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BFI IMAX All Night Musicals Giveaway
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The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is nearly here and to celebrate, we've got a pair of tickets to give away for the BFI IMAX's All Night Musicals on Saturday 29 March.

The 70s themed line up of films gets incrementally camper, and the costumes get more outrageous, the later it gets. The recent Dreamgirls movie opens the bill, followed by 80s-tastic dance and drama spectacle, A Chorus Line (based on the 1970s Broadway smash and featuring a grumpy Michael Douglas as the pervy, manipulative casting director and plenty of gold lame). The Rocky Horror Picture Show brings some classic genderbending to the proceedings and you'll see in a truly gay dawn watching the Village People in Can't Stop The Music. Let's hope you're awake enough for the YMCA dancealong.

To enter the draw for a chance to win a pair of tickets to this wild night of musical madness, simply fill in your details below and we'll notify the winner by email by 5pm on Thursday 20 March.

All Night Musicals at the BFI Imax is on 29 March. The party starts with a DJ from 22:00. Films from 23:30. All night bar and free tea and coffee served between films. Interval prizes and giveaways for best costumes. Book online. Tickets £20.

 
Mayoral Update: The Cost Of Livingstone
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It's still difficult to tell how the mayoral race is going - where are all the opinion polls? But there's no doubt that, in the past week, the Livingstone campaign has made a huge effort to get its show on the road.

The launch of his transport manifesto at Stratford station on Monday was designed to invite the most damning of comparisons between the present mayor's apparent grasp of the scale and complexity of the coming tasks and his main rival's lack of basic bus maths. Livingstone spoke of the greatest expansion of public transport in London since Victorian times and effectively asked, "Would you want that jackass in charge of it?".

Come Wednesday, Livingstone benefitted from high profile support by his party in the Commons. At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday Islington MP Emily Thornberry lobbed a friendly inquiry Gordon Brown's way about the importance of - you guessed it - London buses. The Prime Minister's answer was a ringing endorsement of Livingstone's record. It remains noticeable that Brown doesn't mention Ken by name, preferring to refer to "a London mayor." But there's no doubt he recognises that a Johnson win on May 1st would represent a great and perhaps prophetic victory for David Cameron's Conservatives.

How have the past seven days been for the MP for Henley? He too asked Brown a question on Wednesday, suggesting they agree that spending a bit less money on public relations and a bit more on putting police community support officers on buses would be a good idea. Brown responded with the latest in a series of quite blatant misrepresentations of Johnson's stated policies, accusing him of wanting to cut spending on everything in sight.

The Blond's frustration was obvious in what has looked a rather frustrating week. His speech on Monday, called The Cost of Livingstone, didn't secure much coverage and he made a boo-boo on Tuesday by suggesting that TfL boss Peter Hendy doesn't travel by bus. In fact, Hendy is well-known for doing so.

He's up in Gateshead now, expending breath at the Tories' spring conference and perhaps pausing to draw a little too. Livingstone is planning a further onslaught on transport issues next week. He'd better be ready for it.

By Dave Hill, image by M@

Read more from Dave over at the Guardian, and on his mayoral blog.

 
Subterranean London...Mapped!


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Cold War bunkers, abandoned Tube stations, buried rivers, deep level shelters...London's concealed features are among its most intriguing. So, in age-old Londonist tradition, we've created a map to try and show what a hollow city this is.

And we need your help.

We've plotted the more obvious features - the Fleet River, Zone 1 ghost stations, the Kingsway telephone exchange, etc. But we know there's a lot more down there. Please use the comments to draw our attention to omissions. A few (flexible) rules...

(1) We only plot places that the general public cannot normally gain access to.
(2) Working Tube and train lines are not shown.
(3) Only spaces big enough to comfortably accommodate a person are included - ruling out some sewers and telecommunication ducts.
(4) A few other places we know about (e.g. River Tyburn) are not yet shown because we couldn't find accurate guides to their location or route.

We'll keep the map updated as people send in new information.

 
Drink-ography: Pint by Matthew Gidley

Pint

Photography courtesy of Matthew Gidley via the Londonist pool on Flickr.
Interested in your drink-related photos appearing on Londonist? Click here.

 
Roaming Rabbi Raises Readies
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One Rabbi and his dog should be completing a week long round London ramble to raise money for the New North London Synagogue in time for Kabbalat Shabbat back at the Shul at 6.30 tonight (we've been brushing up on our Judaism - can you tell?).

The 100 mile trek started in Finchley last Saturday and has taken Rabbi Wittenberg and Mitzpah the dog to 28 stops around town including hospitals, schools, the Houses of Parliament and the Holocaust Memorial at Liverpool Street Station. Along the way, he's been keeping up with his teaching duties as well as raising awareness of the work of the synagogue and the new development that the fundraising may enable.

They're hoping to raise £100,000 for a building project to transform the synagogue and its community centre as well as having something to spare for some of the charity projects the Rabbi and Mitzpah visited along the way. In which case, we imagine they'll be slipping a few extra prayers in for their Justgiving page tonight to boost the coffers somewhat nearer the target, with one Rabbi and his dog (woof!) safely home.

Sponsor Rabbi Wittenberg and/or Mitzpah (we wish that was a splicing of Mitzy and chutzpah. More likely it's the Hebrew word for guardpost) at Justgiving.

 
Inside Terminal 5
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Her Maj has cut the ribbon on Heathrow's Terminal 5. The £4.3 billion node, designed by Richard Rogers, opens for non-Royal business on 27 March. The BBC has all the facts and figures you could ever need. Rather than repeat them, with added quips, we'll simply point you in the direction of our sneak preview and leave you with a few images of this immense addition to London's international transport network.

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All images used with permission. See terminal5insider's Flickr photostream for more.

 
To Romford, Young House-Buyer
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Despite getting excited about those plush pads on Hampstead's Billionaire Row, a quick ruffle through the wallet turned up little more than a threepenny bit, a half-eaten custard cream, a ticket to the opening of the Millennium Dome (unused) and the sobering realisation that Londonist is a few trust funds short of a realistic offer on a decent property. However, we're hoping for better luck in less expensive areas, such as those highlighted in a new report on the cheapest streets in London.

Leamington Close, near Romford in Havering, has an average house price of £97,800. It is one of only two streets in the capital where prices remain under £100,000; the other is Willow Tree Walk, off the A222 in Bromley. Bearing in mind that the average house price in London is in excess of £300,000, they seem like a bargain. So what's the catch?

Kirsty Allsop hasn't made it out there yet, but the area around Leamington Close is made up of Fifties red-brick blocks on the Harold Hill estate. It is described sniffily by a spokesperson for Mouseprice, who organised the survey, as having "relatively high unemployment" that attracts "first-time buyers who can afford nothing else".

However, a far more dependable opinion comes courtesy of Eileen Langley-Fogg, 84, a resident in Leamington Close for fifteen years, who extols the area's charms:

We don't have CCTV, we have a communal washing line. You wouldn't get many estates in London where you could hang up your clothes and they wouldn't go missing."

Communal washing lines? We're sold - anything that means we get to avoid the screwface scenes at the local laundrette has to be a good thing.

Image of Romford station courtesy of OwenBlacker's Flickrstream

 
Skippity Hop, It's National Skipping Day!
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It's the weekend! Hurray and woo-yay! Skip, hop and jump we say, but above all... skip.

SKIPTheatre are three young ladies with hula hoops, skipping ropes and some killer full-body leotards, bringing joyful retro glee to clubs, festivals and events around London. They can be seen tonight at The Amersham Arms in New Cross, preparing for big day out on Saturday. Saturday is National Skipping Day and to celebrate, you've got to skip.

Put on your trainers and if you are feeling bold, your best lycra outfit, then head over to St James Park tomorrow afternoon. You want the patch opposite the ICA, and should aim to get there for 3pm when, at a signal from the SKIPTheatre girls, everyone should start skipping. Skipping ropes will be provided (by Diesel, no less) and encouragement, inspiration and general good vibes will be made available by the dozens of other people breathlessly hopping about, trying not to get too tangled between jumps.

So if you're the type to prioritise a trip to the gym on weekends, perhaps you should take your gym gear to the park instead. Skipping is healthy, it's exercise, you get a free skipping rope from Diesel and you get to see the lovely girls of SKIPTheatre do their crazy stuff with ropes and hula hoops in leotards.

Turn up, it's free, it's a flashmob sort of event. The nature of these things seem to be huddles of slightly sheepish people hanging around for a short while then, as if by magic, they are all transformed into grinning, skipping, hopping, jumping kids. Kudos and good karma to you if you can skip to the full length of Song 4 Mutya and keep in time til the end.

National Skipping Day, tomorrow, St James Park opposite the ICA, 3pm. Free. For more information, go to the SKIPTheatre website here. Be prepared to skip!

Image courtesy of cakehole from the Londonist Flickr pool

 
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