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Pogo Cafe

Penny Blood — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:58:27 +0000

Now Pogo Café is a full on no frills vegan cafe and is where I come when I don’t want to feel like I’m in London. It’s the sort of cafe you’d find somewhere uber-liberal like Eugene, Oregon. On the other hand you could find it extremely irritating if you were the type to take all that anti-establishment crap seriously. They go to town with the shredded carrot, but it’s all so satisfyingly healthy and cheap. You’re unlikely to stumble across it unless of course you are unfortunate enough to live near by or you’re a street level drug dealer or one of 5 kids to a white trash single mom. What I’m saying is, this is a dodgy street, where delinquents walk down the middle of the road refusing to move for cars and where kids half my size look like they’re gonna kill me just because I don’t wear jewellery from Argos.

www.pogocafe.co.uk

76 Clarence Road, London E5 8HB
020 8533 1214
Wednesday – Saturday 12.30pm – 9pm Sunday 11am – 9pm

The Last Tuesday Society

Penny Blood — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:49:37 +0000

Now here is a collection of weird shit. So taxidermy and monkey skulls I get, but Labrador’s testicles in jars? It’s hard not to like it here, I mean there aren’t many places where you hear the staff shout, “the ocelot fur coats are in the kid’s coffin under the mortuary table in the back room with Aleister Crowley’s skull and the Vagina grafts” now are there? The stream of people asking what is and what isn’t real must do their head in though. Upstairs there is a conventional gallery but downstairs is Viktor Wynds wet dream, the extensive overspill of his house of madness. With dark red walls and cabinets full of his collection of classical ivory figurines randomly (?) placed next to a key chain of a teddy bear blowing his brains out and a set of goliwogs mixed with shrunken heads and prosthetic limbs. The Last Tuesday Society additionally hold a series of talks on subjects ranging from Hypochondria to Syphilis to bed bugs by renowned speakers who although have a list of great credentials on paper often have a tendency to waffle. I think half the time they are just people Mr. Wynd wants to meet. The shop is a ‘window display’ so to speak for the Last Tuesday Society which hosts debauched and fabulous fancy dress and masquerade balls at different locations throughout the city.

http://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org

11 Mare Street, London, E8 4RP
07947 049814
Wednesday – Sunday 12pm – 6pm

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Le Grenier

Penny Blood — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:46:25 +0000

Le Grenier appears to be the official retailer of 70’s Crockery. Full sets of brown and orange tea cups, sugar pots and tea jars interspersed with eclectic jewellery, retro furniture, exciting knick knacks and old record players in suitcases which are so pretentious it makes me want to throw up. This shop probably survives in large part to people thinking that they will start their own collection of vintage clutter inspired by the immaculate style of this shop, so they start by purchasing one of the gaudy tea sets, but once they get it home and realise how badly it goes with dated Ikea furniture it gets stuck in a cupboard and never sees the light of day. Two years later said tea set ends up in a charity shop where it is bought by a similar posh second hand shop and the price put up by 1000% where it is then purchased by a younger generation of same people. It’s all part of the upper middle class circle of stuff.

www.le-grenier.com

146 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 6DG
07720 890 393
Monday-Saturday 12pm-7:30pm; Sunday 10am-7:30pm

Favela Chic

Penny Blood — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:44:19 +0000

There is nothing I love more than taking a Third World theme and throwing a shit load of money at it thereby creating the ideal place for posh kids to hold their birthday parties all the while discussing their current holier-than-thou missions with the red cross, UN or whatever. The theme is in the title and I can surely say it summarises the place entirely apart from the fact that it is absolutely nothing like a favela or anywhere else in Brazil for that matter. However salsa music, disco balls, furniture that looks like it was washed up on a beach, flea market lamps, kitsch paintings and wallpaper, graffitied bathrooms, staff dressed head to toe in American apparel and imported Japanese trainers, cocktails and delicious Brazilian inspired food with exterior walls covered in carpet is good enough for me.

http://www.favelachic.com/london/

91-93 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A3HZ
020 7613 4228
Tuesday – Thursday 6pm-10pm Friday – Saturday 6pm-11.30pm

Koenig Books

Penny Blood — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:46:36 +0000

Koenig books hosts a collection of wanky art books with beautiful covers and artistically out of focus photographs. It does have a huge selection though so if you do have £50 to burn on a book you will look through once then leave around to use as a coaster you will no doubt find something here. The basement houses all their less glamorous art books (the ones not published by Phaidon), collections of titles on each main stream artist and artistic movement which art students buy to plagiarize in their 3rd year thesis. Main reason I go is that the owner has a pet pug which is sooo cute.

80 Charing Cross Road, Leicester Square, London WC2H 0BF
020 7240 8190

Lorelei

Penny Blood — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:41:48 +0000

It was after talking to his Royal Lowness, King of Soho, Sebastian Horsley that I decided to try out the Lorelei as it’s one of Sebastian’s favourites. I’d walked past it countless times without it registering, mainly because it always looked closed and I never trust places in Soho that aren’t widely known. Well the Lorelei as it turns out is widely known (I’m just clueless, but not as clueless as you) and what a place it is. You couldn’t squeeze more character into it if you tried. Tiny with little Formica tables (since well before they were fashionable) and an epic mural of a mermaid on the wall it’s one of my greatest finds, let alone the fact it’s in Soho. It’s nice to be able to recommend somewhere that isn’t Busaba Eathai. The Lorelei hasn’t changed a stitch since it opened back in the 1940s (or thereabouts) and feels like walking into a back alley restaurant in Naples. It’s Italian with pretty much 2 things on the menu, omelettes and pizza. Both are good and cost about £6. My Greek company for the evening sums up the menu “I haven’t seen a dessert menu like this since I used to go on holiday to Cyprus as a kid, the only difference is this one is spelt correctly”. They appear to have various flavours of ice cream and sorbet but when we enquire as to what flavours the tiny little waitress just stabs her finger at the menu squawking “vanilla”, hmm anything else? Any sorbet? “VANILLA” ok ok we’ll take vanilla. Our smirk as she pulls a giant budget sized carton out the freezer quickly disappears as we soon realise the ice cream tastes wonderfully homemade. It’s the small things like the fact that there appears to only be one bottle of ketchup, one set of salt and pepper and one jar of sugar for the whole place so the tiny little Asian lady is constantly grabbing them for whoever asks, not to be returned so make sure you take as much as you need.

21 Bateman Street, London, W1D 3AL
020 7734 0954

Hackney Pearl

Penny Blood — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:54:57 +0000

Hackney Wick is clearly on the up and the Hackney Pearl is definitely a symbol of that. Oh don’t worry the area still looks like a deserted wasteland only fit for amateur fashion shoots, but salvaged Formica tables, school chairs and copies of the observer are a slap across the face reminder of where we’re at now over in the Wick. For quite a while people seemed reluctant to open any kind of business as the area was rife with gypsies who’d been kicked out of (sorry re-housed), Stratford. However so far so good as the Hackney Pearl looks to be attracting all the RIGHT KINDS of people. The staff here look like extras from (all and any) music video but are really friendly all the same. The food here is great and the carrot cake is off-the-scale delicious. It’s the kind of place where they cook muffins there and then and leave them on the counter as if your mum just made them, awww sweet, that just tickles me. The spacious interior is styled so perfectly it rivals any established café in London. I’m so proud of it being in my very own Hackney Wick.

http://thehackneypearl.com/

Hackney Pearl, 11 Prince Edward Road, Hackney Wick, London, E9 5LX
0208 510 3605
Tuesday – Saturday: 10am until 11pm Sunday: 10am until 6pm

Wild and Wood Coffee

Penny Blood — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:08:19 +0000

These days it is getting increasingly more difficult to find nice places to go in central London. We are losing everything to corporations. I know that’s such a cliched thing to say, but it’s true and should be pointed out more often. It’s not all bad though. A few little places pop up now and again, god knows how they afford the rent. My new favourite for central London is Wild and Wood Coffee. New Oxford Street is not the most likely street to find such a place, a fact which makes Wild and Wood Coffee even more special. It’s a tiny little place that mixes raw concrete walls with parts lined with the wood of old shutters. The booths are made from old church pews and the best part… it has a teeny little ‘nook’ with little shelves for the sugar it’s so cramped. They do great sandwiches and the coffee is good too. In theory it’s the perfect place to hide away. However my tranquility has been spoiled by two ‘corporates’, one being interviewed for a project…ugh…blah….gross…management consultant job. Every time she refers to the ‘CP database’ I think about cutting her head off with a bread knife.

PS I like the sign on the wall stating, “Be prepared for the fire alarm going off on Tuesdays”.

Wild and Wood Coffee, New Oxford Street 1 unit 19, London, WC1 A1BA
07525155957
Monday – Friday 7.30am-6.30pm Saturday 9.00am-6.00pm

http://wildandwoodcoffee.co.uk/

Market Coffee House

Beedell Coram

Penny Blood — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:51:12 +0000

Easily my favourite ‘junk shop’ in London. Beedell Coram is stocked full of Victorian paintings, taxidermy, antique furniture, books, postcards and old medicine jars all lovingly displayed with no order or thought to presentation whatsoever. When she’s not drunk in the Golden Hart pub next door this is where ?????* collects her miniature tea sets, the ??????* buy their master paintings before they deface them, where ??????* has bought the odd taxidermy dome and ???? and ?????* purchase a human skull or two. The owner Andrew Coram is a gem in himself, with his gold earring and an east end sales man grin he alone makes it worth a visit.

*I have omitted the names of those guilty out of respect for the proprietor and his gracious message concerning the privacy of his clients. This little antique shop can hold its own without name dropping anyway.

86 Commercial Street, London, E1 6LY

Alfies Antique Market

Penny Blood — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:58:33 +0000

Situated on a street which is home to a scummy street market selling stolen toilet paper and knock off household products with old immigrants and market people yelling at each other and groups of Eastern European and Asian kids hanging out in intimidating groups cutting school is Alfies Antiques Market. A vast cavern of Antique shops, several stories high, there are hundreds of vendors inside specialising in everything from Victorian jewellery to vintage lace, antique paintings, 60’s furniture with the odd junk shop or two thrown in. I can spend hours here, mainly because most of it is expensive and once engaged in a conversation over the price of something that despite the fact is £600 out of my budget I get a kick out of selling working his ass of to convince me it’s a really good price. There is a café too which is a highlight.

http://www.alfiesantiques.com/

13-25 Church Street, London, NW8
020 7723 6066
Tuesday – Saturday 10am-6pm