Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to Off The Fence, the newsletter that shot J.R. As Issue 29 is now in the safe hands of Studio Mathias Clottu – and we warn you it’s shaping up to be a real doozy – Issue 28 has continued its farewell tour with the spritely gumption of an ailing rockstar. It has been spotted cruising at 40,000ft, and enjoying an iced latte on Abbey Road. And what about this quite frankly ridiculously good team snap?
And so as the season comes to a close, so does our photo competition. The winner is… Chris Coates. Chris, do get in touch with us to claim your prize.
Because we’re feeling generous, we’ve also just minted ten new tokens giving you 30 percent off for a year’s subscription. Enter BACK30 at the link below; it applies to all gift subs and internationally too. Only ten codes available though…
Capital Letter continues to delight. In the most recent edition, we have Jimmy ‘Pintlord’ McIntosh extolling the beauties of Kensington, and we also identify what is perhaps the best pint in London, and the best wine list too. It’s all very exciting and you should sign up for it today.
To business. Today we’ve got another dispatch to spoil you with, courtesy of Lotte Brundle.
Mic Drop
I initially attempted to visit The First Podcast Bar in London in June. My editor had sent me a video from their Instagram. ‘London’s newest hidden gem,’ it bragged. ‘A podcast bar where anyone can grab a drink, pull up a chair and join the conversation.’
The location? 21 Lime Street – but I didn’t take a Lime bike. I arrived with my flatmate on a Friday night at the address, which was right beside Leadenhall Market, but there was no podcast bar to be found. We tried to open a few nondescript doors on the street, to no avail. We circled the block a few times and even asked a few of the nearby establishments if they knew where the podcast bar was. None did. After half an hour of searching, we went home.
That night, I took a second look at the bar’s Instagram, confused. I messaged the account, asking how to visit. No response. I then messaged a few people who had been tagged on Instagram as podcast guests. Nothing.
Further Instagram stalking revealed that the location of the podcast bar actually was Pilpel, a nearby falafel restaurant owned by Uri Dinay, one of the people I had messaged. The following weekend, I returned to the same spot and marched into Pilpel. ‘Is this where the podcast bar is?’ I asked. ‘It’s not open yet,’ the person behind the counter responded. ‘When will it be open?’ I countered. ‘The first Friday in September,’ they said. I went home once more.
In the meantime, a video was posted on the bar’s YouTube account: ‘The Guardian Reviewed Our Podcast Bar... So We Interviewed Them Back’. How? I wondered, now apoplectic with rage. Finally, the day came. ‘Cancel your plans,’ I told my boyfriend. ‘We are going to this podcast bar, if it’s the last thing we do.’
We arrived at Pilpel at seven PM. Falafel that night was free, so we both ordered a portion. We could hear music booming from downstairs. ‘How can you hear well enough to podcast?’ I asked our server. ‘I promise you can hear it when you’re downstairs,’ she said. ‘But right now it is just performances.’ A Coldplay song floated up as we tucked into our falafel. Mine had a hair in it.
Uri appeared behind the counter wearing a white scoop-neck T-shirt and a long necklace with a heavy green amulet hanging from it. He was shouting incomprehensibly, gesturing wildly, and doling out falafel like a man possessed. On the wall there was a sign which read: ‘None but ourself can read our mind’. Another read: ‘Don’t forget to ask for extra tahini.’
We ventured downstairs. We stayed there for two hours. Reader, there was no podcasting.
A singer was playing George Ezra’s Budapest on an acoustic guitar. No one used the pair of microphones hanging from the top of the bar, which was odd considering that Uri and what seemed to be two of his friends sported lapel mics for the second part of the evening.
‘Campari or tequila?’ Uri, now downstairs behind the bar, asked us once we’d sat down. We each gulped one down. ‘I have been fasting for five days,’ he told us. ‘Wow,’ I replied, before asking: ‘Why did you start the podcast bar?’
‘I don’t want to talk about politics,’ he replied. ‘I want to talk about love, unite people, and spirituality.’
‘When will the podcasting happen tonight?’ I pressed. ‘It has already happened,’ he said mysteriously, before going on to explain that tonight was the first time the bar had been an open house, and that they usually invite people from the restaurant business to record a podcast. He added: ‘You have to be invited, but if you have something to say, you should do a podcast with me.’
‘Okay,’ I replied, desperately, looking to secure any kind of podcasting action, so I could finally be rid of this assignment. Uri then disappeared.
It was now eight PM. The only upside to this situation was that we hadn’t paid for our food, and some of our drinks, although, to be quite frank, I would have paid to not eat somebody else’s hair.
The guitarist crooned on, strumming out Uptown Girl. My boyfriend looked dead behind the eyes. Knowing we couldn’t take much more, I pestered another barman. ‘When does podcasting happen in this bar?’ I asked. ‘My English is not good,’ he replied, apologetically. ‘I don’t know.’ We were offered a second free shot of Campari, which we declined. I counted the number of people in the room. 17, including the singer, the bar staff and us.
Eventually, Uri reappeared with an extremely glamorous woman wearing a tight dress and ginormous heels. She was the night’s DJ. The set began thumping. Uri was back behind the bar, thrusting another shot of Campari into our hands. ‘I love you two!’ he shouted. Then he was on the DJ decks as nobody danced.
It was 9pm when we finally decided to call it a night. Like with most podcasts, I came for the click-bait title, but the content ultimately didn’t live up to what it promised. Oh well. At least Uri loved us.
You can follow Lotte on Instagram here.
Shetland’s Most Wanted
Stuart Hill has been called many things: ‘Captain Calamity’ (the media), ‘a danger to democracy’ (a local councillor), ‘an absolute pain in the arse’ (his chief of police). For Issue 28, Daniell Shalier ventured north to find out about the man behind the moniker – a figure that reinvented himself as a separatist in middle age who claims to be able to change the weather and know his own death date – and his ardent troop of political extremists who are determined to take back Shetland for themselves. This is one of the best pieces we’ve published all year, and is available in front of the paywall, at least for now.
Just An Idea
While we do try and keep ourselves out of the political opinion game, it’s obviously troubling to see masked and organised gangs of men targeting national infrastructure. Can we all agree on that, perhaps? There’s a good investigation from the Daily Mailon their leader here, ‘Danny Thomo’, but the bigger question is this: why are these men wearing crucifix necklaces, and who is encouraging or possibly compelling them to do so? Seems like a story from where we’re standing.
Brick Lane Data Centre
In the latest from depressing redevelopments scuppering local charm, protestors crowded outside the Ministry of Housing last week to oppose plans to build a data centre on Brick Lane. These plans form part of a redevelopment of Truman Brewery which includes the construction of the data centre, initially rejected by the council before later being approved by Angela Rayner earlier this year. It is unsurprising that data centres are a consistent feature of news cycles currently, at the least given the staggering environmental consequences of their massive energy and water consumption. One such centre has been the subject of consistent controversy since its construction and was one of the winner-losers of this year’s edition of the Carbuncle Cup – our award for the worst new building built in the UK. You can watch our panel discuss their decision of this particular monstrosity on Channel Four here.
In Case You Missed It
The first throw at the World Stone Skimming Championship was mid.
What a treat to see John Phipps in the New Yorker again.
The U.N. have backed a new map showing regions in their true relative size.
In Japan ‘Yakult Ladies’ combat loneliness.
And Finally
The UCLA film archive has recently published a bunch of student films made in the 60s from their archives. They are pleasingly meandering and funny – one follows a girl who is having a breakdown from having watched too many Hollywood movies and who then proceeds to have a series of emotionally vacant encounters, including with a man smoking a lonely pipe. Very 60s and very nice! But the best part of the films is not really the films themselves, but the who’s who cast of characters at the end. At the end of Muggins (1967), a sort of bouncy tale of an elderly gent, William Friedkin pops up as a production assistant (he went on to make The Exorcist and The French Connection). In Wendy (1966), Mary Jo Weir plays the eponymous heroine forward-slash book seller. She’s a Lucille Ball type, trying it on with almost every customer who comes in, and only getting one solid (and very boring) date out of it. Weir went on to change her name and then appear in The Right Stuff (1983) and Twin Peaks (since 1990).
But most lovely and sparkly of all the celebrity cameos arrives in the technicolored joy of Call it Collage ‘66 (1966). It’s a little doc-let that follows a spate of scrappy West Coast artists. It’s about the scene. There are stretchy dancers and serious collage cutters, and even someone who appears to be stuffing a sculpture with Styrofoam peanuts. But, the star of the show is a band that you are quickly told is quite literally The Doors. They’re playing at their first concert at a venue called London Fog in Los Angeles. They don’t sound 100 per cent totally like The Doors we know and love, but they do sound pretty damn close. As is identified in the comments below, the final song that can be heard is You Make Me Real, which appeared four years later on their Morrison Hotel album. Everyone was young once.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfVfzDIm1Fw
And with that we bid you farewell for another week. No tears please! If you’re unable to wait, might we suggest taking out a sub and delving into our extensive digital archive? Or perhaps clicking over to our sister dispatch Capital Letter. If there is anything we can do to help, regarding the magazine that is, do let us know at editorial@the-fence.com, and anything particularly pressing can be sent to support@the-fence.com. It rains solid diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter.
All the best,
TF