If you're not living on the edge, then you're taking up too much room...

Upping sticks and moving gaff can be a big ting, especially when it comes to leaving an area you've become a part of, that gives you a sense of self and purpose. But so it goes. You can't stand still.You're just getting in the way. Move on motherfuckers!

We high tailed it out of Dalston in mid-September to our new ends of Tottenham after a year of trying. Turning mid-thirties means it's probably time to give up our old place and make way for the next wave of starry eyed dreamers who believe life starts and ends in the N16 post code. Or at least, those who can afford it - elegant slumming such as this comes at a price. But for us, with the car boot at the bottom of our bed, the Marquis of Lansdowne across the road, Super Kebab, the Basak Off Licence, the weird grumpy guys in Kristina Records, the trendy overpriced clothes in Huh, Dalston and Hackney have become embossed in our very beings.

We've seen and done many things while in Dalston. One of the weirdest was nicking a doob off the youths downstairs, smoking it, then hallucinating we were being attacked by a helicopter to the point where I woke up and ran out into the street to find out what was happening. Or when we got so battered at Bar Tipsy that the owners had to carry us home. Or when I lost my keys after my work Xmas party, so had to sleep on the steps, Or when we had people back and ripped the breakfast bar off the wall. Good times yeah.

But now it's all change. Particularly with the Nordic Loft Space next door, possibly sign posting what the future of N16 is going to look like, At least in the eyes of developers who are really those who hold the cards when it comes to etching our future. So see you later Dalston. You've been kind if not very, very silly...

The view

A grand a month and you could get all this

Dalston wo(men) vs Istanbul kebabs

When we told some folk we were going to Istanbul the other month, they looked at us with worry and uncertainty. You're going there? Why are you going there? This was after the recent terror attacks in the Turkish capital so I guess their concerns were warranted. But when we landed the vibe was still extremely large and in charge despite the recent traumas. There certainly weren't many Brits on the flight over and the Air BNB dude Ali (nice, decent, thorough, peculiar of gait) said the city was quieter than usual but everyone we met was totally vibes and seemed unfazed by goings on.

As such, we didn't let the recent badness piss on our chips. Instead, our trip was spent catching ferries, mooching, avoiding the hustle and zorbing between tourist spots while attempting to imbibe as many kebabs as possible. This was perhaps one of the best bits. For living in Dalston it is truly a pleasure to be surrounded by so many Turkish joints (Superkebab - I'm looking at you here babs) but this jaunt was almost a pilgrimage to the homeland of this meaty, veggie, greasy, bready treat.

We spent much of the space in between the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia and Taksim Square with our gobs open noshing. Here are the best things we ate and why yo.

Fish sandwich

Not technically a kebab sure (there's nothing technical about this - it wasn't a kebab - it's a fish butty) but you still need to get this stuffed inside you. You can get them by the Galata Bridge and they come served with a pickle juice. Sit by the bins and try to eat them while avoiding the seagulls attempting to peck you to death. Yummo?  

Kasap Osman

We were on our way to the Blue Mosque when we happened upon this beauty. Recommended by our man Joe Todd we hadn't even had breakfast before taking it on. And why not? If you're not averaging two kebabs a day, then you're behaving incorrectly. 

Zübeyir

We had to go down a street full of men smoking and drinking to find this place but don't let that put you off or distract you. It's a truly wonderful place where they even gave our kebab a little hat made out of bread. Whoops... 

THIS KEBAB IS A TRICK

This was served up on the main tourist drag of Istikal Street and was a trick you should not fall for. You see these young men slicking up loads of delicious looking meat from the elephants legs on display. But when you go over and ask for one, they go round the back and serve you one of these things. It's about 50p sure but fam, where's the meat yo? 

Hamdi Kebab

This joint is towards the southern end of the Galata Bridge and is elevated. So, if heights are your bag, you can grab a great view of Istanbul. It was raining when we went in so you couldn't see fuck all but no matter, the meat was top class. There were a lot of old turks in here with trophy wives which suggests it's could be a classy establishment. Get yourself in there...

We used this as a guide - plus special props to Joe Todd for the encouragement.

Kiss the Fist is back @Tipsy 27/02/2015 - lock up your daughters

We're back - here's the skinnnnnnnnnnnny...

'We’ve come here to kick ass and discover the true meaning of the word balearic. And we're all out of asses to kick...'

It may be bleak midwinter but the Kiss the Fist Allstars DJ squad will be keeping it totally tropical when they land at Dalston's Tipsy on Friday 27 February. That's right - while your hands are feeling frosty from the annual seasonal retreat into meteorological horror, you'll be able to heat up your ears and limbs for a wild night of turntable driven tomfoolery from the infamous crew.

Previous outings have seen KTF bring their in sound from way out to the capital as well as further afield party spots including off-Sonar Lex Record parties and Danish weddings. They may never have been to Ibiza but they've literally journeyed all over east London risking calluses from the kilos of disco, lengthy 12 inch re-edits and popper fuelled hi-NRG anthems they carry. Expect drone logic from the likes of Heaven 17, Emperor Machine, the Doobie Brothers, Eskimo Twins and Rick James. This session will see fellow Tarzan Boy aficionado Pat Mandu join Spruce Springsclean, Donald Slump and Jimpotent as they continue to look for the one thing that's kept them together - their ongoing quest for the balearic beat...

Facebook event ting soon come - Get to know our top flight guest via his SoundCloud and MixCloud zones... We'll be rolling like..

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One man's shite is another man's unicorn

If you have a peak out our bedroom window (if you can get to it through the mounds of unwashed undies - my unwashed undies), then you'll get an eyeful of the Princess May school's playground in Dalston. During the week it's highly likely the screams and shouts of the kids will wake you from your hangover. However, at the weekend, it's the rumbling of the car boot shaking itself to life which provides the soundtrack to flayling about looking for a glass of water and the ibuprofen.

The car boot has been a constant since we've lived here. Most of the better items in our flat, including clothes, shoes and posh pots, have the origins in the cast offs of other people. Many of the shit DVDs were picked up from an old dude with a 4x4. I even bumped into a good mate from another part of the country who I hadn't seen for nearly ten years in the car boot. It's a right special place so the notion of having our own pitch to raise some charity dosh was one we took to with thick dollops of wild gusto.

In keeping with the other constant since being here, we went for one bev at nearby boozer the Marquis of Lansdowne the night before and ended up having a total skinful with some strangers. It meant only five hours kip until we had to drag ourselves up and into the queue for the booty sale. But no matter. The endeavour still turned out to be life affirming in the extreme. It just so happens that certain people really want other people's shite. We sold millions of CDs, plenty of clothes, books galore, organic coat hangers, and bits of tat that no one in their right mind could use but still couldn't resist. Hotel slippers at the competitive price of 20p. A ring - for you mate 20p. Our arguably wayward way with a haggle almost lead us to flogging a piece of jade possibly worth £100 for a couple of quid but other than that it was a triumph. We made a whole load of dosh, plus the burgers are to die for. What are you waiting for? Get yourself a pitch!

Early doors mateee

Hello you

Selling hard

Balearic Mike

Balearic Mike is one of my favourite DJs. Everything about him is ace. The name, the slight podge (gained from a life spent drinking beers and searching/longing for vinyl), the fact he's a Manc, his flowing mane of hair and funny dress sense all make for a character who's almost larger than life. Add up all that, plus his impeccable taste in music and you've got a right dude on your hands. We caught him down at the Dance Tunnel in Dalston where he played a load of hot boogie business for Disco Bloodbath.

He didn't seem too impressed when I drunkenly staggered over  to say how much I loved his aura. But hey ho - check out a mix below. It's top banana...

Dancing

Balearic Mike in the  mix

America part uno

The classic American road trip has inspired much in the way of words and passed into folk lore as a right of passage. All the beat poets who first clambered on the road may have been terrible lyricists but they sure had a thirst for travel. Almost as much they did for ale and reefer. So back in September, we spent two weeks in the US emulating the likes of Kerouac, Ginsbery et al by driving down the country's west coast and taking in the sights, the smells and owt else we could stick in the senses.

The trip started at the IBIS in Heathrow. We’d decided to sleep at the airport, believing that it would make more sense than getting a taxi at stupid o’clock to catch our early flight. What could go wrong? Well it's proximity to the terminal gave us even more of an excuse to get properly pished in the hotel bar. We got whammied enough to sleep through the alarm, then had to hotfoot it, quick sharp to the airport. The triple headache of hangover, lengthy in-flight movies and extreme fatigue meant that landing in Chicago felt like being slapped in the face. It was all a bit too much to begin with. The woman covered in sick talking to herself on the inter-airport terminal train was scary. The guy with the deep baritone passing us on the escalator saying ‘Hellloooo, welcommeee to Chicago’ made us feel anything but. Only the pub next to the gate made sense. We sat there for a couple of hours and made the decision to acquire fridge magnets from everywhere we stopped.

Chicago airport travelator

Landing in Portland was a vibe. It's like Dalston, except cleaner and less frayed around the edges. The crazies are crazier but they don't want owt from you. Beers tasted beerier. Burgers were bigger. Beards are just as beardy. The best bits of Portland were many but included visiting the seedy environs of the Devil’s Point on the Sunday night. Being my birthday (32 innit – fuck getting old), we turned up pissed to be confronted by a thick fug of weed and the sounds of the karaoke wafting through the chilly September air. It's only on getting inside that you realise it’s also a strip joint. Bonkers. Until then, I’d never seen a fat,elderly woman sing a ropey version of White Town’s Your Woman while an athletic stripper did her thing on a nearby pole. Never lived mate.

Outside Devil's Point

The day after was spent attempting to drive a car on the wrong hand side of the road. Doing this for the first time with the added frisson of a soul crushing hangover was a real challenge. Bereft of all emotion and chat, we got lost somewhere in Portland and ended up attempting our jaunt to the nearby Mount Hood in the opposite way to the directions we'd received. Cue tears at wheel of car due to total frustration at inability to act like a proper man. Cue despair. Cue more tears. Cue having to go to Starbucks for a piss. Cue hysterics. This was character building business out in the wilderness. For the first time, I felt what it was like to be grizzly man.

Paranoid and panicked outside Calamity Jane's diner

Tears almost came again when attempting to hire a car for the vaguely pre-planned road trip. In between sight seeing, we'd had another heavy one as our adieu to Portland and arrived at the airport attempting to find our hire car collection. We found the Enterprise desk, queued up and spoke to the over friendly dude on the counter, only to be denied due to a lack of credit card and licence in the same name. Spirits fell like a guillotine coming down on a neck in an European revolution. It was a real low. The pits. The worst. It was only due to the dude at National car hire ripping us off to the tune of 'shitloads' that enabled our trip to get off the ground at all. I've never thanked anyone so much for charging us soooo much.

Once we'd worked out how to drive an automatic, the open road took us out of Portland and north west to Astoria where such pinnacles of cinema as the Goonies and Kindergarten Cop were both filmed. We checked into our weird little hotel the Commodore and took in the sights. Big butties, ales in jam jars, sea lions squawking  and our necessary photo outside the Goonies' gaff.

After dining on oysters and getting a very early night we took off south, hugging the coast via route 101. We checked in at Cannon Beach (where the end of the Goonies is filmed), ate crab and watched surfers at Pacific City before arriving in the sleepy town of Yachats. We got pissed up with the locals in a dive bar, including one local red neck who claimed to run a pizza joint and had a hugmongous beard. He was called Dave and had bare vibes.

Goons at the goonies

Day three behind the wheel involved sliding down the west coast on a southern trajectory through the seaside town of Bandon and picking up some jalapeño and bacon toffee. Disgusting. We dined at a scruffy eaterie before entering redwood zone and purchasing plaid shirts and IPAs from a nearby supermarket. We spent that night in a wooden cabin in the redwoods which was as organic as you can imagine. We didn't hug any trees but came pretty close. Being proper down with nature and that we turned up with no camping gear at all and no real clue as to how to get a raging fire sparking. It took much wood, paper, lighters and the inevitable ripping down of nearby foliage to get a mild inferno popping. We didn't cook anything on it due to fear of disease and local big foot swooping down on us and stealing our sausages. But it did feel very real being out in the middle of totally nowhere, drunk and seeing things in the darkness.

Oh the views of Route 101

Route 101 took us to the Avenue of the Giants, a 30 mile stretch of road hemmed in by these supernaturally sized redwoods. They tower above you like, like, like, really tall giants. We even paid six 'bucks' to a dude in a hut to let us drive our hire motor through a tree. The gap wasn't all that big so we edged through the tree before reversing back into it to get the obligatory tourist photo. Yes mate.

We'd aimed to get to a winery but managed to mis time our arrival in wine country above San Fransisco, so ended up hitting up Guerneville, a small town 60 miles north of the big SF. We found the one spare room to hire at the New Dynamic Inn. Fears were raised by the shitty room and the local crackheads living below. On the way out we met one dude who was rifling through the bins. As nice as he was, he managed to instill 'the fear' in us. To counteract this, we went out and got shitfaced in the big gay bar. I stopped worrying about our belongings, the car and anything else at all. On returning we couldn't work the lock so instead of finding someone who could sort it out, we barricaded the door with the microwave and table. Safe as houses mate.

Redwoods

Our trip continued the following day with a jaunt round Bodega and Bodega Bay, the small fishing town where master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, filmed ornothology fright fest, The Birds. If you've seen the film, don't let it put you off going and getting as much Hitchcock-related tat as a brother can lay his hands on. We saw shitloads of birds and they treated us with the decency and respect we've come to expect from our feathered friends in the UK. From there we zorbed in to San Fran via the Golden Gate Bridge with our mouths hanging open.

Leaving the New Dynamic Inn

We done gone taken a whole load of photos of the trip - check them out on Flickr here... 

Dancing Shangaan style

'No one cares what you look like when you dance' was a spot of advice recently heard at a wedding 'do'. These words were ones of encouragement while I was nervously dribbling a toe around the outskirts of an underpacked dancefloor attempting to decipher whether it was worth jumping in.

Whether they ring true is a moot point. Does anyone care that I look like octopus man being brought back from beyond the grave when shaking a limb? i might but whatever your skills, African dance troupe Shangaan Electro make dancing look fucking cool without seeming to have any cares in the world. Which is probably the whole point. 

Shangaan Electro's flex is a combination of ludicrous bumpy boiler suits, smiling enthusiasm, broad range age and mental lo-fi music. When we caught them at Gillett Square at the start of July on what must have been one of the day's hottest years, the vibes were ludicrous and the music getting so fast it was almost catching its own tale. The crew totally owned the joint for 45 minutes performing pure dance music at speeds verging on dangerous.The final song in particular sounded like summat one might hear on classic Helter Skelter tape pack.

By contrast, the live drumming afterwards, although loud and enthusiastic didn't have quite the same life giving grin-inducing wonder. However, one little drumming lad stood out for me. Bespectacled (not in shades), not giving it any attitude (as many of his youthful colleagues were) and concentrating hard, he was the token geeky dude doing it cos he was into it regardless of whether he seemed cool or not. Or so it seemed. Big up the specky dude doing it for ostensibly all the right reasons. 'No cares what you look like when you drum.'

Temple of Coke

With a New Year comes new danger and there aren't many functioning bands out there more dangerous than Temple of Coke - these Sheffield dudes could rival the Arctic Monkeys for internet hype, tunes and pure, visceral pop sense. Well maybe not, but they've got some serious vibe going on. Scroll down to check their latest video, a take on the classic Pure Shores by nineties girl group All Saints. The lads have been invited down to perform at the latest trendy Dalston night spot Birthdays this weekend so it's a good time to get to know 'em... Listen to main man Big Al on their flexxx...

Who are Temple of Coke?

Temple of Coke are: Big Al: Vox, guitars, synths, bass, stylist. Tich: drums, vokills, cowbell. Producer. Archer: Guitars, keys, triangles, high-pitched shrieking.

How did you come together to make such beautiful music?

We have been friends for a number of years and have played in all kinds of groups together, including a band which did a cover of key parts from U2's Rattle and Hum live album.

The cover version of Pure Shores is destined to be a huge YouTube smash - were you on drugs when you filmed the video?

We were trying to be on drugs. If you watch the video carefully, you can see Tich is struggling to find a lighter to spark up his zubbie. That is probably the longest Tich has gone without blazing for the last five years. I had to get straight out of bed that morning with a bad hangover and get in a car to Cleethorpes. It's safe to say we all felt like shit that day.

What's 'Doing It' all about?

I think they keyword is 'it'. I like doing 'it' with fit birds. Tich likes to blaze 'it' and Archer's favourite Stephen King book is 'It'.

There's an album on the way - are there any themes to the record? Where did you make it?

We record ourselves at Bok Studios - big up Bongo Burt who 'runs' the place. I saw him start on someone at a party the other night, fall down the stairs and split his head open. It was live! The only themes are the twin fears of running out of kingsize rizzlas and getting abducted by sexy aliens who do experiments on our reproductive organs.

Who do you cite as influences/contemporaries?

Haircut 100, The Style Council, Flowered Up, U2.

You're playing Birthdays on Saturday - what should the trendies of Dalston expect? Are they ready?

On Saturday night when we play Birthdays, the front row can expect to be covered in man seed.

Have you ever been inside a Temple of Coke?

Nope, never been inside in any kind of temple but I have been inside a Darth Maul and costume and it felt wonderful!

Temple of Coke play Birthdays in Dalston this Saturday (12 January)... Check out Pure Shores below...see you there...