OFFER

🚴🏾‍♂️ Claim your 60 mins of free bike credits

_{…and that’s not including the standard free 10 mins available every day, too!}

Hey Camdenists, hope you’ve had a good week.

Not only do we love to give you a weekly newsletter on Fridays stuffed with local culture, people and things to do, we’re also dedicated to helping build a happier and heathier city for everyone.

Yeah, no biggie.

With this in mind, Camdenist has teamed up with popular eBike hire company Forest (formerly Human Forest) who very much share this vision.

They are offering every one of our readers a brilliant incentive to ditch the car and hop on a series of FREE zero emissions cycle rides instead.

Your 60 minutes of free credit can be used across multiple rides anytime in the next 3 months, and applies to existing Human Forest users as well as new ones.

• 🆓 Download or open the app and use the promo code CAMDENIST60 to ride for free right away

Forest bikes are the cheapest and most sustainable in the market, giving every user ten minutes free riding every day via an innovative adtech-based business model.

The company is a certified B-Corp, and back in May this year, Camden Council chose Forest bikes to be an official operator within the borough, which is why you never have to look very hard to find one around here.

• 🚴🏻‍♂️ Read more about the good work of Forest (and our fantastic free 60min partnership, including Ts&Cs) in today’s Camdenist feature.

• 📨 Share this link with any local friends you know would enjoy 60mins of free eBike riding and we’ll send them a discount code for subscribing to Camdenist, too.

CAMDEN FRINGE

We speak with the performers about what on earth to expect this August

The 17th - and biggest ever- Camden Fringe festival kicks off on Monday.

That means the chance to catch over 300 often weird, usually wonderful, always welcoming shows, being performed at venues on our doorsteps throughout the month of August.

We reached out to some of the performers this week so they could to tell us a bit more about their shows, and help give you a real flavour for the Fringe.

Do go check them out…

Doomscrolling

We speak to journalist-turned-BBC Radio 4 and Have I Got News For You writer, Suchandrika Chakrabarti, about the humour behind our collective, endless phone obsession.

Violated

Writer and director Rebecca Holbourn on their important play about sexual assault, consent, patriarchal society and childhood betrayal at the giving away of treasured toys.

UNTITLED#1

Konrad Kozior creates stories about today’s social dilemmas and hardships, purposefully leaving things open for the audience to interpret individually. He makes his Fringe debut with this new play.

FOOD, DRINK & FESTIVALS

Regent’s Roots, and now a Spicy Sundowner too

This week’s pick of the free street parties sees Old Diorama Arts Centre throwing a bash on their home turf in Euston.

Expect all kinds of performances, dance, circus, workshops, interactive art, inflatables and food in the streets around Triton Square.

It’s all part of Camden’s South Asian Heritage Month programme, so you’ll find professional performers doing their thing alongside local favourites all day.

Read the full programme and plan your free day out.

🥘 Then, from 6pm, the focus is about the area’s famous local Bangladeshi and South Indian food.

Make a beeline for the Drummond Street Spice Sundowner, where the restaurants are offering £5 taster dishes, so you can work your way around.

More music, Bollywood dancing, henna tattooing and other attractions will keep the party rolling until late.

The Sundowner is part of Camden Inspire’s summer series, which culminates in their own festival in Camden Town the first weekend of September.

MORE FOOD & DRINK NEWS

• 😒 We hate to be the bearers of bad news in these updates, but the current treatment of the team running the Dartmouth Arms in York Rise sounds like a shocking story of big money threatening to crush an authentic community business, as explained in this damning Facebook post from the pub’s Stuart Langley. His Disappearing Dining Club have done a stellar job of turning a forlorn local boozer into a dynamic social hub and it would be a real disaster if they were forced out by a chain operator. Looks like it’s time for locals to kick up a fuss…

• 😃 In more positive pub news, the closure of Camden High St’s Cobden Arms hasn’t meant a net loss for the area’s pub quota, as Kilburn High Rd’s Brondes Age launches a new outpost at the site today.

• 🚧 The Ham & High has spotted that scaffolding is now up around long-shuttered Camden pub The Constitution. Owners Young’s have sat on the empty property since pre-lockdown, so hopefully this is finally a sign of the rebirth of one of the area’s best community boozers, including its waterfront beer garden and downstairs music venue (assuming they don’t bland it out too much).

• 🍕 Esteemed London crew Pizza Pilgrims are celebrating being 10 years old this month with a party at Camden Town Brewery Beer Hall. Book now for slots on Sat 12th Aug, where tickets include loads of pizza, mandatory birthday shots, music, games, beer tours and more.

• 🔥 It's been a year since we interviewed the backstreet BBQ don, RJ of Vibe 'n Go, a story that’s well worth reading again, since his Wednesday and Saturday afternoon cookout sessions have gone from strength to strength, providing Caribbean classics direct to the people from his front porch.

MUSIC

The pick of this week’s truly global selection of local gigs

• 🎷 LA-based jazz vocalist Lady Blackbird is live at KOKO tomorrow evening (Sat 29th), giving locals a rare chance to hear a woman Gilles Peterson has heralded as “the Grace Jones of jazz”.

• At An Evening with Super Panela (Tues 1st Aug) at Pizza Express Live Holborn you can catch music played on brass and tradition instruments that’s deeply rooted in early 50s Afrobeats, ancestral chants and rhythms of the Caribbean and pacific coasts of Colombia and a modern day mix of African, Amerindian and European influences.

• 🤠 Canadian singer-songwriter Julian Taylor (pictured) has been perfecting his soulful americana with a country twang for 25 years, and has now achieved global acclaim via awards, festival bookings and more. Catch him at The Water Rats (Thurs 3rd).

• 🎤 Fast-rising alt-electronic singer and multi-instrumentalist Freddie Yates is bringing his full immersive live band experience to the diminutive Camden Chapel venue (Thurs 3rd).

Gig highlights in association with the fabulous Halibuts.com

MORE

• ➡️ The current hopeless mess that is the flip-flopping HS2 development at Euston is laid bare in this story on the BBC, which speaks in-depth to locals about the massive impact on their daily lives.

• ➡️ Join a ‘pavement preview’ on Monday (1st) from 6pm as the windows of Camden People’s Theatre Glass Cloud Gallery will be showing Lost and Found, a new work by Mahel De Man. It runs until 6th Sept, so drop by and take a look.

POLL RESULTS

📊 What exactly are you lot thinking?

We ask a question each week. Here’s what was revealed when we asked…

Should Camdenist have its own podcast?

👍 Yes! I'd love an audio dose of your content
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 30%

🎧 Maybe, but I probably wouldn't have time to listen to it
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 45%

🙉 No! Please god, there are enough already
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 25%

We love your brutal honesty - and in the same spirit, we really don’t think we’ve got time to make one! Having said that…

1-CLICK POLL

Collaboration is essential, so your feedback, suggestions and requests are always welcome. Reach out to us: [email protected] 

Got an editorial idea you’d like us to consider? Just fill in the online form…

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