Camdenist presents Poster Sale! A pop-up event that marks the latest chapter in NW5’s epic cinema saga

Kentish Town residents have wearily - dare we say sceptically - been awaiting progress on a new cinema, promised as part of the redevelopment of the North Western Polytechnic building.

The iconic former assembly hall sits slap bang in the middle of the high street - but it’s been lying empty for a decade.

The scheme has had multiple setbacks, the latest being that no cinema operator has yet come forward that’s prepared to take it on in this more-then-turbulent economic climate.

However, following on from our exclusive update on the fate of the building earlier this year, the Camdenist team has been working tirelessly with owners Vabel to see if we might somehow open up the space for a cultural ‘meanwhile’ event or two.

And it’s finally happening, on four days over the weekend of 23rd - 26th November.

Camdenist presents Poster Sale! is a unique pop-up celebrating movie, music and games posters and the artist who make them, who are facing big challenges in the face of advances in generative AI.

“It’s a love-letter to those real people, a nod to the fresher’s week sales of old, and a tear in the eye for long-lost poster sections of Athena and Woolies,” says Poster Sale! founder Lynden Campbell.

The weekend will include workshops and film screenings alongside the poster marketplace - the closest the site will have yet come to being a local picture palace.

Read all about it and register for the private view or workshops, all for free.

CULTURE

🥳 The Cross is bringing back 3 of the 90s most legendary club nights this month

If you were round these parts 30 years ago - specifically the backwater badlands of King’s Cross - then you’ll likely know all about the legend of The Cross.

The world famous nightclub was based in the arches that are now home to the designer Tom Dixon at Coal Drops Yard, in an era where regular promoters and their all-night parties had a fanatically devoted following, week-in-week-out.

The Cross returned last year to a 5-floor venue just around the corner, complete with swanky restaurant and lounges with comfy seats for the more mature raver, with a dancefloor down in the basement.

Tomorrow night begins a month of celebrations to mark 30 years since the club’s inception, bringing back top glam house night Glitterati with Judge Jules, Danny Rampling and Sister Bliss.

The birthday season then continues with infamous Italian fiesta Vertigo on the 18th and rounds off with polysexual party Fiction on the 25th - and we’ll see you down there 😉

More info, and charity donations instead of guestlist here.

MORE GOSSIP & THINGS TO DO

• 🍑 After a turbulent year which saw the Vagina Museum lose it’s second site (the original was in Camden Market, back in 2017), then smash its emergency crowdfunding target to secure a third one, they return once more this Saturday 4th Nov. Now based in a cool railway arch near the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, this ongoing project to demystify the vulva and promote better sexual health is important and a lot of fun, too. Read an interview with founder Florence Schechter in Prospect Magazine.

• 🧥 Check out the final weekend of sustainable local menswear brand The Good Neighbour who have a pop-up shop in Hampstead until Sunday.

• 🎄The traditional big Christmas tree has just gone up at St Pancras International, and by all accounts this year’s concept is a real corker. Sponsored by station bookseller Hatchards, it’s a glorious tower of tomes, complete with cosy reading booths all round the base. Meanwhile, annoyingly well organised parents and guardians can already book slots at Santa’s grotto - he’ll be setting up shop at St Pancras from the 17th Nov.

• 🎥 Check out this 4-minute film shot in the lovely grounds of St Pancras Old Church and based around the story of Mary Shelley and her famous novel Frankenstein. It will also be screened tomorrow at The People’s Museum Somers Town as part of a Bonfire Night special performance of one-woman play The Walled Up Woman at the church. Final tickets available here, if you’re quick.

• 🎙️Do you have a fascinating tale from your personal history of living around here? Age UK Camden are starting a living history podcast and want locals aged 55+ to come and spill the beans on air. Email Callum here to get involved.

• 🎧 Ahead of headlining the venue next month, NTS Radio DJ Peach takes us on the ASMR tour of KOKO we never knew we needed. 

FOOD & DRINK

Gilgamesh to be reborn, joining London’s ambitious line-up of immersive dining experiences

News dropped this week that Camden Town’s infamous Babylonian-themed, celeb-heavy mega-restaurant Gilgamesh is to return at a new site on St Martin’s Lane this December.

Many locals will remember it as a completely OTT palace of opulent wood carvings, broadly pan-Asian dishes and upskirt paparazzi offenses, that for some reason all seemed like a very hot ticket in the early 00’s.

The ambition now is somewhat smaller, but we bet the idea of resurrecting this particular brand from the dead is to tap into London’s seemingly insatiable appetite for dining ‘experiences’.

Wood carvings by 10,000 Indian craftsmen and a retractable rooftop might have been a big deal back in the Gilgamesh heyday, but the competition these days has really upped the game.

Our city now has no shortage of technologically innovative, immersive, sometimes ridiculous themed spots to eat, where often ‘the experience’ becomes strangely more important than the actual food.

Here are a few of the more impressive ones among the current local crop.

5 RESTAURANTS NEARBY WITH A TECH TWIST

• 🔬 Holborn is home to Kitchen Theory, nothing less than a multisensory, boundary-pushing eating and drinking odyssey. Chef/founder Jozef Youssef has studied gastronomy down to the molecular level, and is now on a mission to blow each diner’s tiny mind at his wildly artistic supper clubs.

• 👨🏽‍🍳 Le Petit Chef at London Cabaret Club (also in Holborn), sees the ‘world’s smallest chef’ cooking up a storm, including wrestling lobsters and torching steaks directly on your plate. It harnesses the latest hologram technology, (since encountering a 6cm tall carrot-wrestling chef running around on your table is otherwise the preserve of those adding a little, er, ‘magic’ to their mushroom stroganoff).

• 🎮 Tabletop tech is also the big deal at Inamo, the West End sushi joints that have invested in their very own pioneering projections. You order the food, watch it getting made and digi-doodle on the table while you wait, all using their bespoke interactive technology, or dine in the private games rooms where up to 10 of you eat and all play simultaneously on vast surrounding screens. Try not to spill anything now, won’t you.

• 🦇 Park Row London is Soho’s classy homage to DC comics that aims to make guests feel like they’ve stepped into a top restaurant in Gotham City. The Monarch Theatre found inside blurs the lines further via floor-to-ceiling screens, accompanying a 10-dish and wine pairing menu and DC heroes and villains storyline throughout the evening.

• 🖤 The London offshoot of the global Dans Le Noir? phenomenon is based in Farringdon, offering lunch or dinner in pitch darkness (even watches must be checked at the door). In the absence of vision, your taste, touch and smell is heightened, and the menu is always a surprise, too.

CAMDEN DIARY

Shifting centre of gravity

The weekly Camdenist column: observations and frustrations from living, working and playing in the borough…

FRIDAY: The news of Gilgamesh restaurant being resurrected on St Martin’s Lane (see story above) got us thinking again about waste. After the horrors of witnessing the Holborn office strip-out the other day, we wondered about the recent history of this site, assuming it’s going to be thoroughly remodeled into a Babylonian theme park any day now. Turns out it was previously trad brasserie St Martin’s House, an all-day dining venture which lasted little more than a year before folding. And before that it had been Marcus Wareing joint Tredwells for seven years. Admirably the most recent owners had made use of most of Marcus’s fixtures and fittings for their ill-fated venture, rather than ripping things out.

We doubt the all-new Gilgamesh will want the grand mirrors, tiled walls and leather booths, and they may yet need to commission a whole new load of those signature carvings and statues which made them the talk of the town once upon a time. We’re not sure where they all went, but it was all comprehensively stripped out of the Camden Market original when it was turned into a bland corporate hospitality space. We do know that one solid section is now being used as the bar up at Patron in Tufnell Park though, so hopefully the work of all those craftsmen didn’t get junked - even though so much clearly does every time a restaurant comes up with a hot new theme.

WEDNESDAY: A short Overground hop to the Olympic Park for the launch of the exciting new London College of Fashion campus at East Bank. The building looks ominously towering and brutal when viewed from the outside, but once you’re up on the cascading steps for sunset over the London Stadium, or swanning down the curvaceous central staircase, it all makes a lot more sense. The launch was a joyous affair, with enthusiastic students telling their heartwarming stories, and music from the likes of alumni Kojey Radical. Here’s a more comprehensive look at what went down by local music charity UD Music.

Mayor Sadiq Khan is oft quoted for saying London’s centre of gravity is moving East, and this was solid evidence of that current tide. The Olympic Park’s gain is Oxford Street’s loss, with the closure of the famous LCF campus there part of a consolidation in the new building. What does it say about London’s main retail thoroughfare to lose all those creatively dressed students from the heart of the fashion-led consumerist mele? They are now draped all over the steps out East, laser-focused on designing sustainable and long-lasting clothing, symbolising the shifting sands of fashion in many more ways, still. As we left the party, a roar went up at the West Ham match taking place directly opposite in the stadium. They were spanking Arsenal. While we might be losing students, cultural institutions (and football matches) to the exciting East, it remains only a pleasure to see this corner of the capital enjoying such a rapidly expanding richness of opportunity, creativity and energy, a pervading buzz that will already be familiar to people lucky enough to be living in Camden.

MUSIC

Live gigs to check in the next seven days

• 🎻Tonight sees French blues, garage, country, psychedelia and folk group The Shazzams ripping it up Jamboree in King’s Cross.

• 🎤 Reformed indie folk-pop band Stornoway are celebrating the arrival of their unexpected forth LP with a gig at the O2 Forum Kentish Town tonight.

• 👺 Enigmatic electronic producer SBTRKT is also honouring a long-awaited new album, by playing live on Saturday (5th) at Chalk Farm’s Roundhouse.

• Queer Folk present more LGBTQ+ artists at Cecil Sharp House on Wednesday (8th) with Burd Ellen and Holly Clarke performing their solo sets on the same bill.

Gig highlights in association with Halibuts.com

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