Here’s a chance to win a free Moscow Mule Cocktail Kit courtesy of Smirnoff, who wants to celebrate the Moscow Mule with Londonist readers. Much like the average Londonist reader, the Moscow Mule is particularly stylish and refreshing, comprised of vodka, ginger ale and a wedge of fresh lime. Smirnoff’s cocktail kit contains a bottle of triple distilled Smirnoff vodka and two cans of Schweppes Canada Dry Ginger Ale plus a selection of stainless......

Cheers to Dave Hodgkinson, who after winning a pair tix from us for a gourmet food & wine tasting with Jimmy Doherty at Vinopolis was thoughtful enough to post a review of the event on his blog and to give us a heads up. Looks good, Dave. We’re glad you had a good time.......

Here’s a chance to win a copy of Charles Campion’s London Restaurant Guide 2009 (which we think is particularly useful for finding the right place to dine in London). Simply click here to take a quick survey . Complete the super quick 'n' easy survey by 5pm on Wednesday 24 September 2008. Then, we’ll randomly select a winner. Good Luck!......

To celebrate their UK launch, Allrecipes – the world’s largest social network of food and entertaining enthusiasts – is offering one lucky Londonist reader the chance to win a Waitrose voucher worth £200. They’ve rolled out other competitions as well but this one is for Londonist readers only. Check it! All ya gotta do is answer the following foodie questions and then crack the secret code by taking the first letter of each answer.......

Jimmy Doherty from the BBC2 show Jimmy's Farming Heroes will host a gourmet food and wine tasting event at Vinopolis … and Londonist wants you to be there. The event will take place on Sunday 14th September, with sessions at noon and 3pm. Known for his traditional farming methods and rearing rare breed pigs such as Gloucester Old Spots, Saddlebacks and Essex pigs, Jimmy will share his insight about traditional farming in the modern......

If so, you’re probably better poised than we are to win a contest kicking off today. So listen up artists, armchair critics, and wannabe designers: HarperCollins, in collaboration with the Saatchi Gallery, are sponsoring a competition to design a book cover for the forthcoming The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal, Sean Dixon’s debut novel. To all our artsy readers: opportunity knocks (though we’re not making any claims about fame and fortune). The collaboration......

• Londonist pondered who might be the next sponsors of the London Eye and whether or not readers would be willing to donate £1,000 each for a Londonist Eye.
• Shanghaiist was shocked to find a cameltoe in the city's only English-language paper.
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Continue Reading "Week Around the -Ists"

If you're free on Thursday night (13th Dec), then Mercury nominees The Young Knives are playing a pretty cool headlining gig at Canvas, Kings Cross. The Rage Out In Winter is an all evening event (7.30pm - 2am) aiming itself an a more discerning gig goer, hoping to provide cool bands in luxurious settings. They've even got proper caterers on the case to provide food to gig goers which we think is a great......

Noah and The Whale. It's amazing what names bands are coming up with these days, but somehow this fantastical one suits one of our new favourite bands. We know we're a bit behind the times here, after all Noah's crew have been making waves since the summer, but for some reason we've only just properly listened to them and wow. Noah and The Whale are part of the newly cool folk scene. If we......

If you’re a fan of musicals then you probably think the bigger the better. In which case you must pop down to the BFI Imax, where their After-Dark All-Nighter event will be screening four modern musicals on the trot on Saturday 8th December. First off the bat is 1980’s high school classic Fame at 11.15pm where the students of the New York High School for Performing Arts discover sex and show tunes. For those......

We love it when London gets all Christmas-y and a big part of that is the sudden belief that all of us can ice skate once December hits. We gave you a big round-up of the main ice skating rinks last week but there's just been a further addition to the fun with the launch of Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland. For five weeks from December 1, the area of Hyde Park between the Serpentine......

Hailed by Steve Lamacq and produced by Trevor Horn, London band Captain released their debut album in 2006 to critical acclaim. But somehow their brand of slightly dark twee pop (and we say that in the nicest way) didn't quite hit the charts as well as they may have liked. Now they're back for a 2nd go with a forthcoming second album in 2008 and they've been reminding people of their existance with a......

As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts -- okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles -- now that's a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude's landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in Venice......

The Rushes are Gerard, Dan, Joe and James and they've just been signed by Island Records. They're in the process of making their 1st album between studios in Ladbroke Grove and Clapham and make emotional piano lead pop that will probably be everywhere by this time next year. We particularly like "What U Waitin For" -have a listen. So here's your chance to catch them early, The Rushes are supporting Turin Brakes on Thursday......

It's no secret that we reckon the Indigo2 is a bit of alright. It's glitzy, it's got normal bar prices, great music acts and a bunch of transport links. What's not to love! So we're particularly please to be giving 6 of you the opportunity to check out multi grammy award winner Christopher Cross there on Sunday night. Performing classic hits such as Arthur's Theme and Saling, Christopher will be bringing out the hits......

A night of clubbing is as much about the music you want to hear as it is the experience you hope to get out of it. Whilst there are endless opportunities to don your best threads and brave the night buses to see and be seen, we prefer to come as we are, get sweaty and get down. With their irresistible selection of post-punk and electro classics and obscurities, Our Disco ticks all our......

The BT Digital Music Awards 2007 are being held on next Tuesday (2 October) at the Camden Roundhouse in London and we've got a pair of tickets for you to win to attend this special event. Artists such as Klaxons, Calvin Harris, Chemical Brothers and the Manics are all competing against to win one of 20 awards designed to recognise UK artists that have embraced digital technology in an exceptional way. The ceremony will......

Ahhhhh, Monopoly. With its cute Scotty dog and get out of jail free cards, it's everyone's favourite rainy day game. But why do people have to keep tampering with it? So far, we've had Star Trek, The Simpson's and a version just for Kent. Not forgetting the really expensive one with the little jewelled houses. Now it seems Monopoly has gone national. And, well it all gets a bit strange after that. You'll no......

After following up a superb night with The Field by bringing Gui Boratto a few months later, Allez-Allez have fastly become one of our favourite club promoters. If we're not dancing to the best in minimal techno at one of their Plastic People events, then we're likely downloading one of the many installments in their excellent podcast mix series. This Wednesday, Sam and Steve return to Plastic People with techno superduo Supermayer (Superpitcher + Michael......

One Night Only are a new band who are causing rather a lot of fuss on the radio with Zane Lowe declaring them one of the hottest new bands out there. Despite starting out as a teenage Beatles Cover Act and growing up in the middle of nowhere, One Night Only signed with Vertigo Records earlier this year and are now getting ready to release their first single "You And Me" They're playing what......

The four Tory hopefuls (or 'Top Tories' in tabloid sub-editor's argot) for next May's London mayoral elections will be put through their paces at a hustings for Conservatives in the capital this evening, where this Londonista has managed to bag a seat (despite neither being a Tory nor originally from London) to report whatever clangers Boris Johnson intentionally drops into the mix. The winner (ie. Boris) will then be declared to an audience of dozing......

There's another brilliant line-up at Fabric this weekend. While Annie Mac takes control of Friday's Fabric Live, Saturday is a blistering mix of techno, house and electro. Innervisions take control of Room 1. Formerly a sub-label of Jazzanova's Sonar Kollektiv, the label run clubnight Innercity in Berlin and offers a hand picked selection of producers a platform to celebrate the current renaissance for all things deep house. They'll be presenting duo Ame, German DJ......

You could be forgiven for not giving a fig about how the candidates for the London mayoral elections in 2008 are shaping up. Londonist, however, does. On the left, the Greens were first off the block in March with the selection of anti-4x4 campaigner Sian Berry, followed by Respect (remember them?) in April with Lindsey German, who stood last time on behalf of Team Galloway. For the far right, the British National Party have selected......

It's often easy to forget the Liberal Democrats these days, despite the opportunity to write alliterative headlines like that. In the last few days, it must be hard to try to top a new Labour Prime Minister swanning off for a ride in George Bush's motorised buggy, or his Conservative rival escaping the floods to Rwanda, only to return to be dogged by criticism and demands for peerages. But as Boris and Ken start......

As one of the most exciting new venues in town, as well as hosting Prince afterparties continuously, the indigo2 will be home to the first in a series of nights run by The Bedford pub in Balham. Famous for helping to discover burgeoning talent (with the likes of of KT Tunstall, James Morrison, Paolo Nutini, Imogen Heap behind them), Bedford Bandstand aims to continue this tradition via a monthly night starring raw talent and......

We've never made it down but the tales we've been told of Saturday night party Together at Turnmills make us curse everytime we realise it clashes with something we've already done. So while some of the Londonist music team are djing a clubnight on a boat down Temple way with a request list that includes Dane Bowers & Victoria Beckham's "Out of Your Mind", the slightly better DJ David Guetta will be pumping the......

Imagine a TV show combining all the whirl and sparkly outfits of Strictly Come Dancing with the foreign glamour and international pop-geopolitics of Eurovision... Doesn't that sound amazing?! Imagine no more, as The Eurovision Dance Contest sashays onto our screens on September 1st! Dancers from 16 countries will compete, dancing a classic dance and another unique to their country. Will the Austrians waltz, the Poles polka, Ireland's dancers Irish dance? Maybe the UK dancers......

Once it became evident that someone the chap in the street had actually heard of was willing to go forward, the Conservatives closed nominations for their 2008 London mayoral candidate last Monday. Former Met Commissioner John Stevens, rubber-lipped former Defence Sec Michael Portillo, ex-PM 'Sir' John Major, sacked BBC D-G Greg Dyke and, erm, Nick Ferrari had all resisted the overtures of David Cameron for some reason best known to themselves and their future......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, MP for Henley, journalist, historian, author and everyone’s favourite upper-class twit is being considered as the Conservative candidate for London’s mayor. After being questioned on whether he would like to run in 2008 against Mayor Ken, Boris enthusiastically harumphed, "Being Mayor of London would be a fantastic job and anyone who loves London would want to consider the possibility very carefully." He went on to state that he does......