It is incredible to think that we are just over halfway through the Olympics already! More than 10 000 athletes from 200 national Olympic committees around the globe are taking part, and so far dozens of Olympic and World Records have already been broken – resulting in more than 500 medals already awarded!
US gymnast McKayla Maroney yesterday scored 16,233 with a beautiful vault routine at the 2012 London Olympics. And just like her performance, the judges’ reactions were absolutely perfect.
Bert le Clos, the father of South Africa’s latest Olympic gold medalist, Chad le Clos, has confirmed in a radio interview this morning that his son has withdrawn from the final of the 200m individual medley.
With all the bad (and some good) press the Olympics, it’s great to see videos like this one surfacing. Meet Rachel Onasanwo, who volunteered to help herd fans into the Olympic stadium on Friday. Her dry humour shows a fantasticly sarcastic, yet oddly sincere appreciation for the Games that you simply have to see.
On Friday, cyclists from the “Critical Mass” cycling campaign defied police instructions not to go ahead with their monthly cycle on the eve of the Olympic opening ceremony. This ended up in brawls between police officers and cyclists in central London, resulting in 130 people being arrested.
He may not be competing in the Olympics, but based in London, you can be damn sure that street-artist Banksy will have something to say about the Games. His two latest stencils, “Hackney Welcomes the Olympics” and “Going For Mould” are unfortunately struggling to win favour with British authorities, who have not taken his artwork lightly.
Imagine posing with a friend inside a mall photo booth when suddenly a super metrosexual-looking David Beckham pops his head inside and goes, “can I join you?” That is exactly what happened over the weekend at Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford City – just a stone’s throw from the Olympic Park.
Over the coming weeks the Thames in London will literally be transformed into a floating village of luxury and excess. Up to 100 superyachts are due to arrive for the Olympic Games.
With the London Olympics a mere ten days away, this is a bit of an embarrassment for Boris Johnson to admit. With the decision to outsource security of the games to private security firm G4S, their last-minute withdrawal has left politicians with no choice but to call up members of the military. Many have just returned from deployment in Afghanistan.
Pandas have been on the endangered species list for some time now, so to promote their plight 108 performing pandas took to the streets of London to entertain commuters and passers-by. Click through for the video.
To be honest, I’ve never really followed any of the other olympic torch relays, but this year’s one has been pretty awesome. Kids are trying to steal it, a man with a jetpack is flying with it, and stormtroopers are getting to carry it.
Less than a minute into a speech to mark the month-to-go countdown to the start of the Olympics yesterday, Britain’s prime minister got heckled by a protester. The guy shouted: “Shame on you, David Cameron – you are crippling the poor in London. Shame on you!” Cameron’s response? “Don’t spoil it, sir!”
In a typically outstanding interview with New York Magazine, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, has come out saying that London is a great city because of a “greater range of girls at the bar,” that he’s doing it all for fame, and he wants to “assume supreme power in England” to build an airport in the thames. Radical.
Because nothing happens in Merrie England without Banksy offering some sort of comment on it, a new piece has been spotted near Poundland showing a child laborer at work sewing Union Jacks. Apparently this has something to do with Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. Take a look! It’ll be a postcard soon.
Oh awesome, this makes total sense. The UK’s Ministry of Defense is planning to install surface-to-air missiles on top of residential flats in east London for the duration of the Olympic Games. The bulk of the missile array is intended for the Lexington Building Water Tower, which has about 700 people living in and around it.
As the Olympic Games draw nearer, organisers have made the almost 70 000 volunteers assisting at the Olympiad take a sensitivity quiz to assess their readiness to meet a variety of different people that will be visiting London. Given that this is England, you can bet some of their responses were not… er, productive.
Hoof. The legal battle waged by the the Occupy London camp to keep their place at St Paul’s Cathedral was lost last night – and within about five minutes of the injunction being ordered, the camp was evacuated by bailiffs and officers from the City of London Police.
Earlier this week Seth showed you a video of a charming British woman ranting and raving about ethnic minorities sharing the tram with her and how they are ruining Britain. Since then, two more videos, featuring equally charming ladies went viral. The competition for Britain’s most racist commuter is heating up! See the two new contenders after the jump.
Please enjoy this video taken on a London tram, showing a charming young English woman ranting and raving about ethnic minorities sharing the train with her and how they are ruining Britain – all while her son sits on her lap. Having spent three years living in London, this video comes as no surprise. These […]
I leave in a couple weeks for London, where I will be interviewing Daniel Craig on behalf of Ster-Kinekor for his new movie – a remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. These ‘junkets’ as they’re called, feature journalists from around the world who come in, one after the other, to interview the actors for […]
As part of its promotional campaign for the new Chrome operating system, Google has quietly opened up its first retail store in London, called the “Chrome Zone”. The store is Google’s first venture in realspace retail, using the location to sell its Chromebook computer line.
Please notice the “allegedly” up there. Reports claim that two senior officials at the SABC have been arrested in London after refusing to pay two prostitutes for their services; the two men were in the UK for a business school initiative set up between South African and British academic boards.
London has overtaken New York City as the world’s fashion capital for 2011. Given the number of badly dressed folk in the news looting the English capital at present, this may be difficult for the rest of the world to swallow.
A 20-year-old man in Essex has been charged with “encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence” because he used Blackberry Messenger to invite people to a public water fight. Whether this means British cops can now wiretap the Blackberry messaging network is unclear, but either way: great job, democracy.
Josh Cole is a photographer from London with a strong background in the hip hop, parkour, and street culture. He returned to some of his old haunts following the riots over the last couple of days. Here are some rather disturbing pics of rioters he met, and the kind of weapons they aren’t afraid to use on whoever stands in their way.
There is something encouraging coming out of the past three days of rioting and looting, even if it is a remote silver lining: the online mobilization of volunteer clean-up operations, mostly organized via Twitter and Facebook. By this time yesterday, #riotcleanup, was the second-highest trending topic worldwide.
Well here’s some sport’s news from those kooky guys in fun-lovin’ Iran. The world’s craziest government has now decided that the 2012 London Olympic Games logo is racist.
The other day, while I was busying myself writing articles about men who use Gumtree to swap citizenship for sex, a German artist was doing something infinitely more radical.
As part of an a contemporary art exhibition in London called Drift, Frank Bölter created an enormous paper boat and sailed the Thames in it.
It’s Friday, you should look at this. A classy young John Lydon walks through London in proto-hipster gear, talking about the disintegration of the Sex Pistols and general punk things. He knew the vibe.