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February
Dark, Satanic Turnmills 20th February 2008
A Legend Hosts its Last Parties
It has been some years since I had to consider how my feet would feel after dancing from midnight until dawn when choosing my shoes. But the news that Turnmills was to close so soon after the King’s Cross Goods Yard clubs (Canvas, The Key, The Cross) still came as a shock. About half of London’s major all-night clubs have disappeared in the space of three months.

It’s hardly surprising that these labyrinthine venues are shutting their doors: my generation is now much happier sipping cocktails somewhere salubrious than bouncing around in a former factory, and the young, so I’m told, think that electric guitars are the future.

Nobody is going to much miss those chillout rooms full of sleazy dreadlocked men offering massages to anyone in a skirt, or the stench of sweat on the dancefloors, nor yet the music that had been carefully subdivided into 1000s of indistinguishable sub-genres with names like Darkcore and Dubstep. In any case, you only have to hop on a plane to Eastern Europe if you want to experience a place where these phenomena still flourish.

Yet there is much to regret about the slow death of dance music in the capital, not least the stunning buildings that housed these clubs. There was something very special about the way that going out in London meant a descent into the bowels of our city’s industrial heritage. Turnmills is an extraordinary Victorian edifice, while the Goods Yard clubs were housed in a set of arches and warehouses that still remembered the days when the Industrial Revolution was fed by thousands of trains from the North of England.

I worry that today’s skinny-jeaned youth won’t get the same thrills from their corporate-sponsored gigs at the O2 Dome as we had from these gothic underworlds, with their great brick arches, and mazes of UV-lit corridors. The idea that dark, satanic Turnmills is to become a set of trendy offices, where designers in thick-framed glasses will have brainstorming sessions, is truly depressing.

Though perhaps not quite as depressing as the way that I’ve obviously turned into a dismal old nineties nostalgist, moaning about how the youth of today don’t know how to have fun. If anyone spots me putting on an Underworld album and telling a bemused teenager that it’s what PROPER music sounds like, please have me shipped off to the Ministry of Sound immediately to remind me just how horrible the superclubs often were.
Underground but not Undercover
You’d think it unlikely that anything could make London’s Tube commuters more frustrated or irate but, for a while there, it looked as though London Transport was going to ban nudes too by censoring a poster of Venus wearing nothing but a knowing look as part of an advertising campaign for the Royal Academy’s Cranach show. Luckily they have relented ‘given its context’ – thank goodness for that, imagine the tedium of just having Mayor Ken’s ‘Poems on the Underground’ as company on your way to work…
So much art, so little space
Nigella knows how to whip up something out of nothing and husband Charles Saatchi is certainly not just sitting around eating her choco-hoto-pots either. Nope, he thought he’d take on the Tate Modern (as you do) by opening a new art gallery in Chelsea. Saatchi has already got a couple of shows in the pipeline for when he opens in spring – contemporary Chinese art, new US artists, Indian art – you better watch this space!
There's a storm brewing!
Us Brits just love to chat weather - bemoaning the great British summertime, going camping in a lake of mud and what we’re especially fond of is when the whole rail system grinds to a halt because the wind has blown some leaves onto the track. Well, now we can expostulate about the climate to our hearts’ content at the Museum of London with a new exhibition about our weather, appropriately titled ‘Weather Permitting’ – it’s brilliantly quirky and informative and a great way to spend a rainy summer’s day when it opens in June.
October 2009
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Posties Strike a Chord
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Frieze Still Pleases
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26th September
A River Runs Through It
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Blogging is Best
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When Saturday comes
22nd August
Bring on the Bikes
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27th July
Against the Clock
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View for a thrill
June 2009
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18th February
New Photography Laws
12th February
Glitz and the Pitts
January 2009
27th January
Setting the Standard
21st January
Too Much for Posh Nosh?
December 2008
23rd December
January is on the Horizon
20th December
Merry Christmas
November 2008
26th November
All The World's A Stage
20th November
Surviving the Crunch
October 2008
24th October
Boris v Jingjing
17th October
Soaps in Pole Position
September 2008
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23rd April
By George
11th April
Back to the 80s
March 2008
February 2008
20th February
Dark, Satanic Turnmills
6th February
A Diamond in the Drink
January 2008
21st January
People Wanted for Plinth
14th January
Boo! Hiss!
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28th December
Tate That - A Hirst for Art
20th December
Christmas Shopping
November 2007
27th November
Mind the Gap
26th November
London On A Tray
October 2007
26th October
Leaving the Station
14th October
The Sky's the Limit
September 2007
August 2007
24th August
Heathrow under Siege
17th August
Gormless
10th August
Losing Face
July 2007
June 2007
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April 2007
March 2007
23rd March
So, Another Magazine
16th March
Avoiding iContact
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
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26th May
Curvaceous Border
12th May
Vegging Out
April 2006
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20th January
February Sales
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Moby Sick
13th January
Glass Half Full
3rd January
Three Cheers for the Tube Station Workers
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January Bites
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A Remarkable Year
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29th July
Moving On From 7/7
22nd July
Get loaded in the park
15th July
Victoire!!
June 2005
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December 2004
30th December
Party Pooper
23rd December
The Second Battle of Trafalgar
16th December
Sadie's Year
November 2004
28th November
Ripper-Watch
21st November
Kinky Boots
14th November
Smoked out
October 2004
22nd October
Yuppie Meal
15th October
Fines of Fury
8th October
No Twist in the Turner
September 2004
17th September
Battleships, bloodsports and Batman
10th September
Clique Week
3rd September
Return of the Bard
August 2004
July 2004
 
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