London Underground Fashion Victims

Fashion Victims on the Tube

Ah, it's Friday again, and the regular weekly look at this week's fashion victims. The beginning of September is generally a weird time of year for clothes. It's not summer, but it's not quite autumn either and London has been reasonably warm. Although I've somehow managed to get a late summer cold. The ladies featured below are either making the most of summer's final rays or not......

Not so pretty in pink

Hmm the lady below is in a quandrary, she's managed to find items of clothing that are almost all the same shade of pink and thrown them together.


I used to go for a very co-ordinated collection of colours when I was younger thinking it would work, but as I've got older I've realised this makes it look as though you're trying a bit too hard.

Pink boots, pink belt, pink necklace, pink cardigan. Sensibly she didn't go the whole hog with pink jeans and pink underwear.

Backlaces

Footballer's girlfriend Colleen McLoughlin has been paid by Asda to do a lot of sashaying down the streets to the tune "Pretty Woman" warbled by a bunch of street urchins. She flicks back her locks at one point to provocatively reveal a backless top:


The woman above is going the same way but with much more back on show and a delightful "backlace" to go with it.

Micro Shorts

I'm just jealous of this girl as she has the figure to carry it off


But interesting contrast between her and her friend. Hot Pants Lady felt it was warm enough to hardly wear much at all, whereas her mate is more autumnally dressed.

Is that a Skelt?

Finally one of those cases where your belt is as long as your skirt, or is it that your skirt is as short as your belt?


There was something quite sad about this girl. It was only about 9pm at night and she was carrying a single rose. Was it at date that had ended abruptly? Or was she going on to a blind date where she said, "I'll be the one carrying a rose and wearing a belt as my skirt. You can't miss me." I guess we'll never know.

That's it for this week. The previous week's victims can be found here and if you've missed the whole set they can be seen on the following Flickr set.

Piccadilly Line Station of the Future

Project Eden meets The Tube


If you've got half an eye for design, good foresight, planning skills or you just like playing with "mixed media", you've got the opportunity to design a Piccadilly Line station of the future.

The example shown above looks like something out of the Jetsons or a Ray Bradbury sci-fi novel, as I really can't see us having floating stations with giant roof gardens and the sort of climate control you get in giant green houses or places like Project Eden. But who knows?

The competition is split into three categories - under 18's, over 18's and Transport for London Staff. Which is quite interesting - why a separate category for TfL staff? With most competitions that are open to the public, staff can't enter, so I can only guess there is some motivational - ten year plan - visionary thing going on, where we get to see how staff would envisage their ideal station.

I imagine the Piccadilly Line station of the future from a TfL viewpoint would be pretty empty, with no tourists, no children, no old people and certainly no one without an Oystercard. The TfL station of the future would have sensors that could recognise drunks, druggies, and graffiti artists from five yards. Once they entered the five yard radius a piercing ear-drum splitting sound would be emitted that only people who had a penchant for drugs, booze and spray paint cans could hear.

I'm generally rubbish at drawing but I have some ideas of items I'd like to see in a Piccadilly Line station of the future, and if someone wants to visualise them I'm happy to share the prize booty (including lots of cinema swag, one year membership to the V & A and goodies from CBBC's Underground Ernie - they spoiling us!). Perhaps we could come up with some sort of bulk entry.

If you're looking for some inspiration check out "Beautiful Subways from around the World", as many other countries already seem to be light years ahead of us in terms of design.

The combined metro and tram station in Oberhausen from the Rhine Ruhr area was built in 1996:


I also love this shell like entrance to Abando station in Bilbao. The entrances were designed by Sir Norman Foster in 1995 and are nicknamed fosteritos


Ideas welcome in the comments and the more futuristic the better.

The Tube by the evening freebies

London Lite and The London Paper battle it out

Regular commuters will know by now that in addition to the morning Metro, we now have not one but two free papers to see us home at night. London Lite escaped last Friday and on Monday The London Paper hit the outside of Tube stations. Moley kindly sent me an email with some interesting thoughts on how the one of the capital's new papers covered the London Underground. Will it be the sign of things to come?

"Monday was the night when The London Paper was launched to go head to head with last weeks new freebie, the London Lite.

So, apart from the fact that they both ran with the same lead story - Steve Irwin's untimely death - you thought one of them might have gone for a big fat London exclusive.

Well, yes - one did. The London Paper on page 6 has the story "£6bn Games travel plan" which begins:

"A £6 BILLION masterplan aimed at ending London's commuter misery and reading the capital for Olympic glory has been exclusively revealed to thelondonpaper...."

This exclusive story has more big gaps in it than the Northern Line's service to Mill Hill East! I choose just a selection for you....


"Long-suffering commuters on London's neglected North London Silverlink line and passengers on the East London line from Shoreditch to New Cross will be among the first to benefit."

OK - The NLL comes to TfL from Autumn 2007, but the East London Line (phase 1) will not be fully delivered until June 2010!!!! If they are among the first, then we should all panic now.

"On Wednesday, Mayor Ken Livingstone will confirm he has signed a "225 million new contract to deliver 30 new trains on the North London Line"
How about this press release then from last Thursday.

Page 10 and 11 then go onto show the improvements for the Olympics - as you will notice they are all 'shocks'

Jubilee Line - Upgrade to the signalling

District Line - Rolling stock refurbished by 2009

Central Line - Capacity Upgrade

Station Upgrade - All 275 stations refurbished by 2010 (This is way behind schedule)

Bond Street to be upgraded sooner than 2010 (They obviously have not been through Bond Street recently, it's happening - now!)

Upgrading of all sub surface lines to get 15% increase in train service by March 2012 (They however forget to mention the S Stock.)

Canning Town, West Ham and Stratford - Stations to be upgraded to take DLR services. (Well, I've used DLR services at Canning Town and Stratford before - so 1/3 isn't bad!)

Woolwich Arsenal - Extension of DLR line with new station (Yes, because this is already under construction).

Bank to Lewisham line - Platforms to be extended for 3 car trains (Old news? They go on to tell you that an increase from 2 to 3 cars is a 50% increase in capacity - you don't say!).

Poplar and Canning Town - "New three car-trains" (We don't know what they will do with these three car trains at Poplar and Canning Town - perhaps turn them into offices?)

Four new stations to relieve at High Street, Abbey Road and Star Lane. (Yup - count them, one, two, three - errr????).
"Hoxton clubbers can look forward to their own Tube stop for the first time" - since when has there been planned a TUBE service to Hoxton? TfL Rail - yes indeed.

Finally - the article states "Up to 240,000 passengers disgorging at the Olympic Hub [Stratford]" - The Dictionary definition of Disgorging:
1. To bring up and expel from the throat or stomach; vomit.
2. To discharge violently; spew.
3. To surrender (stolen goods or money, for example) unwillingly.
4. To discharge or pour forth contents.

Erm, I'm staying away from Stratford!!!!

As you can see Moley wasn't exactly wild about the "news" in The London Paper.

He concludes by saying: "The London Paper appears to have modelled itself on the Guardian whereas London Lite is a cross between The Metro and The Mirror. Incidentally, tonight the distributors were both stood next to each other trying to convince their victims (sorry, I mean readers) to choose their respective papers. There also appears to be an unwritten rule whereby you may not have a copy of each free paper! As I got yelled at both distributors for taking one of each!

After tonight's performance, The London Paper have scored an almighty own goal and handed the upper hand to London Lite. Let battle commence........"

It's too early for me to have developed a favourite yet, but I am now having a bit of a time warp and thinking that night time is morning time with the amount of discarded papers strewn over the seats in the evening. Are London and the Underground seats big enough for two evening freebies?

Out of this world on the London Underground

Tube Roundel in a virtual world

Continuing in the series of the London Underground Roundel spotted in various places around the world other than London. Many thanks to James Petts who was in the virtual world of Second Life when he spotted part of the roundel


So it appears that even virtual shops are nicking the roundel for their signage. James said "It was not clear why the logo had been chosen, but it is the first take-off of the roundel that I have seen in a virtual world. Where next - Mars?"

I had seen the logo in a Tomb Raider game where Lara Croft was acting like any normal person on the Tube


"Run and jump to grab the crack in the wall, and shimmy right. Jump to the ceiling panel and drop to the crawlspace. Use the ticket at the barrier, wary of rats and other vermin."

Weird how there's no escape from the Tube even when you're trying to get out of this world.

But if you're Harvey out of So Solid Crew and now in Daddy Cool you might think the Tube is as exciting as a virtual world. In yesterday's London Lite he said "The Tube is an adventure, the way all the lines join up". If that's an adventure, I'd love to know what he thinks a hum-drum day is.

Pantless in Paddington or Keckless in Kensington

Trouserless subway riders arrested

Many thanks to Sara who sent a link to a video from Improveverywhere where a group of New Yorkers travelled on the subway without any trousers and bizarrely got themselves arrested:


"One frustrated cop freaked out and called in 25 more. 8 were ticketed and summonsed to court, 6 of the 8 were handcuffed and traveled in police vans to a precinct. Everyone has been released and is fine."

With some of the microskirts we've seen on the Tube, I'm not sure if anyone in London would have even noticed, but where is the crime in travelling around on the subway with no trousers? Perhaps if Pantless Subway Riding was labelled as performance art the participants would have been given the Turner Prize? Do you think the same thing would have happened on the Tube?

There have been occasions when Circle Line Parties have been stopped due to the police being a bunch of killjoys. Perhaps the powers that be are just happy with keeping the Underground a miserable place where you can't have any fun, you can't talk, you can't have a laugh or even try to get fellow passengers to have a double-take.