Chris Raymond

Christopher is a freelance writer, journalist, editor, animal-lover and Northern expat living in the badlands of Southeast London. He also plays drums in a punk band, and is a film geek, Morrissey devotee and inveterate collector of books.

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Tired of Soho? Time to Go Retro

A gem of a pub light years from Soho’s aspirational candy-coloured, pecs ‘n’ pop gay scene, the Retro bar remains the only alternative gay pub in London – as much a refuge for misfits of the gay scene as London is the refuge for the misfits of the provinces.

The Retro is down-to-earth in its ethos, laid-back in atmosphere and broad in its appeal. Though officially a gay pub, the clientele – from punks and goths to suits-without-ties – is not always so. All sorts come here and sling their shiny pounds into the excellent jukebox (on which Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits nestle side-by-side with Rude Boy Revival). All the popular lagers and ciders are on tap, plus an exhaustive array of bottled booze, all at the relatively lowest prices that Central London will allow. Bar staff are friendly and something of a visual treat – on my last visit the barmaid and bar man looked like they’d been timewarped, respectively, from 1973 and 1981.

There’s a quiz night on Tuesday, plus rockabilly and Glam Rock nights. The upstairs bar is smaller and mellower, with booths. Probably the only pub – gay or straight – in the impersonal West End with a ‘local’ feel. Go Retro!

Retro Bar

Address: 2 George Court, Strand, London WC2N 6HH

Nearest station: Charing Cross underground

Category: Food and Drink

Sub-category: Pubs, Bars

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Bespoke Vintage Menswear in an Endangered Enclave

Before the grim march of Clonetown Britain reached it, Greenwich was once full of offbeat shops and market stalls. The Emporium however has thankfully avoided the corporate cosh and continues to purvey quality vintage menswear to those who care about their flair.

This is not a typical vintage store. The majority of the stock is menswear for a start (although there is a densely-stocked ladies’ corner, heaving with satin, lace and Lurex) and some of it is unworn: it’s not unusual to find still-packaged 40-year-old Brutus Trimfit shirts. You’ll also find seasonal clothing, and formalwear is stocked all year round.

The clothes are all hand-selected, with attention given to great British tailoring, inevitably a dying art in an era where few men seem to give a hoot about their appearance. But you won’t pay through the nose for this level of attention to detail – a suit will set you back a mere £75, slightly more if it’s Savile Row.

There’s dark denim and leather for latter-day Ton-Up Boys, plus Harrington jackets, Sta-prest, polo necks and vintage Chinos - imagine a New Mod smoking a Gauloise outside the Top Rank circa 1980 and you’re on the right track.

The Emporium

Address: 330-332 Creek Road, Greenwich, London SE10

Nearest station: Greenwich Cutty Sark DLR

Category: Retail and Services

Sub-category: Clothing

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Probably the Best Vegetarian Restaurant in London

It once looked like Mildred’s was in the business of turning folk away more than welcoming them, so disproportionate was the size of the premises in relation to its crowds of waiting punters. But they’ve since left the bustle of Covent Garden for the louche environs of Soho’s Lexington Street and, crucially, extra space - and it’s thriving.

Probably the best vegetarian restaurant in London, Mildred’s is often spoken of in awed tones, as if it were an archaeological find. Certainly, it’s worth discovering it if you haven’t already.

Starters are around £6 and include gyoza dumplings in soy sauce and Roman-style artichoke crostini. Main courses are plentiful in choice and come in at around a tenner. On my last visit, I went for porcini and ale pie with chips and mushy peas, which rendered me pleasingly immobile. Puddings include lush pavlovas and pannacottas, tofu cheesecakes and raspberry truffles.

Mildred’s don’t take bookings, presumably because they don’t wish to become one of those ghastly elitist restaurants for which you need to join a decade-long waiting list. Instead, you can kick back in their cosy bar with a dry Martini or blond Belgium beer and wait to be initiated into veggie heaven.

Address: 45 Lexington Street, Soho, London W1F 9AN

Nearest station: Piccadilly Circus Underground

Website: www.mildreds.co.uk

Telephone: [phone]

Category: Food and Drink

Sub-category: Restaurants, bars

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Get Clipped Clean in Darkest Whitechapel

Associations of being on the end of a switchblade in deepest Whitechapel will always conjure up images of fog-bound Victoriana. But that shouldn’t stop you taking a trip into latter-day Whitechapel (as yet still ungentrified - but they’ll get you my pretty, oh yes) and heading for Jack the Clipper for the shave of your life.

A wash, cut and style will set you back less than £20, as will Jack’s Cut, finished off with a rinse and the relaxing touch of a steaming hot towel.

A certain amount of personal courage may be required – along with being fairly hirsute – for the fiendishly named ‘Dig in the Grave’. No manpower or shovels are required, however, just a capacity for chilling out as the cut-throat razor is whipped around your jaw, neck and eyebrows (threading is offered where required too).

The Full Ripper covers all bases: wash, cut style and shave, for £26. The Jack Beard Trim will only set you back £6. For this, your facial rug will be clipped and styled and your neck and cheeks spick ’n’ spanned with a flash of the ol’ cutthroat (they also promise to ‘flame your ears’ which sound s like a schoolboy knockabout prank, but which I’m sure is a more likely to be a procedure through which any rogue wires are removed from said area). For braving this, you’ll be rewarded with a hot towel and invigorating massage.

They never found Jack – but you’ll find Jack’s easily enough. Get down there and you’ll discover there’s no mystery behind’s the shop’s popularity.

Jack the Clipper

Address: 4 Toynbee Street, E1 7NE

Nearest station: Aldgate East underground

Website: www.jacktheclipper.co.uk

Category: Health and Beauty

Sub-category: Barbers

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Steampunk and Sam Smith's in New Cross

The Montague Arms is a cult rough diamond of a boozer: warm, surreal and eccentric in the truest sense. Taking the top spot in Britain’s Best Rough Pubs Guide (i.e. untouched by the pernicious hand of gentrification), The Monty is festooned with pirate ship paraphernalia, cast-offs from a taxidermist’s workshop (check out the stuffed zebra inside a stagecoach) and, crucially, Victorian nauticalia, including frogman suits. It’s only a matter of time before the Steampunk crowd hear of it (over the telegraph, no doubt).

On Sundays, roasts that look like they’ve been prepared for a latter-day Henry VIII ensure that the place is rammed. Fridays nights boast the weirdest bands, DJs, dancing, and a surplus of art students from nearby Goldsmith’s and Camberwell.

Pints and spirits are around £3 and ales including Sam Smith and Black Sheep are available, pulled by the redoubtable northern landlady who sports a Katherine Hepburn cottage-loaf ‘do and displays a wit as dry as her ever-present dainty glass of sherry. She and her hubby have been here since London was swinging (the first time around) and then as now, it’s a cash-only pub – neither AMEX nor attitude have currency here.

The Montague Arms

Address: 289 Queen’s Road, London SE15 2PA. Call for opening times: 020 76394923

Nearest station: New Cross Gate, Queen’s Road Peckham overground

Category: Food and Drink

Sub-category: Pubs

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Crobar: The Devil's Bar of Choice

If they didn’t have one of the heaviest jukebox playlists this side of hell, the Devil would definitely be The Crobar’s in-house DJ. He does have the best tunes, after all.

At first glance, it might seem like the Crobar is in permanent lock-horned rivalry with the nearby 12-Bar Club, but they’re different beasts: Crobar is straight-up, low-down, dirty rock and metal all the way, while the other is more rockabilly and ska.

The bar itself, overlooked by a grinning horned bull’s skull, is chock-full of rock paraphernalia and serves the finely leathered fiends who make up the core clientele every whiskey known to man, along with beer and Jagermeister on tap. The back room hosts gigs to make your ears bleed and there’s an appropriately rocky-surfaced dancefloor. Said room can be quite chilly in the depths of a London winter, which is when you’ll want a warming Bulleit Bourbon and mixer – £2.00 all night, every night, Monday to Thursday. Happy Hour is every night, 4-9.

One piece of advice though - when heading for a session at the Crobar, you’d do well to book yourself a liver transplant in advance. It’s collateral damage for one hell of a night out.

Address: 17 Manette Street, off Charing Cross Rd, London W1D 4AS

Nearest Station: Tottenham Court Road Underground

Opening hours: Mon-Sat, 4pm-3am. Closed Sunday

Website: http://www.crobar.co.uk/

Open large map

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Meat-Free Bohemia South of the River

You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise these days, but the spirit of collectivism is alive and well in our capital, and nowhere more so than at the Bonnington Café, a collective-run vegan and vegetarian eatery in the Bonnington Square Community Centre, opened in the early 1980s as a squat cafe to provide good cheap meals for the community. Tucked away within the centre’s verdant shared gardens, deep in the heart of Vauxhall, this place is just waiting to be “discovered”.

The uncontrived demimonde look of the café manifests itself in mismatched crockery, checked oilcloths and candles on the tables and, usually, an enthusiastic but gentle pianist on the battered old piano (sometimes accompanied by an accordion player). In the dead of winter, there’s a roaring fire in the grate.

But the real reason for the hush of reverence that deservedly surrounds Bonnington’s is the food. For £13, you get three courses (two choices for each) of fresh, home-cooked delights. The chefs change daily and are an international bunch, resulting in wildly inventive and idiosyncratic dishes ranging from new Italian and French to new American (on my last visit, my meal was medieval-inspired Romanian fare).

If you're interested in becoming one of the Cafe's chefs yourself, head to one of their meetings held on the first of every month at 6pm sharp. The place is unlicensed, so bring your own booze (there is no corkage charge). Viva Bohemia!

Address: 11 Vauxhall Grove, London SW8 1TD

Booking: www.bonnigtoncafe.co.uk- where you’ll find the phone number for that day’s chef.

Nearest station: Vauxhall

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Underground Cool in the Belly of the Elephant

In the 21st century, leftfield arts and music venues often surround themselves with similar places in an area saturated with ‘artistic’ types. So Corsica Studios is something of an interesting anomaly. HQ of an independent arts organisation, it nestles in a cavernous railway arch behind Elephant and Castle tube, overlooked by an empty monolithic, brutalist estate block. Back in the day, this would have been a perfectly normal setting for such a place. And the industrial feel of the interior only adds to its timewarped charm.

The whitewashed, curved walls around the bar are often alive with some projection or other, giving it the feel of some NYC ‘Happening’ circa 1967. The minimal bar serves bottled beers (including Buda, Corona and Negra Modelo) wines, spirits and mixers. Performers and club nights are avowedly culty and cool, but not narrow in scope, featuring all styles from Psych-prog and Noise to Japanese Hip-Hop and Bass. Out back behind the stage is a vast smoking area. In winter, this yard looks the very definition of ‘urban’: smoke rising from mouths, cigarettes and the vents of the nearby tube, while the overground trains thunder by in the near distance.

Corisca Studios

Address: 4-5 Elephant Road, London SE17 1LB

Nearest Station: Elephant and Castle (underground and overground)

Website: http://www.corsicastudios.com/

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Rock 'n' Soul on London's own Tin Pan Alley

As the beast that is Crossrail continues to destroy live music venues in Central London, Denmark Street – London’s Tinpan Alley - stands proud and ungentrified, and on it, the 12-Bar Club, reverberating with the Devil’s Music seven nights a week.

The interior pays homage to the earthy watering holes of the American South-West – home of the 12-bar blues. There are vinyl seating booths, a narrow bar, gig space and dancefloor, and a pool room decked out with murals of rockabilly, Two-Tone and blues rock paraphernalia. Out back is an alleyway where you’ll find the nicotine addicted greaser guys and gals who are the mainstays of the 12-Bar’s punters.

There’s live music nightly, running the gamut from psychobilly to folk. All the best beers, lagers and light ales are available on tap and there are often deals on whiskeys and mixers. A small café counter in the front serves the blackest coffee until 7pm.

When the stage is empty, there’s the jukebox, which offers twangy Blues, frenetic rockabilly, punk, hardcore, soul, Motown, ska and stax. Avoid Lonesome Town and head here for some big beat from Badsville.

Address: Denmark Street, London WC2H 8NL

Nearest Station: Tottenham Court Road

Opening hours: Monday-Saturday 7pm-3am. Sunday 7pm-12.30pm

Café is open Mon-Fri 11-7 and Sunday 12-7

Website: http://www.12barclub.com/