the world who can't afford to eat, there's a £15,000 piano in High Street Ken McDonalds... (turn over)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
