Jaunted Embedded Travel Guides: If You Can't Beat Brick Lane, Join It
Jaunted Embedded Travel Guides: London 2007
We are constantly searching for the most timely and useful travel information on locations around the world. We have always found that boots on the ground is a great way to sift through the marketing clutter and bring you the travel tips, information, and opinions you crave. However, now it is time to kick it up a notch. First, we are searching the world for folks who can take you on a field trip of their "backyard." When we find these folks, we then embed them into their local travel scene and ask them to be our eyes and ears out in the field.
We are expecting the same sort of grainy video, choppy sentences, and snapshot photos that you are use to seeing from embeds. The rub is, at the end of the day we should be left with a backyard travel guidebook like no other.
Our first embed is Benji Lanyado of London, UK. He is a budget travel columnist for the Guardian Newspaper in the UK. He also is the fearless leader of Youngin Europe, so expect his guide to skew young, but not that young, we intend to keep this thing legal. He lives in London and enjoys ranting about football.
Now that you have all the particulars, sit back and enjoy the trip.
London :: Nightlife
London's hippest hotspot, or a hive of wankers? You decide.
Brick Lane; London's Janus-faced temptress. Either the coolest place in London, or the spiritual home of the city's boundless legions of Nathan Barleys. Or maybe both.
Quick backstory. Brick Lane has followed the age-old hipster gentrification process: poor working class area, low rents, immigrants move in (Bangladeshis in this case), so do the gifted-but-broke arterati, gets cool. Also see: Kreuzberg in Berlin, Lavapiés in Madrid, Norrebro in Copenhagen. The result is a heady concoction of trendies, curries, electronica, punks, tramps, yadda, yadda. Get it?
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Inevitably, things reached a tipping point some time back. In fact, the Brick Lane trend-a-thon has even spawned its own resident species; the
Shoreditch Twat. Ah well, if you can't beat them, join them.
For a proper Brick Lane night out, marinade yourself at
Cafe 1001; the quintessential dim lit loungey electronica gaff. Hop across Dray Walk to the Big Chill Bar, the stationary offshoot of the
Big Chill franchise, then join the march to
93 Feet East , Brick Lane's most celebrated club.
Once trollied, an institution awaits. The two bagel shops at 155 and 159 Brick Lane (no-one seems to know which one came first) are compulsory. If Sylvester Stallone was a bagel, this is where he'd be baked. Thick slabs of salt beef, smothered in life-threatening mustard, a bagel, and, um, well that's it. Bloody good, though.
Above: Brick Lane party people
Specific questions about London? Ask away in the comments area below.
Think you have what it takes to be an embed? Send us an email and pitch us.
[Photos: benjilanyado]
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