Notting Hill's “temple to good booze and fine living,” Trailer Happiness was a few steps ahead of the London cocktail craze when they opened in back in ’03. It’s still a good spot to keep in mind for mixed drinks in a casual setting. Trailer H bartenders know their rum ... and how to mix it. Londonist sincerely appreciates that.......

Fears that the "credit crunch" would cramp Carnival style, would seem to have been unfounded as around 250,000 people turned out to revel in the Children's Day Parade yesterday. There was a year on year increase in arrests with 98 people nicked and 7 pit bull type dogs confiscated but police were keen to stress this was a result of "proactive policing" rather than an increase in criminal activity. Carnival spirit appeared to be on......

If you're born with the proverbial silver soup-eating utensil in your gob, yet your aspirations include running a country with a long-standing disdain towards the average toff, how can you relate to the lumpenproletariat? Maybe by showing that you suffer from the same troubles they do - such as, for example, being the victim of petty crime. Just days after his City Hall chum Boris announced the Summer Cycling campaign, David Cameron has joined......

There seems to be a lot of protesting going on today. Ever eager to facilitate your assimilation of the salient parts of the day’s news stories, Londonist has bunged a couple of vaguely outdoors related posts together and drawn our own spurious but fun conclusion. Our beady eye was first drawn to the tale of protestors who are occupying quite a large part of Wembley Park Sports Ground in order to stop the local authority......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Taqueria 139-143 Westbourne Grove, W11 2RS Nearest Tube: Notting Hill Gate 020 7229 4734 Mon–Thurs: 12:00pm–11:00pm; Fri: 12:00pm–11:30pm; Sat: 10:00am–11:30pm; Sun: 12:00pm–10:30pm Expect to Pay: £8–£12 Rating: 9 out of 10 Spring, and a young woman’s thoughts turn towards frozen fruity cocktails – margaritas in particular. But as we haven’t yet persuaded our editor to expand this column to......

Rejoice or recoil: It looks as though the long-rumoured film adaptation of Martin Amis’ London Fields is viable again. Originally announced in 2001 with David Cronenberg directing, the project had been shelved as of 2006. But now, with Hallam Foe’s David Mackenzie slated as the new director, the possibility of the film seeing the light of day is once again alive. The script for the film has long since been completed by Amis and......

The weather is batty. One minute you’re showing some (pale) skin, reveling in the promise of summer, and the next minute you wake up to a snowstorm. What could, at first glance, be wonky hangover vision, is the undeniable truth: it is April, and it is snowing. And you can’t do a damn thing about it. So get out there, make a few snow angels, and then check out our guide to escaping the......

Well, not all of them, obviously. But the London launch of a US newspaper heavyweight, and a high-profile fundraiser for a Presidential candidate, has given us threadbare cause to run that rather glib headline. Moving on.... For London's business and financial elite, the pink pages of the Financial Times are the only thing to be seen reading on the morning commute to work. However, the FT's sturdy grip on matters monetary will be challenged......

The tussle over the fate of an east end council block stepped up a gear over the weekend, as a heavyweight "starchitect" and a respected art critic both sided with a campaign to save the building. Robin Hood Gardens, a 1972-built concrete block in Poplar, was recently singled out as a failed estate by local MP and culture minister Margaret Hodge, who wants it demolished. However, it has been defended by Richard Rogers and......

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......

Decades ago, Notting Hill/Ladbroke Grove was the hippest part of London: a warren of squats, not quite legal after-hours drinking dens, hippies, proto-punks and political activists. This exhibition at London Print Studio is a commemoration of the posters and printed ephemera of this scene shown along side similar artwork from around the world and from more recent times. This is art born out of necessity; work that says it doesn't actually have to be......

Where's Gil Grissom when you need him? Before London gets their own version of the hot shot crime scene investigator TV series, the police will have to do. They've got a real nut to crack with the murder of 94-year-old Thea Zaudy. CCTV footage of the suspected murderers, including Mrs Zaudy's cleaner, show them carrying a large empty suitcase from Notting Hill station and later lugging the same suitcase, now full, back to the......

The book grocer’s coffers are chockfull of goodies this week, so let’s jump right in and get shopping... Monday: Crikey. Take a look at author and critic George Steiner’s publishing credits and you have to wonder whether the man has actually slept in the past fifty years. Yet the premise of the prolific writer’s most recent work, My Unwritten Books, is that there are actually some subjects that Steiner has purposely left unexplored. Join......

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.......

Daily Candy tweaks its culinary repertoire at a secret cooking class in Clerkenwell. Slonik at Edible London visits the Malmaison-ized Fox and Anchor twice in one week! An American in London checks out Crazy Homies in Notting Hill (she’d go back but …) Posting for Food and Drink in London, Ben Bush accuses Waterloo Brasserie of perpetrating a fishy felony. Photography courtesy of D I C K S D A I L Y's photostream......

On Londonist we try to include as many different aspects of London as we can: it’s not all news, entertainment and parody….sometimes we aim for edification, things that we genuinely find absorbing or surprising. Things that make us go ‘ooh-er’, or even ‘gosh’ (‘cept to our chagrin we can’t say it quite the way that Joanna Lumley can). On Saturday afternoon, then, something both dramatic and interesting is happening. A march, from Speakers Corner to......

Mere days after warning us about 'white flight' and the perils of living in modern London, scribes at the Telegraph have had a volte-face, and declared their love for our flawed yet fantastic city with a special report on the top 10 property hotspots for 2008. First up on the list: well, colour us a shade of surprised blue - the Telegraph's only singled out the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, home to Notting......

I have been interested in recent newspaper reports suggesting I had lost, or was about to lose, one leg, two legs, an arm, a head - some people suggesting this went some time ago! - or even a fingernail. I am happy to tell you that, when I last looked, all of these items appeared solidly where they have been for many years. Michael Winner on rumours that he’d had a limb amputated. January 19......

32. The Spirit Of Christmas Christmas ghost stories told by a crackling fire are a rare occurrence in the modern age, so let me chill your spine with a few yarns relating to festive phantoms of the wintry city. The first haunting is said to occur on Christmas Day at the Cadogan Hotel, Sloane Street, and concerns the ghost of actress Lillie Langtry, once a mistress of Edward VII. The spook is not a......

Paddington Bear is to face depawtation in an all-new book from octogenarian Michael Bond. London’s favourite bear has been hibearnating for 30 years, but has been prodded awake to celebrate his 50th birthday. Harper Collins have even persuaded the original illustrator, 85 year old Peggy Fortnum, to do the front cover For Paddington Here and Now, Mr. Bond decided he wanted his ursine pal to engage in some upbeat adventures…and Londonist supposes that it......

After a 2-month hiatus spent reading Finnegans Wake (alright, would you believe rubbish romance novels?), The Book Grocer returns, with a continually evolving format and its diary stuffed full with book-ish events. Here are our picks for the week: Tuesday: Anne Sebba, author of Jennie Churchill, Winston’s American Mother, in conversation with Hugh Whitemore, playwright and writer of the Emmy-award winning Winston Churchill drama The Gathering Storm, at Waterstone’s Notting Hill Gate store, 7pm,......

New writing theatre company Paines Plough are presenting an absolutely cracking new way to see plays this autumn and making us think that there should be more theatre programmed like this. New writing, an exciting theatre space, a sensible time slot, a hot snack and a drink are all included in the ticket price and you can be on your way having had your culture fix by 8pm when other theatres are raising the......

London, a melting pot of immigrant cultures and strange beasts. Amongst other things of course. But none of this is anything new. Way back in October 1958 a bear arrived on a lifeboat from Darkest Peru with a suitcase full of marmalade sandwiches. Luckily he was discovered on the concourse of Paddington station by the remarkable Brown family (possibly related to our glorious leader, we're not sure) and went to live with them at......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 17th September 1961: Police arrest 1,314 demonstrators at a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) protest in Trafalgar Square. Bertrand Russell is amongst those arrested. Tuesday – 18th September 1970: Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix is found dead in his basement flat in Notting Hill, west London. A subsequent inquest records an open verdict on his death, noting that he drank wine and took nine sleeping pills the previous......

Finding venues for Friday and Saturday's fixtures was a piece of cake compared to this! But no nation should be left out - what with the world being in union and all that. Fiji v Canada Sunday 16, 13.00 UK time from the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. Canadians! Seek the Maple Leaf. Drink Molson. Forget hockey. Fijians - listen up. We have important news for you and your Polynesian rivals below. Meet us one paragraph down.........

With headlines that bluntly state "Two shot at Notting Hill Carnival", you could be easily led to think this past weekend was more lawless London and that one's life is best spent staying at home if one wants to keep it. Thankfully reality stretches beyond newspaper headlines and the 43rd annual Notting Hill Carnival was a splendid day out that reminded us of everything we love about our city. The tragedy of those injured......

Here's what else has been going on while you've been at The Notting Hill Festival: This weekend's news: It's possible there could be a new Thames Barrier built. More people have been shot in North London. Toddler dies in swimming pool. Authorities agree to give bus drivers more toilets. How nice. Mum fights web drug dealers. Hooray for cyber mum! And here's what we think might happen next week: Pete Doherty arrested. Again. Amy......

With Notting Hill Carnival upon us in full effect the next day, you probably won't want to cane it too severely on Sunday night, but gently starting the party early never hurt anyone. Well, on second thought, it probably did at some point or other, but Upset The Rhythm should guarantee that at least you'll be entranced by interesting sounds if not completely kept out of harm's way. This Sunday sees these never dull......

Kate Monro is working on a book about that most intimate subject: how people lose their virginity. She's interviewed Londoners old and young, male and female, gay, straight, Muslim and Roman Catholic, able and non-able bodied. And she's always on the lookout for, ahem, a new angle... Why are you so curious about how people lost their virginity? I’m nosy! No, seriously, it came to me in a light bulb moment. A friend and......

One club event we've neglected to mention really (and we really should have) is the birth of the amazing Modular Weekly parties at Ditch in Shoreditch. Modular is the label home of some of our favourite electronic artists including The Presets, MSTRKFFT, Klaxons and Cut Copy, as well as looking after Jack Johnson & Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And when they put on a party, they rock it! Sure if you're not wearing skinny jeans,......