Weekend Report
Mar. 14th, 2011 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
millionreasonsSaturday: a Treasure Trail around Fitzrovia. The clues are found on things you don't normally notice, much less look at - lamp-posts, burglar alarms, pub windows, war memorials, street-signs etc. After we fail to find Lord Sebastian Snuggles, we meet Dave and Rebecca in the Coal Hole and on to Chinatown to a restaurant I've been to many times before, The Friendly Inn. It's still run by the same Yoko-Ono-gone-to-seed woman, and the food is still cheap, but there's food debris on the bowls, no paper in the toilets, the mineral water is warm, and the bill un-itemised (I'm pretty sure items never ordered were on there). Sad when a trusted place goes WRONG.
Somewhere else I've been to many times before does not let me down, The Gallery Cafe on Old Ford Road, which used to have a Henry Ford style menu of sandwiches or pasta, but now has expanded to breakfasts and Sunday opening. It's very full; I suppose E2 is the height of cool nowadays. When I lived in Bethnal Green (1995), the most fashionable place was Tesco. We walk up to Mare St and visit the Last Tuesday Society - a shop/gallery/museum like a more macabre version of the Museum of Everything. If you're a modern artist nowadays, sliced up kids' toys, skulls and taxidermy are the way to go. Here the stuffed animals go further than squirrels playing cards: winged cats and dogs hanging from the ceiling, a two headed snake, animal testes in a jar, lions at the dinner table and Marmoset monkeys having a chat, as well as drinks coasters made from rat and vole skins (heads intact). A real mouse mat. There's also Amy Winehouse's poo, used condoms from the Rolling Stones, a mummifield penis of a hanged man, dildos for hire (£10 an hour), but no used tampons from Kate Moss or pubic hair from Elton John. They're missing a trick, there. "It's like looking into the mind of a serial killer," says Dave.
Somewhere else I've been to many times before does not let me down, The Gallery Cafe on Old Ford Road, which used to have a Henry Ford style menu of sandwiches or pasta, but now has expanded to breakfasts and Sunday opening. It's very full; I suppose E2 is the height of cool nowadays. When I lived in Bethnal Green (1995), the most fashionable place was Tesco. We walk up to Mare St and visit the Last Tuesday Society - a shop/gallery/museum like a more macabre version of the Museum of Everything. If you're a modern artist nowadays, sliced up kids' toys, skulls and taxidermy are the way to go. Here the stuffed animals go further than squirrels playing cards: winged cats and dogs hanging from the ceiling, a two headed snake, animal testes in a jar, lions at the dinner table and Marmoset monkeys having a chat, as well as drinks coasters made from rat and vole skins (heads intact). A real mouse mat. There's also Amy Winehouse's poo, used condoms from the Rolling Stones, a mummifield penis of a hanged man, dildos for hire (£10 an hour), but no used tampons from Kate Moss or pubic hair from Elton John. They're missing a trick, there. "It's like looking into the mind of a serial killer," says Dave.
