Randomness Guide to London

Welcome back! The update this week will have to last you for the next two. (Also there's no image for the featured article, as the original photo doesn't seem to allow embedding as an option, but imagine a green facade, maybe turquoise... or don't imagine it, click on the link!)



So the featured article this week is Four Hundred Rabbits, SE19 3AH, which is a pizza restaurant in delightful Crystal Palace (or maybe Upper Norwood if you're historically so inclined). It's a top place for all your sourdough pizza, gelato and craft beer needs.

We also have a new entry for Osterley Bookshop, in that bit of West London known as Osterley, housed in a former rail station building! It's arranged in classic second-hand bookshop style, which is to say haphazardly. Don't take any book-murdering dogs, though the regular book-friendly variety are fine!

There's an update for Dartmouth Park boozer The Lord Palmerston.

There are also two closures. The first is possibly only temporary, Shanghai Blues in Holborn. The other is definitely permanent, Moti Mahal in Covent Garden.

Happy New Year! This week's featured article is Lucky Seven, a second-hand bookshop and (mostly) record shop in Stoke Newington. I went there for the first time the other week having not even registered its existence before and it was filled with things from floor to ceiling, often precariously piled and stacked.

One temporary closure is Imperial War Museum, for six months.

Three reported permanent closures are, very sadly, Hoopers Bar, an excellent real ale-loving local in between Camberwell and East Dulwich; the Camberwell branch of Wing Tai; and the N1 Centre branch of Yo! Sushi (in Islington, that is). The last is the least sad, as I've ranked them on a sliding scale. Feel free to disagree with my ranking (unimportant as it is) in comments.

Also, Foote's Music has moved from Soho to Bloomsbury, so take note, music instrument fans.

In more positive news, a pub has reopened! In this case, The Wheatsheaf by Borough Market (no, not that one), meaning there are now two competing Wheatsheafs within a few steps of one another, ostensibly the SAME PUB (the first was opened when this pub closed for the Thameslink work and the management went around the corner to the Hop Exchange).