London, Innit

Unbelievably insulting copyright notices

These unbelievably insulting copyright notices run before every film in London. They invite audience members to snitch on each other if they suspect that someone is making an illicit recording of a movie, and threaten arrest for using a camera.

You know, illicit recordings are made by an unmeasurably small fraction of the moviegoing public. Most of us pay our (insanely high) ticket prices, watch the (interminable) ads, and then enjoy the film we paid for. Subjecting us all to this stupid, insulting lecture to go after a statistically insignificant percentage of infringers is unforgiveably arrogant.

I took a flash picture of this tonight in Leisceter Square and got a round of applause. I think I'll do it every time. I hope others do, too.

Polish-Mexican restaurant

Spotted this Polish-Mexican restaurant while following the course of the centuries-buried Tyburn river from Baker St to Picadilly. I can curse in both languages: note to self, eat dinner there.

St Paul's Cathedral: the source of DRM

Went walking with Paula today. We climbed the hundreds of steps to the top of the dome at St Paul's Cathedral and got a breathtaking view of London, but my fear of heights kicked in and there was no way I was going to reach into my pocket for my camera. Back inside, I snapped this pic of the root of all DRM.

Crossbones Graveyard handbills

The Crossbones Graveyard dates back to Roman times. London Transport wants to excavate it and turn it into a car park and a tube-expansion. They've covered up the site with high wooden fences so that people won't think too hard about the millennia-old remains there. There's a car-park operating there for visitors to Burrough Market. These handbills were wheatpasted on the fence, running all the way around.

I love London's newspaper trade

One thing I utterly adore about London is its relationship to the printed word. The city overflows with bookstores and newsagents and supports literally incredible volume of magazines and newspapers -- II mean, it strains my credulity to imaging that all those periodicals are actually sustainable!

The newspaper business is so highly evolved. The newsagents write the day's headline in chisel-tip-market calligraphy -- standardized across thousands of newsagents, many of whom don't have English as a first language -- and prop it outside their shops on sandwich boards. These headlines are exquisitely well-written teasers that demand that you investigate further, almost always appealing to prurience (a lot of London's papers are frankly shit; I've heard liberal intelligensia friends dismiss the "red-top" tabloids in particular).

Unlike Namerica's newspaper-box sales-pitches, the you can't see the front page of the paper without getting right up in the newsagent's face, and, like as not, paying him. All you get is that teaser.

In my nabe, there's a local weekly rag called the Camden Chronicle, which has the most delicious, sensationalistic headlines of all.