No It doesn't mean my brother Bob is your uncle. And Bob's your uncle is Brit speak for, "and there you have it" or "and you're all set". For example, "to set a car alight, simply poor gasoline in the driver's seat, throw a lit match inside, and Bob's your uncle".
I've seen a lot of photo shoots/video shoots going on in my neighborhood. And they're always dressed funky.
drinks at the Griffin, which is across from the Book Club basically. Everyone drinks outside on the sidewalks in London pubs.
Hoxton Square is cool.
a Beef pie with mash(ed potatoes is what the brits mean).
a random assortment on the sidewalk
down the street from my house.
London has a "free" bike public bike system too. its a 1 pound access fee and then a 1 pound a day rental fee for 24 hrs. or 45 pounds for a year. I have hesitated to do this cuz London is not a bike friendly city cuz the roads are narrow, no bike lanes, and drivers are not yet aware of bikers like they are in tokyo.
Brick Lane review number 2. me and johnny wanted to try somewhere new so we let a guy tout us into "Cafe Bangla". I think he started at 11 pounds and johnny got him down to 8 pounds for whatever meal crap.
This place gets an A+ for awesome artwork on the walls. This isn't the only mural where you'll be wondering what the hell is going on.
chiken tikka starters. super sad size and not so good.
papadoms or however you spell it. are you supposed to dip into these are spoon out onto the papadoms? i don't know what the status quo is so i have been mashing my things in there and i'm probably not supposed to.
all i can remember is that the portions were super small and nothing special. So this place ultimately gets a thumbs down for skimping on everything and not tasting the best despite the fact that it has the best weird art on the walls.
what is going on here?
oh they just threw in a princess diana mural amongst the 13 year old boy's heavy metal dream land murals.
What is this thing called? a spatula, a pancake turner, a flipper? Lucy insisted it was called a flipper or "flippa" in her accent. The official product name is "Nylon Turner". I came downstairs in the morning to find that some clever gal was trying pull a fast one on me. Double gloucester is cheese that uses cream from the morning and evening milkings or something so its yellow and kind of like cheddar. it's not bad. Wenslydale is frequently mixed with fruit and ends up tasting like dessert cheese. also not bad if thats what you're looking for. but if you're looking for a cheese that slaps you in the nuts these are not it.
badminton at some sports center near angels house. I guess some sports that are not so cool in the US are at least tolerated here by people from all walks of life.
my first real cream tea at this cool place in stoke newington meaning just tea.
my first scones with clotted cream and jam. clotted cream is chilled and kind of like butter but creamier and chilled-ier so its awesome. scones are basically biscuits with more sugar in them. they don't even have biscuits in Britanian.
Angel's parents bought James a new Roland.
A melodica that you blow into. Yann Tierson who did the soundtrack for the movie Amelie uses this.
there are a lot of these stores in my area.
I hope to capture the complete "Poor Man's Harry Potter" cast on camera before I leave London. I missed my chance at the perfect Poor Man's harry potter at the airport last time cuz i was in a hurry. will i get my chance again? here is the poor man's Neville Longbottom.
Columbia flower market again with Lucy. This photo is horribly edited but i gave up on it so here it is anyway.
Lilies and Gladiolas from the flower market.
Lucy came home and said the riots were now 2 blocks from out house. I had a magazine deadline i was working on so i couldn't move from my desk to go take pictures or run away if necessary. all i could do was listen to the BBC and have a little adrenaline running through my blood the whole day. Lucy has been living in the area for 10 years so she has friends all over that were texting her updates like that their store is getting looted now and that they're not attacking people with cameras yet and looters yelling get out of here white people. She would yell these updates up to me in my room but all i could do say oh my and keep working. By the next day the carnage was over and a lot of the businesses in our neighborhood had been trashed. I tried to go Argos with Sioban but it looks like it got looted.
So tons of windows smashed all over London and England, fires set, (here on the news they say alight, as in 50 cars were set alight), trainers (sneakers) stolen, electronics and liquor stolen, and cars burned out. There was a riot in the 80's where they cut a police officers head off with a pen knife, in the same area where this riot started. I can't believe the police even let this whole thing come to this but everyone said the police in london don't beat people down like that. So they just let their city be set alight and ravaged by "youths" for a few nights.
And Bob's Your Uncle
Are You Taking the P!ss?
No it doesn't mean what these three possibly european bums did in the corner before they passed out on top of each other on this couch on Brick Lane. In Brit speak "are you taking the p!ss" means "are you having a Giraffe?". Which in Cockney rhyme slang means "Are you kidding me?". So in the end it means are you joking? Insert British accent for more humor.
Drug dealer on Old Ford Road. I was taking a pic of those chimneys in the back when this dude rolls up and says "what are you taking a picture of, take a picture of me". So i quickly snapped a few horrible shots while he asked me if i smoke or do coke. I said eh and he handed me a fortune cookie sized piece of paper with his name and number hand written on it and said call him and he can sort it out. I later saw dude on Old Ford road again on day 2 of the big London Riots with a bandana around his face, I was going for a jog. I didn't say hi to him cuz number 1, why would i do that, and 2, he probably remembers that i have pics of him. On the news they were asking people to send photos and identify rioters. whether he was en route to partake in some unsavory activities like breaking windows remains a mystery, but he certainly was dressed for the part, and this prior encounter doesn't help either. Don't look for them, they'll find you. Everyone gets asked if they want drugs by what seems like the majority of the male population in whitechapel/bethnal green/brick lane/hackney.
A way cool discovery was regents canal. I guess there are other canals too like little venice. I have to check it out.
I'm in love with these narrow boats. I saw a sign that said they can only stay for 14 days and then have to move their boats. Maybe that means they don't have to pay for moorings to dock their boats if they just move down the canal every 2 weeks?
boot planters.
you can rent this kind of narrow boat/canal boat. I want to do it for a night and have a little party on one. but summer is over so i don't think its going to happen. but for anyone reading this that has a chance next year, think of how cool it would be slowly chugging through the canals of London, sipping wine/beer/champagne with a few of your good buddies and male/female companion.
a different kind of canal boat.
back of that same boat.
there is a path along the canal with lots of joggers and bikers, it's a cool path that transports you from london to like some cool canal path. creative descript i know.
water fowl with freaky feet.
why don't they have these east west signs other places? they would really help travellers.
i saw a few young people with these boats and talked to two boats. 1 guy said the boat was 10,000 pounds. he had a solar panel and internet. he uses his parents address for mail.
this one was cool. it's a traveling tea and snack boat. i talked to the Woman and she says she travels between the different canals in London and you can see her location on her website. I didn't have time to have tea there but I will soon! lets go everybody!:
http://www.thesandwichbarge.co.uk/
bookshop boat
what appeared to be a bike repair boat but just may be a young guys boat that was fixing his friends bike and selling this one.
ping pong in some park with James and some of his friends.
pints at some pub that had board games and this game where you guess what you are but you can't see the card.
these seem like new bums. they may be eastern european. this was on brick lane, in this alley that smells like p!ss. this is one of the downsides of brick lane. this is not Japan. well it could be if they were wearing black suits, replaced the couch with subway benches, increased the money in their pockets from $0 to a lot, and replaced that garbage back there with a suitcase or something.
Every sunday they have the Brick Lane market, I took a stroll with my flatmate Lucy and her dogs through here and up to the Columbia Flower market which is also every sunday. From wikipedia: Pearly Kings and Queens, known as pearlies, are an organised charitable tradition of working class culture in London, England.[1] The practice of wearing clothes decorated with pearl buttons originated in the 19th century.[1] It is first associated with Henry Croft, an orphan street sweeper who collected money for charity. There is a pearly king and queen from each part of the city that is elected. in the old days these pearly kings would protect the street vendors from bullies trying to oust them from their spots. The suits are woan at charity events, christenings, weddings, and funerals. My photographer flatmate Lucy did some event and they were there.
of course its so stereotypical for there to be a fox doing needle point embroidery in the window wearing james dean/hipster/shoreditch clothing above the columbia flower market. I got 3 big bundles of Lilies for a sunday dinner party at Ed's house.
whitechapel road and valance road. E1 PMP. its a subaru something. due to the neighborhood you can almost guarantee that this is owned by someone from the area of india and that they are super cool. why else would they park it on the side walk?
