8 Track Cartrige Family

Locale is staggeringly overpriced for what it is and the people who run it clearly have not paid enough attention to either the quality of the food most people expect at these prices, the service, which from my experience this evening is embarrassingly poor even at this early stage and especially the interior design which combines an uninspiring layout with a depressingly banal choice of materials and colours. I live around the corner so I really wanted to like Locale but it suffers from a poverty of imagination at all levels. Your average Strada is 25% cheaper and 500% better designed with a vastly superior wine list to boot. I'm sure the people behind Locale are well intentioned but if you want to charge these obscene prices you need to ensure that the focaccia doesn't have a crust (it had clearly been in the oven some time rather than placed there for the order - a very telling sign of lack of culinary knowledge in the kitchen), the menu needs to be much more adventurous, the service needs to improve by a quantum of at least 10 and the overall environment needs the touch of someone who understands contemporary dining sensibilities.

As you're in to Klimt then you'll need half a day for the rest of the delights of Tate Liverpool. The Walker Art Gallery has an impressive collection of painting, sculpture and objects and the building itself has considerable charm. The Walker is right across from the neo-classical splendour that is St.George's Hall which is a pretty gobsmacking experience If you're into film you should head to FACT on Wood St. It's the best contemporary building in the city centre and is in the middle of the buzzy Ropewalks district. Just across the road from FACT is Alma de Cuba an extraordinary bar cum restaurant in a converted church. Stay at the boutique Hope St Hotel - which has a brasserie and restaurant - and is situated midway between the two cathedrals But most of all just walk around. Liverpool has a unique character and identity and there's an enormous amount of pleasure to be had from wandering around the streets and squares of the city centre. You might want to check this out http://www.liverpool08.com/

Can anyone suggest the best and most time efficient way to get from ED to London City Airport by public transport?

Look, Green and Blue is a huge asset for the area. Get over yourselves. Reds is right. Even if you don't like or enjoy what they do they've completely raised the bar in terms of quality and range of wines available in the area and they are one of the reasons I've chosen to live in this transport-challenged neck of the woods. The perverse latent nostalgia for the old unreconstructed rubbish that used to characterise the lane that raises its ugly head here from time to time is just plain dumb. Move on. Or move out. And while you're at get some of your buddies to open a decent clothes shop or two for men, a proper bookshop cum record shop so I don't have to keep using Amazon or i-tunes or phonica or trundle up the road to the excellent Review, an independent cinema should be a priority and a contemporary art space or two to would bring a welcome contemporary cultural edge to the area and would make the cosy suburban smugness much more tolerable. Get on to it ED.

That's terrible. I'm on East Dulwich Road. Whereabouts are you flong? Did the police shed any light on it?

You're on the wrong thread here Melody. Try this one: http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?20,70249

Michael Haneke's new film is coming out in the new year. It's called Funny Games US and it's a frame-or-frame remake of 'Funny Games' which he made in Austria 10 years ago. I saw it at the London Film Festival and it's an absolutely devastating and disturbing piece of work, but gripping and playful at the same time. Transfering it to the US context really works. Check it out if you can.

But the worst eastern european tv accent of recent years has to go to Dennis Hopper in his mercifully brief - though admittedly entertaining - appearance towads the end of the first series of 24. Maybe it was an elaborate joke by his voice coach but Serbian masterminds don't come less Serbian than Dennis Hopper's performance.

Spooks is glossy, fast-paced entertainment of an entirely different order to most British TV. It doesn't feel compelled to explain everything to its audience, for constant exposition, and for neat resolution. What we get from Spooks barely resembles traditional dialogue - with questions, answers, follow-ups - and if you want that you'll have to tune into Cranford or Casualty The action - laced with fragments of colloquy to which James Joyce would be hard-pressed to ascribe narrative coherence - proceeds at such a rate that there seems to be no distinction between the intentionally compressed "last week's episode in a 20-second nutshell" introductions and the rest of a given episode. Blink and not only have you missed it, but everyone in EC1 has been blown up, chief suspects interrogated and alibis confirmed, and all of a sudden it turns out some trusted insider you've only met for 10 seconds (in 10 different scenes) has masterminded the entire thing using only a black pudding, string vest and a borrowed nuclear trigger from a Kazakhstani carpet salesman. Now that's quality tv.

Wenders golden period was his road movies of the 70's and 80's and really, really, really if you haven't seen Alice in the Cities, go see it. The atmosphere of the film is completely intoxicating. Agree about 'Until..', but most artists make their best work towards the beginning of their careers when they're less self-aware and conscious of trying to please their public(s).

So... inspired by the film thread and Timothy Spall's TV project being shot in the neighbourhoood it'd be good to know what everyone thinks is the best thing on tv right now and why? A friend recommended the HBO series The Wire. It's set in Baltimore and as far as I know hasn't been aired n the UK. I bought the DVD of the first series last week and it's utterly complelling and gives the Hill St Blues formula the Heineken effect: in other words it goes places other police dramas don't - or perhaps can't - go. The focus on the detail of the social and political forces that shape the lives of the black underclass in Baltimore is fascinating and revealing and I'm totally hooked. Wish I had more time to set aside and watch.

Michael Palaeologus Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Paris Texas with the great Ry Cooder (I think) > guitar riff echoing in and out. There'a a whole season of Wim Wenders movies at the BFI Southbank starting in January including the very wonderful Alice in the Cities. Anyone seen that?

Ultra You got a problem with scousers? As the Police - and various books on the subject - subsequently revealed, the Bulger scenario (temporarily kidnapping and torturing kids) is cruelly played out every day by kids and adults across the land, though it seldom leads to such devastatingly tragic conclusions. Venables and Thomson's particular psychosis is the result of our collective neglect and ignorance of entire communities over generations and indifference to random acts of violence (whether implicit or applied0 is not geographically specific. Singling out Liverpool people in this way is nothing more than a casual form of racism. So Ultra, I suggest you keep your prejudices to yourself.

*Bob* Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Santasangre... seeing as this forum is mainly > comprised of people who either already live in ED > (or wish they did), it would be interesting to > hear from a 'potential' incomer for a change. > > Where are you coming from? What have you heard? > What is your perception of SE22? I'm in the process of buying (in the area) so you know the curve: started off thinking this was full of life's little pleasures (good food and drink, independent retail sensibility, lovely open spaces, good mix of people and ages, enough grit to make sure it wouldn't become too pleased with itself) but then started to see some of the cracks and the wrinkles, including the lack of places where young movers and shakers move and shake. That gives any place a good energy and a bit of edge - essential to city life, even in a suburban setting. But maybe that's up the road in SE15? Anyway, I'll be joining you soon for the scrabble, the local history lessons, the strolls in the park, the book club, the ceramic painting, the footie, the bar (and lounge) at the CPT, the mass protests about the privatisation of public space, the Foxton's-are-the-devil workshops, the quiz nights at the Rye Hotel, the galleries on North Cross Rd, the campaign to attract a sushi restaurant, the 11 quid sandwich, the search for geese in Goose Green and the banter, wit and community spirit generously sprinkled across the mean streets of ED.

... and one reason why I shouldn't.