FESTIVALS

🌳 Explore the hidden backwaters of King’s Cross

It’s the third annual Camley Street Festival this Saturday lunchtime, offering up an excuse to go and discover a rather special corner of Camden that you might not know very well.

Firstly: the community party.

You’ll encounter art, music, street food trucks, henna and face painting and more, plus info on the area’s ambitious development plans, all around the brightened up Overground underpass, up at the Agar Grove end tomorrow from 11am-3pm.

The Council have big ideas - a masterplan, no less - for this area, including 350 homes, Knowledge Quarter and life science workspace, new roads, parks and attractive sounding sustainable stuff.

Before all that, there’s actually lots of interest here already, from the cheerful underpass gallery to the urban orchard and permaculture garden at Alara, the trailblazing organic health food brand started 50 years ago with £2 found in the street (tours are being run as part of the festival).

Further down, just before the Eurostar thunders overhead, you’ll see the lovely back entrance to the historic St Pancras Gardens and it’s Old Church, ‘London’s most spectacular intimate music venue’ according to Time Out (see below for who’s playing there tonight).

Walk onto the newest canal crossing, aka the rather handsomely rusty Somers Town Bridge and you’ll spot the home of St Pancras Cruising Club based at the canal basin.

This Saturday they have a rare chance to take a free tour up to the top of the Waterpoint, (and discover how the whole building was moved from the path of the Eurostar tracks) plus narrowboat trips, too.

Back on Camley St, there’s the proper green oasis of the Natural Park, former polluted coal drops now inhabited by butterflies, bees and small children fishing for newts.

There’s a nice cafe with a large waterside terrace there, too.

After a coffee and cake, finish your mini Camley St odyssey by admiring the impressive green wall (opposite Pancras Square) and the verdant raingardens that run alongside the road, designed to help stop flooding by absorbing a quarter of a football pitch-worth of water during a downpour.

Sceptical? Always. But positive, too…

The latest star interview in our series leading up to HowTheLightGetsIn at Kenwood (info and discount tickets below) is the conspiracy debunking founder of The Skeptics Society, Michael Shermer.

Ahead of his debut appearance at the London festival next weekend, we asked him about what happens when religion declines, and whether fake news might finish us all off.

His answers prove to be surprisingly positive, so enjoy today’s Camdenist interview long read: America’s top sceptic Michael Shemer tells us what to believe.

CAMDENIST PROMO

The world’s largest philosophy and music festival returns to Kenwood House, 23rd - 24th September. Renowned as a hub for world-leading thinkers, Mercury-prize winning musicians and cutting-edge comedians, this year’s festival sees Ruby Wax, Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Deborah Frances-White, David Baddiel, Michio Kaku and more lock horns over a packed weekend of debates, talks and performances.

20% off full festival tickets when you book here using the code CAM23

WINNER! Congrats to Valerie Pyott, who was drawn from the many entries we had in the competition in last week’s email to win 2 x tickets to HTLGI.

FOOD & DRINK

Where’s new to eat this week?

• 🐝 Prolific local foodies Honey & Co have opened another spot in Blomsbury (on Store St) known as Honey & Co Daily. The focus here is pastries and a range of all-day baked delights, plus look out for weekend supperclub events, too.

• 🍔 Fleet Place in Blackfriars is the latest lunchtime streetfood market from Kerb, with 6 rotating vendors. It’s main day is Thursdays, with the odd trader popping up for service on Tues and Weds too.

• 🎭 Going to a West End show? Arcade Food Hall at Tottenham Court Rd will give you a cocktail, a glass of wine, beer or soft drink on the house (with a meal) if you show them your ticket for the show that night.

• 🍖 North Yard’s Epicurus has slowly been picking up plaudits from the national press, (even if Jay Rayner somewhat inevitably coloured its Camden Market setting with the usual harsh touristy brush) so hopefully more people know where to find them. Camdenist was there way back in May for a chat with the owners.
  

• 🍟 Meanwhile, obscene loaded TikTok-friendly fries box sensations Funky Chips have queues of people lining up nearby, mostly wanting to make videos like this, and have opened a second local site up on the rooftop at Buck Street Market.
  

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MUSIC

Live and loud on your doorstep

•  🎤 As promised above, if you’d like to experience a night of ethereal music in the beautiful setting of St Pancras Old Church, tonight offers contemporary folk-pop from Irish songstress Lewis Barefoot, who launches her new LP with full band and four vocalists, too.

• ☠️ It’s London’s biggest black metal bash, the Cosmic Void Festival all this weekend, showcasing some of the scene’s finest, rarest, most trascendental bands at The Black Heart, Underworld and Electric Ballroom but hurry, there are only a few tickets left….

• 🎻 There’s a chance to show your support for the perilously threatened pub venue The Harrison in King’s Cross on Thursday night (21st), as folk dance supremo Will Allen returns with his new show English Fiddle 2.

Gig highlights in association with Halibuts.com

MORE GOSSIP & THINGS TO DO

• ➡️ Art Car Boot Fair takes over King’s Cross this Saturday with a riot of work by 120 artists and collectives, music, performance and food and the whole thing goes pop…

• ➡️ In more local art news, The Koppel Project are again transforming the abandoned Police Station on Hampstead’s Rosslyn Hill with their Open Cells artist in residence programme, which opens today. Sign up for the Ex-tending Bodies workshop on Sunday, which takes things onto the nearby Heath, and also tonight’s open studio at their Chalk Farm location, for a chance to see work from some of Camden’s most exciting artists.

• ➡️ Camden has brilliant secondary schools, yet also a higher than average number of students (or rather their parents) who opt to go private. Meet The Parents has been busy strengthening local communities for years by getting people to trust their neighbouring schools instead, and are back with a new season of drop-in events.

• ➡️ In the week where the future of Brixton Academy hangs in the balance down south, congrats are due to iconic Camden High Street venue Electric Ballroom, who have been granted a 4.30am licence at weekends plus an additional 400 capacity, notching up another sensible policy decision towards the return of a truly thriving (late) night time economy in this globally famous area.

• ➡️ Certain corners of t’internet have been going nuts this week over a one-bed flat in Tufnell Park that’s on the market for just shy of half a million quid, but has it’s bath in the hallway.

• ➡️ This weekend looks like it might be the last gasp for a dip by those who only do outdoors swimming when the sun is blazing. Last weekend’s visions of the ridiculous queues for Parliament Hill Lido snaking back to the bandstand were unprecedented, but we preferred this drone shot c/o @wildswimminglondon

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With news about the Electric Ballroom being permitted to stay open until later at weekends…

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