Chap Olympics celebrate ‘athletic ineptitude and immaculate trouser creases’

Knock-out matches of umbrella jousting and the ironing board surfing race are among the disciplines featured at this year’s Chap Olympiad opening in London on 16 July.

Running annually since 2005, the competition welcomes only unfit cads and gentlemen dressed in elegant period dress ranging from Victorian explorers to flappers and World War II RAF pilots.

To win the highly-coveted bronze, silver and gold cravats, contenders will have to struggle with finding witty anecdotes, inducing a line of ‘chapettes’ to swoon over them, and manoeuvring a steed around obstacles wearing a horse mask.

Chap Magazine “a monthly journal celebrating tweeds, hat doffing, martinis and all things gentlemanly,” sponsors the competition. The events will take place in Bedford Square Gardens, located near Russell Square.

“It is a really popular event,” Rosie Broughton, PR Assistant for Essence Communications Agency, said. “Some five hundred people turned up last year. The response has been really positive.”

For the special occasion, Chap Magazine joined forces with Bourne & Hollingsworth Group, the same people behind Prohibition, a night when “illicitly drinking bourbon out of teacups” is set in a decadent ballroom in central London, and  The Blitz Party.

But the Chap Olympiad does not stand alone in the list of weird sporty disciplines.

Last Friday, hundreds of aficionados climbed the hills in Gloucestershire for the most bruising competition the human kind has ever come up with – the shin-kicking World Championships.

Rules are simple; fighters have to knock each-other down by kicking competitors in the shins, stuffed up with as much straw as they can shove in their pant legs.

The competition, which was the highlight of the Cotswold “Olimpick” games, dates back to 1612 and requires competitors to wear the traditional white smocks of shepherds.

The Cotswold Olimpicks also featured other louty challenges such as sledgehammer throwing, tug-of-war and a special version of tossing the caber.

Sometimes events of this sort get cancelled due to bad weather conditions, as it happened this year with the world-famous Cheese Rolling competition in Cotswolds, Gloucester.
Yet its fans tend to be hardcore, and for the second year running they did not give up staging the traditional race down a steep hill to catch an eight-pound double Gloucester.

Waiting to run after a gigantic cheese rolling down Primrose Hill in Regent’s Park, London’s gentlemen can at least console themselves with the 2011 edition of the Chap Olympiad.

Tickets for the Chap Olympiad are £15 and sold in advance via Ticketweb or by calling 020 7636 8228. Games will begin at 1pm on Saturday 16 July.

The gig-goers guide to scoring tickets

(Article originally written for the website Londonline.org.uk)

Summer in the UK brings a surge in hormone levels, a gust of good vibes and a plethora of awesome concerts.
Here at LondonLine, we know that amazing sensation of crossing the venue gates with a cheap ticket in your hand. That’s why we approached both experienced music journalists and shameless scalpers to give you the essential handbook for gig-goers.

Londonline's reporter Lillo Montalto Monella approached Michael, local scalper, outside HMV Forum in Kentish Town where Wolfmother were just about to deliver a stunning performance. Photo: Alessandro Bergonzoni

Trust the organisers
Buy your ticket from the official website of whoever organises the gig – the most straightforward way is also the cheapest. Music venues like HMV forums have their website set up to welcome all credit cards. Royal Albert Hall, Royal Opera House or Barbican will deliver the tickets to your postbox in just a couple of days.

Charing Cross
Vendors in Charing Cross generally set their prices cheaper than online. However, as music critic Antonello Furione reveals: “they are not fixed and vendors can make them up on the spot according to some abstract criteria”.
On the other hand, when it comes to musicals “it’s better to head straight to the box office and bargain the price at the theatre,” Furione said. “It sounds absurd, but we got a third-row ticket for £17 in a few minutes before the musical started. The original price was around £70”.
The TKTS booth in Leicester Square sells discounted tickets, sometimes up to half price.
Watch out for bogus websites
“Get it from legitimate sources if you don’t want be disappointed,” recommends an experienced NME journalist who preferred not to be named.
In 2009, for example, some people were jumping for joy after having found the leftovers for the Reading and Leeds festival only to find out later that the website they’ve bought from was bogus. “They seemed legitimate websites, yet, people just got ripped off,” our NME insider said.

Photo: Alessandro Bergonzoni

Ticketmaster or ripper-master?
Even if your ticket will be a 100 per cent guaranteed, be aware of Internet ticket sales and distribution companies. They could have different names (Ticketmaster, Stargreen, See Tickets, Sonisphere, Ticketline, Ticketweb, etc.), “but they are all the same when it comes to charging you unreasonable booking fees. They don’t even do text messages on the mobile, you still have to print the ticket yourself. We live in bloody 2011,” our NME insider said.
From 1994 to 1998, Pearl Jam boycotted Ticketmaster-affiliated venues because of the company’s high booking fees. The band was then forced to give up its dispute so as not to disappoint concertgoers struggling to find tickets for small venues.
Don’t e-buy
You can never eliminate the risk from online shopping. Websites like Gumtree and eBay could be your worst nightmare, but remember if something bad happens, it is always possible to raise a query. However in the worst-case scenario you could end up spending your summer in court instead of the mosh-pit.
Therefore, trust only sellers living in your town and avoid the digital divide – arrange a meeting and feel the ticket with your fingertips before buying it.

Scalp the scalpers
We would never recommend that you do something illegal. Always remember that scalpers are only there to make money. However, sometimes there’s no other way in than asking touts for tickets outside the venue.
LondonLine has spoken with Michael, local tout at the HMV Forum in Kentish Town, right before the latest Wolfmother concert. Here are his golden tips:
– Always come with the exact amount of cash you want to spend in your wallet, hide the rest in your pockets before talking to the scalper
- Start bargaining for half the sum and then hold your ground as much as you can;
- Get to the venue a few minutes before the concert starts – scalpers will be more eager to get rid of surplus tickets
- Keep in mind that scalpers usually get their tickets from insiders in the venue or buy them in huge stocks. Since they pay almost nothing for them, there’s no reason why you should pay more than the original price given.
Give it a nameRecently a lot of venues introduced a new scheme to jeopardise scalpers’ business –  releasing tickets with the name of the buyer or his credit card details printed on them. “The tendency is on the increase, it is a good thing,” an anonymous NME journalist told LondonLine, “as it is impossible to sell those tickets on the black market. The only problem is that if your daddy bought the ticket for you, you have to bring him to the very gate to guarantee your entry with the bouncers.”

Photo: Alessandro Bergonzoni

Be careful in your choices
If an artist plays for more than one night at the same venue, try to go on the very last day. The performer may not deliver the same brilliant performance of the first gig, but tickets on the black market will be cheaper and easier to find.
Once-in-a-lifetime events like a Pink Floyd reunion, however, are fat cows to milk for scalpers. “We can make whatever price we want with the certainty people will always buy tickets,” scalper Michael revealed.

A struggle between two worlds – A photostory

Historic Billingsgate are losing its fish porters that keeps the flow, Gianluca Mezzofiore finds out. Photostory: Lillo Montalto Monella

Costantinos Camilleri has been working for 52 years at the Billingsgate fish market. Half-Italian and half-Greek, he wears with pride a battered enamel badge on his white uniform. It shows his licence number and his historic profession –a fish porter.

Like the rest of the market’s porters, who are about 100, Costantinos is angry at the City of London Corporation’s decision to scrap the licence of the porters. “They’re fucking greedy bastards,” he said pointing, with a sweeping movement of his arm, at the HSBC skyscraper towering over the market.

The Corporation, which owns Billingsgate, revoked in April a bylaw dating from 1876 that allows a superintendent to license anyone with a “good character and fitness” to become a porter. They claim it was redundant, out-of-date and irrelevant in modern times.
“The fish merchants, who are the porters’ employers, should employ who they wish freely, without constraints or empathy,” said Malcolm Macleod, Billingsgate Superintendent for the City of London Corporation. “There are 500 people employed at Billingsgate and only the fish porters have licenses. Why should they receive special treatment?”

However, London Assembly member and Labour party politician John Biggs believes that the Corporation’s withdrawal is a move towards “casualisation” of the City’s workforce. “It seems that the City of London is happy to retain some tradition while dropping other ones, and the difference between the two sides is one of power,” he said. He shares Labour MP Jon Cruddas’ view that the scrapping could be an attempt to dissolve the workforce of the City, while bankers and financiers keep their privileges.
Superintendent Macleod dismisses all these allegations, claiming that without the licences the market will employ more people. “We respect the past, but we can’t live on it,” he said. “We are a business and we have to compete with other markets.”
The same fish porters are aware that their job could soon turn into cheap labour. “It’s disgusting, they want to get rid of us and replace us with some East Europeans to do our job,” said Tom Rissix.

Others think that more sinister reasons are carefully hidden behind the withdrawal. Fish porters, and the market itself, may stand in the way of the Corporation’s expansion plans for Canary Wharf, they claim. “This land is too much in a prime position for the market to stay here,” said Bobby, a fish merchant. “This is just the first step to wrap things up and to move the market somewhere else. It is worth too much money, the land. The Corporation of London, in my eyes, they are the biggest crooks in London.”
“The fish porters transport 25,000 tonnes of fish every year and make a vital contribution to a market which generates around £200million in revenue,” Unite national officer Jennie Formby said.

Billingsgate has been in Docklands for the past 35 years. The leasehold on the Billingsgate complex is up in 2013 and the Corporation is seeking a new location.
Chris, who has been working for 42 years at Billingsgate as a fish porter, has a lot of disappointment in his eyes. “I personally think that the Corporation wants its land back and by getting rid of the licenses from the fish porters, they can take away the tenants’ leases,” he said. “The market will move. It’s a legend that is going to go, and it’s a shame.

Free food deals ultimately bad for business

Lillo Montalto Monella investigates the real cost of free meals…

‘Dear customer, please pay what you’d like to pay for the food you’ve just eaten. We won’t charge you on the bill,’ says a notice in one of London restaurants offering a free meal.

It sounds like a highly ambitious utopian idea but London restaurant owners have wised up to the reality: Restaurants simply cannot offer free meals because an unfortunate minority will always take advantage and not pay.

In 2005, national newspapers enthusiastically covered restaurants adopting the pay-what-you-like formula. “The business tactic is proving a success and ‘pay-what-you-like’ restaurants are spreading across Britain”, wrote the Telegraph in June that year. But following a global economic meltdown and five years after French Bistro Just Around The Corner introduced this new philosophy of fair eating, pay-what-you-like restaurants have almost completely faded out.

“Tourists and students started taking advantage of it,” explains Yugoslav restaurateur Peter Ilic, former owner of Just Around the Corner who now runs the  Little Bay Restaurant in Farringdon.

Mr. Ilic sold Just Around the Corner in 1997 just before the downturn and now the Finchley-based bistro is out of business. Consequently his current restaurant group, Little Bay Restaurant, has stopped offering food at unfixed prices.

“We did it only for promotion, and it lasted only one month,” he admits. “It was very popular, more than I was expecting actually.”

In fact, figures showed that during that hectic promotional February, each customer was willing to pay an average of £17.25 for his meal, almost 30% more than usual. Then Mr. Ilic realized: “some people started using it to their personal advantage…it started attracting more and more students…I had to stop it.”

Other restaurants, including one called Sweet Melinda in Edinburgh, had to abandon a  similar promotional offer. “We started it to get new customers,” Polish manager Vowtick Pankiewicz reveals. “It was a big hit at the time, even though we only did it for food, on special days [Tuesdays] and for tables up to 6 people.”

“We stopped because we used to have quite few regulars…. It worked as long as we got publicity; then we decided to try something new.”

In Germany, where fewer people take advantage of “free meals” the concept seems more viable. In Berlin, a wine-bar chain Weinerei has been promoting free deals for several years. But, as waitress Anna explains, owner Jürgen Stumpf had to adjust the concept a little:

“The deal now is that customers pay a respectful price: there are no fixed prices…. They have to bear in mind that they must spend according to what is fair and respectful.”

In Britain however few restaurants are brave enough to try the “pay-what-you -like” concept, afraid the offer will promote a free for all mentality, where people do not contribute to the cost.

Love haunts me, goddam nature

In memoriam of a former director/actor: Mel Gibson

PhotoJAPANism: the power of pictures to tell a tragedy

A list of useful PHOTOJOURNALISM WEBSITES for the narration of the Japanese post-tsunami tragedy.

My new post for The Grey Side of News

Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters - All rights reserved

 

Assange explains us how to do our homework properly

Spoon River resurrects at Tate Britain

It all starts with a closed book, kept in a white, aseptic shrine, frozen in time; but then the neon light fades away, and the book of the soul unfolds, revealing the dark abyss of a forgotten past.

Susan Hiller exposition at Tate Britain (1 February – 15 May 2011, £10) is a journey into lost identities and the ideology of memory.

Descents into the darkest depths always take move from the easing surface of ordinary life. No wonders the Hiller’s journey starts from a comfortable ordinary-life object: a postcard; or a book, maybe.

Curator Ann Gallagher did a great job by making the visitor at home with the calming, reassuring whiteness of the first exposition halls.

Then the journey gets trickier: the visitor has the chance to either dwell on the reassuring surface or get lost in the side folds of exposition, where moans from the past arise from the dark corners of the past. Private relics, personal mementos, talismans and neglected Victorian plaques to little-known heroes of ordinary life: everything tells about “the ideology of memory, the history of time, the illusion of representation.”

As artist Hiller, 70, puts it, it is just a hopeless stammer, “a discourse full of holes to match a broken world.”

Visitors may think it’s not worth paying £10 to hear a stuttering voice. But getting lost into a tangled, dark forest made of small speakers suspended from the ceiling, each one murmuring with its own voice, is worth alone the pricey ticket.

Just like The Last Silent Movie, Witness is homage to the past: a universe of extinct languages, long-gone people, and forgotten ghosts of the modern consumer society.

“Monuments represent absence: they are metaphor of desire, and regeneration of ideas.” This is why Susan Hiller would have probably appreciated the picture taken from that teenager with her Iphone: following Edgar Lee Masters’ teaching, “we exist forever through our portraits.”

RATING: 4/5