Raving for the Cause

In 2018, everyone who's anyone is heading to Tottenham to eat, drink or set up their own club or pub.

As the new stadium for Spurs nears completion, local businesses are getting ready to hopefully cash in from the huge anticipated numbers of additional visitors to the area. It's literally all to play for with the first games due to kick off this September so it's an exciting time for the place. Alongside the likes of Five Miles, The High Cross and the recently opened Bluecoats boozers, The Cause is one of the freshest additions to Tottenham's night time calendar. This new club boasts an incredible soundsystem, unrivalled outside space and late, late 5am licence while also raising dosh for local charities. Sounds good right?

Check out a wee interview we did with co-founder Stuart Glen on the venture and what it's doing to put Tottenham on the map for raving...

Five Miles might well be our favourite place to drink pints

A shockingly controversial headline I'll think you'll agree as, if we're being totally honest, anywhere we drink pints is usually our favourite place. At least until we leave and begin drinking pints somewhere else. Whether that be the nearest bin or the bar, wherever pours some of those frothy mothers is usually somewhere we adore.

But Five Miles near Seven Sisters is certainly high up there in our list of beer swilling affections. Not only does it have a huge array of taps and craft but it has a mighty fine sound system, discerning taste in visiting selectors and a welcoming attitude to mid-30-something 'parents' with a penchant for pushing their luck and an addiction to beer. As such, I found some time to get the skinny with them for the latest issue of the Tottenham Community Press to find out more about how they came to land in Seven Sisters and what the vibe is behind the place.

Check out this latest issue and feature now and visit the Five Miles website for more info on them and their shenanigans...

Drinking beer in Tottenham

We've been in Tottenham for just over a year and in that time it's gone from being home of the Carling binge drinker to the capital's craftiest postcode. Coincidence? I think not mi familia. We're setting the bench mark for taste buds all over the north of London. With so much good beer on offer and the trendies who over run Hackney yet to take over our environs, we've been out and about sampling many of N17's best aley wares.

Check out the latest issue of the Tottenham Community Press for a piece exploring Tottenham's new beer mile...

Read Tottenham Community Press issue six

Out in the Styx

If you go out in the styx today, you're probably going to get a big surprise ...  well if you end up in Tottenham Hale you might be surprised to learn that there's more popping than just JD Sports, Pizza Hut and an inexplicably busy Costa Coffee. Arts venue Styx is almost next to the bus station but you'll need to be slightly in the know to discover its mix of clubs, theatre and cocktails. Seek and ye shall find? Or check out this interview with the team behind the venue in the latest issue of the Tottenham Community Press...

Visit tottenhamcommunitypress.co.uk for the whole shebang...

The Record Shop in the Tottenham Community Press

The Record Shop is an initiative in Tottenham aiming to give a platform to local youths who want to record their own music.

It's a wee studio which enables people to waltz in off the street and into a record booth which is a pretty vibes creation especially in these ends where opportunities like this are few and far between.

We quizzed Mary from the initiative for the latest issue of the Tottenham Community Press.

Get it here 

Verity Lane

As you may know, Tottenham is our new ends and the Tottenham Community Press has become another outlet for words and vibes in the N17 postcode. We've been attempting to keep up with the pulse in a place where the pulse is getting stronger by the day.

For this second issue, we tracked down a local composer Verity Lane specialising in dreaming up music using traditional Japanese instruments. She's playing gigs in the vicinity and you should check out her steeze. Listen below and we'll link the interview here when it lands...

Tottenham Community Press

Tottenham has been our ends since mid-September and the vibes have been big and strong ever since we landed. Bruce Grove is our hood and it's been on point, from the Italian joint San Marco's to Aldi, the Beehive boozer and the Bruce Castle Park. We've been having a lovely time scrabbling around the post code and attempting to embrace the place, or at least uncover the boozers which will let us quaff ales with our sprog past 8pm without giving us a scolding. Don't judge us. Purleaseeeee.

As part of that, I've started putting together words for the Tottenham Community Press, a new social enterprise aimed at shining a light on the area and the good stuff that's going on in a community that feels like it's on the brink of taking off. Check out their website here and dig into the first piece I've written for them, on the next wave of grime to come in your ears.

Read issue one via PDF. 

Take me to Chicken Town

If you want to eat fried chicken, then there are few better places than stinky old London town. Apparently there are something like 8,000 fried chicken joints clogging up the arteries of the capital as well as those of its eaters. From Perfect Fried Chicken to Roosters via Dixie and the Chicken Cottage, all the poulet is here, being plucked, fried and dished up in greasy cardboard boxes. Plus, it tastes fucking amazing. It does - our tongues know full well, from about two years dining out in Hackney's Carolina Pizza and their infamous Chicken Lover (same price without drink mate), that it's fucking delicious. The saltier and greasier the better although your bowels will never forgive you for it.

So, with this deep-rooted appreciation of chicken lodged sloppily in our guts, you can imagine how excited we were when the Viking-like prince of prime electroclash Batty Rymer announced he, and agency Create London, were teaming up to set up a social enterprise dealing in, and you guessed it, fowl play. Their new eatery Chicken Town launched in Tottenham in November and is aimed at ensuring that the teenagers of the area will not kill themselves through their love for chicken. Instead, the team, all sourced from Tottenham, steam the chicken, cutting out the salt but keeping the flavour to offer a healthy alternative.

Having backed it in the Kickstarter campaign, one of our crew treated us to the works - a full chicken meal, coleslaw, mac and cheese, kale and a shitload of Beavertown all soundtracked by Winston Hazel's Jive Turkey mix. It was glorious - you should go, get down and stuff some steamed chicken in your life...

Drinking with the beavers

As we all know, beer is a deeply delicious drop and arrives in our gobs in a multitude of forms and flavours. While we could always enjoy any fizzy tipple which loosely arrives under the banner of 'beer', the Beavertown brewery in Tottenham Hale has come up with a particularly magical and strong drinkable voodoo.

We went up there the other week to sample its wares and lo it's a pretty peculiar vibe. You get to a deserted industrial estate in the fag end of Tottenham to be confronted by a load of beer snobs in a yard outside a brewery. The place was fucking ram-jammed, mainly with trendy beardy blokes sipping, quaffing and making notes on their brews. Disappointingly there was a very low quota of the weird, older ale drinkers, the ones who enjoy Discworld, wearing socks and sandals and tucking their fleeces into their shorts. But this new breed of craft ale supper are no less rude, snooty or sneery as their older counterparts.

While the sausage fest of bad vibes went on around us, we chose to try and drink as many of the Gamma Ray and Neck Oil bevs as possible in the five hour opening window that the tap room allowed. The cans are only 330ml but it's probably a good job as these bevs pack a pretty potent punch which sends you fucking mental. It shut at 8pm and we went over to the Hen and Chickens in Highbury to try and watch the rugby but by that time it was too late. Total memory loss, vom and no recollection of getting home. Classic and proof that you can sometimes have too much of a very, very, very good thing... we'll be returning...

The beer of kings...

The damage