Tucked away up a narrow flight of stairs above the Soho bookshop on Charing Cross road is a little designer bookshop specialising in fashion and art books, many of which are hard to find. It’s also home to a vast collection of glossy magazines that, let’s be honest no one ever really reads but our [...]

Let it be known in no uncertain terms that I will never under any circumstances go anywhere near a multiplex cinema. I would rather trek to north London to a little gem known as the Phoenix Cinema. Built in 1910 and surviving two world wars, it’s believed to be the oldest purpose built cinema in [...]

Aside from The Everyman in Hampstead, I have never known comfort like this. Plush leather armchairs and footstools with cream coloured walls, red velvet-like recesses and golden trimmings and a bar where you can forget the usual packaged and processed fat food and expect Mediterranean snacks such as olives and crudités, stuffed quail eggs and [...]

What was once originally a brothel is now one of London’s longest standing cinema’s, with ornate paneled walls, heavily coffered ceiling of Edwardian plasterwork, red velvet chairs and double love seats that are comfortable enough to fall asleep in (I did once, to the Royal Tennenbaums, I hate Wes Andersen, what was I thinking?) There [...]

The Curzon specialises in independent films, including a lot of British and European ones and is perfectly located on the edge of Soho and Chinatown. It has a street level café selling cakes and cookies from my favourite bakery, Konditor & Cook and a dark relaxing lower ground floor café and bar with a number [...]

When I asked if I could take a photograph I got a grunted reply of “urgh people are always asking us that”, the main reason I think anyone comes here is for the super elevated gillie platforms with 9-inch heels and 4-inch platforms from Vivienne Westwood’s 1993 fall-winter Anglomania collection that Naomi Campbell fell over [...]

This is my main go-to place for bags, boots and shoes. They have a lot of shoes and this is when being arranged by colour can be useful. Despite the fact that slouchy leather boots your mother wore in the 70’s is a trend that I feel should have died out circa 2006, Absolute Vintage [...]

An awful lot of fuss is made about Beacon’s Closet in New York, it’s supposed to be a big deal that all the clothes are arranged in colour rather than style. I personally don’t know many people who go out shopping for something orange rather than those that say go looking for a dress or [...]

Certain experiences can severely taint a place for me (negative association) like suffering that claustrophobic pang when watching a film that sickens you but is hard to walk out of, in this case “The heart is deceitful above all things” an utterly depressing film directed by and starring Asia Argento about a junky degenerate mother [...]

It’s an ongoing dilemma for me where to sit in the cinema. I’m forever up against the tricky decision as to whether to sacrifice a good view of the screen for mental comfort by taking an aisle seat, reason being, as soon as I’m boxed in with a row of tightly packed viewers to either [...]

South of the river is really growing on me. I was never much of a fan of south London. I had decided there wasn’t much down there and it’s a hassle to get to anyway, that was before I discovered the likes of Gastro, Breads etc.. Rosie’s café and now The Clapham Picture House. Tucked [...]

I could not be more enthusiastic about this cinema. I consider myself an expert as I have pointedly been to every independent cinema in London and the Everyman Hampstead comes at the top of the list. For not much more than you would spend at a regular multiplex cinema you get your own chair, you [...]

Once you manage to negotiate your way from Brixton station through the tramps and junkies scrounging to pick up cigarette butts from under your feet, you’ll find yourself in a little haven. The Ritzy has a lovely cafe and bar and is the kind of cinema where you can have dinner or coffee before a [...]

Art books, graphic design books and magazines which are hard to find is what you get here. It’s a tiny shop packed floor to ceiling with “flick-through-once-and-leave-around-to-look-cool books” with the same being said for magazines which are 75% adverts, 15% artistic photoshoots and 5% boring articles on people who don’t matter. I am by the [...]

All the people who work here are idiots*. I don’t think they mean to be but they have the mindset that people who work in second had book/record stores have – ie. that they are superior and know far more on the subject than you ever will. They always have industrial jazz or worse, Bob [...]