Carving your beloved's name on the trunk of a tree, or doodling it on the school desk, is so 20th century. For the modern urban dweller, the only way to really impress your betrothed is to spread your love in three-foot high letters on the side of a train. That was Raymond Agbegahs's plan. The graffiti vandal has spent the past decade spraying messages for his girlfriend on train carriages and railway stations in......

Congratulations – you can read! (Presumably. Unless you just look at Londonist for the pictures.) Literacy is sexy. Hyper-literacy, even sexier. Or so we at Londonist tell ourselves as we don our Coke-bottle glasses and curl up each night with a bottle of wine and a dictionary. But enough about our steamy Valentine’s Day plans. What have you got planned? Now, you may have inferred that we’re a jaded lot over here at Londonist.......

Dusting off the snow from last year, every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... The Londonist team is full of interesting people doing exciting things but one in particular has been......

Those Peckhamites have got their rose-tinted spectacles on again. This Saturday and Sunday sees the 4th (or 5th - really ought to research things more thoroughly) annual Flavas of Peckham Festival in Peckham Town Square. Which is of course a food festival. Now Londonist is rather partial to food, so this one may be worth checking out. We're not talking gourmet and celeb chef here - the festival is all about celebrating the area's multi-flava-ed......

Get thee to Peckham this week, where the good citizens are organising the inaugural Peckham Literary Festival. Apparently Dell Boy moved out a number of years ago…. It is billed as ‘2 shops, 4 days, 8 events,’ although Londonist counted 5 days, 3-4 venues and rather more than 8 events. It is seemingly part of the growing I Love Peckham movement – we have to hand it to them down there in the deep south…they......

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......

For most of you, it was pay day this weekend. Wahey! This also means if you're like us, you've spent all your cash in the pub and will now be eating beans on toast all week. Which after going to The Edinboro Castle and having spent so long at the bar you sobered up, doesn't really seem worth the effort any more, does it? But don't worry! All is going to be fine. Even......

Poor Peckham. It really doesn’t have the best time of it in the press. Shootings. Stabbings. The odd ministerial walkabout, with a lot of head and hand shaking involved. It has become the sort of place which causes passers by to lock their doors, crank up the volume and accelerate. But the citizens of this much maligned southern resort are fighting back. This week marks the fourth annual I LOVE PECKHAM Festival, which amounts......

It's Eurovision week, and Helsinki is buzzing. These are the first batch of songs automatically into the final, either because the countries came in last year's top 10 or pay for the whole thing (hi UK, France, Spain and Germany!) Bosnia & Herzegovina send a song very like their entry from last year, an ethnic ballad with traditional instrumentation and harmonies. It's pleasant, but that's as far as it goes.Spain send D'NASH, a buff......

Ticket from Toronto: £299. Getting your song chosen for a Mastercard ad: Priceless. Last Thursday Findlay Brown, whose song Come Home is currently playing to millions of TV viewers daily in the Christmas Mastercard advert, joined a folksy line-up of four artists in the space of three hours at the awe-inspiring Union Chapel in Islington. With a half-hour slot at the start of the evening, Brown had to contend with latecomers and lots of......

Some crimes are more than just crimes - the Dreyfus affair is one example that comes readily to mind. In modern Britain, no murder has had more of an impact than that of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 (was it really 13 years ago already?), the black teenager killed by racists, whose murder triggered an inquiry that found institutionalised racism Stephen's murder will never really go away, but it is brought back into the spotlight......

The Labour peer Lord Tom Pendry is calling for the government to introduce a code of practice to ensure the 2012 Olympics are are "not marred by betting irregularities". The mix of local councils, the London Assembly and central government quangos that consitutue London's governance is "too confusing" says a new report. Transport for London has announced an increase in taxi fares. A petition to make London's train stations safer by introducing extra Transport Police,......

Unless you've been living in a cave...on Mars...with headphones on...and you've cancelled your subscription to the Mars Musical Express (which isn't as good as it used to be anyway) then you'll already know that Madonna played an 'intimate' gig at Koko last night. So was it any good? Well the Independent liked it, saying it was "Madonna reclaiming the plastic pop of her past and reconnecting, Kylie-style, with her devoted gay fanbase": Opening the......

The Dandy Warhols - Cargo, Tuesday 30th August If we'd released this today and not two and a half years ago there'd be a lot more assholes in here than there are. The cooler than cool Dandy Warhols have no time for the terminally cool, the wannabe coiffured scenesters and hangers on that you tend to get at small venue album release shows like this one; the Bohemians Like You they so wonderfully take......

January is known for a lot of things: dieting, being skint, the sales, resolutions. But, in our hearts at least, there's one thing which really makes January, and that's partwork magazines. You know the kind of thing we mean. The magazines published by people like De Agostini, which have names like 'Japanese Trains' and 'Miniature Kitchens' and come with a free binder and a tube of glue. They're like crack these magazine. They give you......

Well, everybody else is doing it, so why can't we? Here we present Londonist's favourite music of 2004, along with pointers to other sites' lists. It might be worth bearing in mind if you're brave enough to visit the shops during the January Sales melee. Those of us who like to foist our tastes on our public should read this cautionary tale though: 'News for rock critics: no one is listening to you' Londonist -......