Croydon

Picked up my bike today in Brixton, happy to be surrounded by Caribbean people. In honor of Celeste Olalquiaga's fabulous book The Artificial Kingdom, I decided to head from Brixton up to the Crystal Palace, where you can the remains of this paragon of Victoria architecture which was built in 1851 after industrialization permitted the manufacture of large glass panes (see en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Palace). All that's left is the stone surround and this statue overlooking it.

Then, I headed off to the land North of the River on the first stop on my cheese pilgrimage: the Neal's Yard Dairy. The shop was everything I had imagined, and one of the cheesemongers gave me tastes of everything! Sadly, the camera on my phone went berserk and wouldn't focus on anything, so I give you blurry pictures of delicious cheese...

Later on, I met up with my fabulous student Jacob, who just filed his dissertation at the London School of Economics! We went to place for cute drinks called Oriole in the Borough Square Market on Poultry Lane. It was a bit over the top, especially the "blue" corn in a pisco-sour-influenced drink that was actually baby corn soaked in blue food coloring (for real). A world of Orientalist nostalgia in liquor!Læs mere