Tube Fancy Dress Quiz

A Costume for Cockfosters

I often get asked about how to get hold of the London Underground Font to produce and invite to the London Underground Fancy Dress party. People then ask for suggestions as to how to how to dress up as a Tube station (well like the names of Tube Stations) as an idea for themed parties. Last week Toyoko sent me the following picture where you had to guess which Tube stations people were dressed as


So I thought it would make a good quiz. It's in two parts:

1. Guess one of the stations that people are dressed as above - a, b, c or d. Just one please (people being smart alecs and guessing more than one will be disqualified) and you get a bonus point if you give a different guess to the person immediately before you. You should be able to make them out and c's pretty obvious.

2. If you were going to a London Underground fancy dress party, what station would you go as and what would you wear? Again please just make one suggestion so other people have a chance to guess too. Although if a number of you want to go as Cockfosters that's fine as long as you all come up with a different costume!

The prize is a Tube Traveller Teddy Bear



To enter leave your email address and/or blog/website with your answers in the comments below. Please leave all your answers in one entry and you can only enter once! You have until 23.59 GMT, Sunday 10th September to enter.

Neil will do his paperclip selection from the people with the most points and I'll probably throw in some suprise prizes for particularly inventive answers to part two.

Have fun.

London Underground Fashion Victims

Fashion Victims on the Tube

You've still got a few days to nominate Ms and Mr TFV (Tube Fashion Victim) 2006, but we're back with the normal week's look at slaves to fashion on the Tube or people with a particular style that they've taken and "made it their own" (Ah X-Factor Louis Walsh we love you - I'm almost tempted to be the 46th member of his fan club).

Girls in Combats

Seem to be a growing trend of women wearing camoflagued combats at the moment. They're a fairly blokey thing to wear, so how do you make them look a bit more girly.

One trick is to buy a pair that have butterflies in them and wear with some big black boots - just in case people think you've sold out by getting girly butterfly ones in the first place


Alternatively go full the full on camo look but make sure you're wearing a lot of girly bracelets to go with them.


Luggage Trousers

The following guy's trousers provide a very efficient way of dealing with the hand luggage ban we had on planes recently.


Wear trousers that look as though you could fit enough things for a short break in the pockets. Certainly handy when the Tube announcer tells you to remember to take all of your personal belongings with you when you leave the train.

We Lurve Leopardskin

Well I don't really, but the two ladies below were in a bit of a leopardskin frenzy. Firstly we have leopardskin leggings with a micro denim skirt so micro that you can't even see it


Then we have a leopard skin bag where the lady loves leopards so much she decided to keep the poor creature's face in the bag


She's resourceful though this woman. She obviously accidently spilt a load of bleach onto her jeans which also ripped each leg in half down the front. I think she then used the points on her Ali Baba shoes to poke some holes into her jeans, only so that she could tie them back together again with some leather straps. Genius.

Crocodile Rock

At last we capture the lesser spotted Croc on the Tube. Are these hideous rubber clogs set to be this year's Ugg boots?


I spotted so many people wearing them in general but Neil managed to grab this woman wearing a pair on the Tube. What a fine worn specimen they are. Half clog, half wellington boot and about half as comfortable I'd imagine.

Jesus Loves Calvin Kleins

Finally Mr Post Modern Irony man


Simply loving the way he teams camo combats with a Jesus Loves You belt and a Bollywood bag. Coupled with his grey Calvin Kleins he looks trendtastic!

That's it for this week. Don't forget to nominate Mrs & Ms TFV and if you've missed the whole set they can be seen on the following Flickr set.

Snakes on a Drain

Drain Delayed

Just as you thought you could travel on the Waterloo & City Line again. Just as you were going to happily wander through the never ending white corridor. Just as you were about to drop a few coins in the cheerful busker's guitar case along the way. Along comes Samuel L Jackson screaming "Get those mother f**king snakes off that mother f**king Drain"


Surely that's got to be the reason why the Drain isn't re-opening on time.

I spose we should have got suspicious when Metronet took the countdown clock from their website. I think 4Queen&country has inside knowledge as when I asked people to make a guess as to when it would open, she said September 11th which is now looking like the earliest date. How spooky is that?

Life on the Moscow Subway

Greetings from Russia

Not sure where Moscow appeared in the public transport survey featured yesterday, but it's good to see that it's not all grand palatial stations and they have their fair share of weird and wonderful commuters too. Many thanks to Jess who sent me a link to a blog entry from englishrussia which included the following photos:


A soldier cleaning his gun on the subway with the woman next to him not remotely interested.


Interesting subway sleeper - certainly not the most comfortable headwear to sleep in.


What looks like Joseph Stalin on the subway!

And they've even got their own subway fashion victims.....





Check out the the whole blog entry - loads more pictures and as the blogger says "There are plenty of other interesting people that you would be able to meet if you decide someday to travel to Russia".

London has World's Best Transport System

It's official London's Transport Rox

Just remember if you used any public transport to get around today that it's the best in the world. Forget about yesterday's strike which "crippled" South West Trains, that was just a blip. If you travelled under someone's armpit this morning, don't worry, that was just being cosy. If you stood for half an hour waiting for a bus and then three turned up at once, just laugh along with fellow queuees, and say "Don't you just love having the best transport system in the world?". If you travelled on the Northern Line. Erm, well, erm. Oh just ignore this next bit.

TripAdvisor (with emphasis on the trip - what were they on?) carried out an international survey where they questioned 2,000 people and 25 per cent believed that London had the best public transport in the world.

New York was second, Paris was third and Los Angelos came bottom. But how many cities' public transport system had each person used for London to be top? I have travelled on the subway in Paris, Mexico, Lisbon and Toronto and as much as I like the Tube I'd say they were all a good deal more efficient than London.

Perhaps it's a case of the grass always being greener on the other side. Admittedly I've never commuted on a daily basis in any of those cities (although I have travelled on all of them in the rush hour), so perhaps commuting is like a marriage or a relationship in that you really have to live with something day in, and day out before you can either appreciate its little quirks or rush off to marriage guidance.

If the majority of people questioned were holiday makers, perhaps like me, they just remember the good things about travelling in London. City travel while on holiday is like having an affair or a holiday romance. You probably even see the delays and over crowding as exciting or charming ('Guess what', you can say at dinner parties in Australia, 'We were stuck on the Tube for two hours - how we laughed'). It's sort of fun because you haven't got to put up with it all the time.

"Two in five said the most important quality of a transportation system was that it went everywhere they needed to go, which was considered even more important than safety (30 per cent), proximity (16 per cent), frequency (5.5 per cent), cost (4 per cent), cleanliness (1 per cent) and comfort (0.8 per cent)." So I'll grudingly accept that you can get more or less anywhere in London by public transport - although it's interesting to see that speed of getting there didn't figure as part of the equation.

Also the respondents weren't completely deluded. No matter how much TfL try to spin that we have great value travel in London, we don't - and that's official.

"London's public transport services get a lot of bad press but it seems that the international travelling community think it's the tops all round, even taking into account that it is also thought to be the most expensive" said Michele Perry from Trip Advisor.

Enough of my ramblings, what do you think? Does London deserve it's honour of having the best public transport in the world? If not, which city would you have voted for?

Oystercard Overseas

Is there nothing that Ken Livingstone won't do to flog Oystercards? Dmitri sent me a link from the BBC's site showing that from March next year if you live in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Spain, Portugal and the USA, you'll be able to travel "smarter, faster & cheaper" with Oyster.

However our Sheriff wasn't quite as positive as the glowing research above "The best way for visitors to travel around the capital is usually by public transport" he said. "Usually" by public transport? C'mon Ken, you know nothing, we've the best public transport system in the world, there's no usually about it.

But hey-ho at least having an Oystercard might mean a faster route through the barriers themselves. It's quite galling being behind anyone who 's not got fast ticket or Oystercard swiping action at the gates. I've seen a number of tourists try to put their credit cards through the travelcard slot, or waving their credit cards over the Oystercard reader and expecting their cards to be magically debited. Perhaps those days may be coming to an end.