Attention all technophiles! Nerdgasms ahoy! Like descending Space Invaders, a whole plethora of gaming activity will scatter across London in the coming weeks, as the London Games Festival arrives in town to delight and amaze us. Events kick off with massive multi-media celebration Video Games Live at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday 24th October. The esteemed English Chamber Orchestra will provide renditions from classics such as Legend Of Zelda, Halo, Sonic The Hedgehog......

As we enjoy a mild and occasionally sun-kissed start to the Autumn season, the hulking relic that is Battersea Power Station - still the largest brick building in Europe - provides the venue for the biggest winter sports and music festival to ever hit these shores. The tongue-twistingly titled 'Free Sports On 4 Freeze' begins on Thursday 23rd October, featuring a world-class line-up of the cream of the snowboarding and skiing fraternity. The Snowboarding......

On Friday, the best place to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games is probably in the Bird's Nest Stadium. If you've mislaid your £373 ticket down the back of the sofa, there are still heaps of other options beside vegging at home and picking at a warmed-up chinese ready meal in front of the telly. The ceremony kicks off weeks of Olympic and Paralympic sport, with the BBC promising to......

Dan Shipsides, Several sequenced problems on Contemporary Art (Frieze), installation view, 2008, mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo by Andy Keate. Peckham. The mere mention of this seemingly blighted borough is enough to send some running for the hills. Much in the same way as mentioning Hackney in the 1980s would do. But this just makes its treasures more special. We aren't ashamed to say we are fans of Peckham. South London Gallery, created in the......

The Beijing 2008 Olympics is officially 'over' on the evening of 24th August, when the closing ceremony takes place in their enormous 'bird's nest' stadium. London gets a few minutes in the ceremony as part of the Handover, which will be shown on big screens hastily put up in London and across UK cities. This happens to be on the early afternoon (in UK time) on the Sunday of the big august bank holiday/Notting......

When not wowing critics and fans alike, and drawing hordes of male 18-35 year olds into a hermit-like existence as they try to crack the game's labyrinthine layers, Grand Theft Auto IV has been courting controversy like a stressed out salesman courts cheap hookers. GTA IV's violence encourages copycat activity by players, say critics (an argument given credence when a Croydon man was stabbed as he queued to buy a copy). Christian conservative lawyer......

Our environmentally sustainable Mayor is taking on the IOC bigwigs who are demanding VIP fast lanes for a fleet of up to 3000 cars "to take officials, politicians and corporate sponsors to venues" at the 2012 Games. No fool he, cunningly waiting until they'd finished their progress inspection and given a favourable verdict earlier this week. He's not diving headlong into a fight though, preferring to wait until the Beijing Olympics are over this......

Olympic news items are like buses, or decent Boris Johnson policies: you wait for ages then two come along at once. This week we've heard about the package of security measures announced for the Games, while the International Olympic Committee popped by to check up on how we're doing. The announcement in July 2005 of London's Olympic triumph came just hours before the worst terrorist atrocity the city has ever seen, so from the......

It's officially Spring and by Pisces it's lovely out there in the sunshine. Crocuses have been spotted in Highbury Fields so our biggest recommendation for expenditure light trips this week is get to the parks and into the gardens and witness the miracles of the changing seasons. If you're in need of more artificial stimulation, however, and are squirrelling all your spare cash into your ISA before the end of the tax year then......

Here's a novel idea for a film festival: instead of just showing a director's oeuvre straight, why not throw in a handful of films that complement, or contradict, or just plain go nicely with the main work? Ciné Lumière is doing just that with a "retrospective in context" of the work of Michael Haneke, the Austrian director who has made a career out of cracking apart the complaisant, cosseted world of the continental middle......

Thanks to a concerned reader, we were alerted today to a potential tragedy in the making. It seems that the folks over in Monopoly Land are holding an online vote to choose the world’s top twenty cities (in addition to two wild cards) for its Here & Now: World Edition version of the classic game. Winners will be awarded prime real estate slots in the world edition board game – leading us to wonder......

2008 is Beijing's Olympic year so we're expecting plenty of 2012 related news, rumblings and international comparisons bouncing round the internet. On the last day of January, our Games have already made the headlines 3 times this week: When overall costs trebled at the end of last year, the Lottery stepped in with a mega loan to the Olympics. This week, Tessa Jowell announced it might take 10 years after the event for any......

The Shunt Lounge garden shed, courtesy of the author Londoners can be a playful bunch, going on Flickr Photo Scavenger Hunts, playing Rubbish Games and doing pictures of our favourite landmarks. There's also a chance all next week to play houses and happy families at Home Sweet Home in the Shunt Vaults, an installation by collaborative arts company Subject to Change. Home Sweet Home is a small city made of cardboard, all neat streets and......

Our friends in Westminster have voted that more money from the Eamon Holmes fronted tax on the poor, the National Lottery, can be used to plug the funding gap for the 2012 Olympics. Culture Secretary James Purnell said the £9.3bn budget for the Games (almost four times the estimate that helped win the bid in 2005) is "robust". We doubt it. How has it suddenly become robust? The real lottery here is determining how much......

The Christmas turkey is cold and in sandwiches. A few of us have struggled back to work, carrying surplus chocolate to the office in a desperate attempt to stop our expanding waistlines. Which must mean it's about time to start panicking about what to do on New Year's Eve. Aside from rammed pubs, pricey nightclubs and awkward parties in someone's frontroom, the main focus for London will be squarely on the London Eye. Since......

Trying to end the year on a positive, if unglamorous note: Olympic demolition complete and Games declared on track West Ham United get behind campaign to stop young people killing each other, Home Office campaign criticised for not being strategic enough Winehouse arrested, bailed and declared biggest selling artist of the year while Dad slags off Doherty in the press Look out for Lily blooming in the spring Sobering image of Plaistow Fire Station......

Our friends at the South East London Folklore Society (SELFS) will be hailing and celebrating Yule tonight with a good old fashioned game of pin the tail on the Yule Cat. There will also be beer, chips, storytelling, songs and games. If you're a fan of urban legends, One Eye Grey, Jack the Ripper walks, gory London histories, oddities, nooks and crannies, the occult, paganism, Morris dancing, dragons, witchcraft and the like, you need......

While most will undoubtedly be snuggling up on the sofa, warmed chocolate cupped in one palm, tv remote in the other, the residents of East Barnet will be endeavouring upon a very different xmas eve: as was the tradition back in 1932, those with a ghoulish disposition will be flocking to Church Hill Road, near Oak Hill Park, in the hope to catch a glimpse of the former Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville, a headless......

In years to come as historians look back on the events that triggered the untimely demise of this once great nation of ours, they'll probably be analysing the following timeline: October 2003: First grumblings about raising the Council Tax in London to pay for the Olympics if we get it. February 2006: Travelling Ken asks for a bit more money to fund the Olympics, 65p a week on London's Council Tax bills. December 2007:......

Here’s what we’ve learned this weekend Pedestrianisation is very popular But so is shopping online Olympic building ambitions are being scaled down due to spiralling costs. Potential 2012 Olympians, though, will be sent to Beijing to soak up the Games and fire London ambitions. Greenwich Old Royal Naval College wasn't quite grand enough for Northern Lights film But the late, great, Tony Wilson gets photograph of the month at the NPG Picture of the......

Londonist is all for environmentalism. We even clothe the Londonist baby in non-disposable washable cotton nappies and take all our groceries home from the organic food shop in a bag made of woven hemp. We wash our hair with a cuttlefish and row everywhere. However, when we heard that a low-carbon Olympic flame will light up the 2012 Games, we weren't impressed. We want a big old dirty flame. This is the Olympics! Let's......

Last week's fire at the Stratford Olympic site was apparently caused by a gas torch (which is not a gas version of an electric torch as we initially thought, but some type of cutting tool which sends out sparks), which lit a pile of insulation material on fire. Hold on there a second. Seriously? A torch? Because, of course, one of the most easily recognisable symbols of the Olympics is the Olympic Flame, which......

The 2012 Olympic Games may seem a long way off, but the pressure is starting to mount on the proposed developments for East London. In addition to building a shiny new stadium, the Olympics is meant to be an opportunity to provide more jobs, improved transport, and 9,000 new homes (of which half will be low-cost). While the Overground is now servicing Stratford and due to hook up to the East London Line in......

We've seen you racing down Rainbow Road in the queue at Sainsbury's. We've also noticed you desperately arranging tetrominoes on the tube and catching Pokémon at the bus stop, so we know you're just as addicted to playing Nintendo DS as we are. For over a year now, DS:London has been organising frequent pub meetups where fans of the handheld console can gather for competition and conversation over pints. If you've been playing alone,......

Rapha makes clothing for serious cyclists - the couriers, the racers, the hardcore fundraisers pedalling over the Andes. They are also organising one of the most unusual events we've had the privilege of hearing about: this Saturday is the second Rapha Roller Race Culture Clash which is "a four-way clash between teams of bicycle couriers, cycle journalists, media folk and a ‘dark horse’ Dutch team made up of unnamed riders." And before you try......

The Olympic Park has received a lot of attention lately, unveiling its flagship stadium, promising to start work on it early and suffering fiery blazes which fortuitously destroyed a warehouse due for demolition. This Saturday though, an audaciously different kind of attention will be focused on the Stratford site: imagining the Olympics weren't happening. WE SELL BOXES WE BUY GOLD is an artistic collaboration exploring what the Olympic site means to people and endeavouring......

Well, it's certainly less controversial than the logo. The design for the new Olympic Stadium is something of a zoetrope in the aspirational design launch video which follows bits of the stadium as they fly and crawl through London to Stratford, witnessed by a jogging girl with a coldsore. The bits all spin together excitingly to settle into a massive, goldfish bowl. Or sunken, oval cupcake. After the Games, 25,000 temporary Olympic seats will......

With immaculate PR timing, just a week after London was urged to focus on delivering the 2012 Games on time, the team at Olympic HQ announce that work is starting on the Stratford Olympic Stadium 3 months ahead of schedule. In fact, they're so ahead of their game the news hasn't yet made it into the official 2012 website, although, that tells us other thrilling news: the laying of underground power cables is also......

This weekend, Rowan Walker wrote in the Observer of her torturous but strangely addictive experience of training at the Islington Boxing Gym to raise awareness of the fierce campaign to get female boxing recognised as an Olympic Sport for the 2012 Games in London. According to the International Olympic Committee, "Boxing ranks among the Olympic Games' most illustrious sports" yet only for men, to date. As Walker's article indicates, the number and calibre of......

Whenever Londonist is feeling a tad glum, we have but to turn to Matt Harding and his amazingly silly website to get all cheered up again. Matt Harding is one big internet sensation, albeit a very unlikely one. The former games programmer has made a new career out of dancing badly in front of some of the world’s most recognisable and iconic buildings, and in some of the planet’s remotest terrains. But Londonist has been......