Sadly my latest posts are about shops not opened anymore or relocated. This, again, is one of them. I recently went to Cuts in Frith Street, Soho, and one of these massive "to let" sign was there. Well I might do a quick history recap for whoever doesn't know that the infamous "fin" haircut  on David Beckham's head was born here long time ago and quickly traveled the world. Today is spotted mainly on unfashionably "trendy chavs" and some loyal football supporters. Anyway at the beginning I couldn't believe that such an institution had gone out of business. After a bit I spotted the tiny note on the door advising the customers that they've relocated nearby in Royalty mews just off dean street (next to Quo Vadis restaurant) I guess in a cheaper shop...

Another credit crunch related matter. After over 30 years of business on Ladbroke Grove, the mighty Dub Vendor has closed down. It's one of the saddest picture I've taken so far, looking at the fluo yellow/blue builder's targeted sign that goes over the historical graffiti / murals with the phone booth transformed into a mega sound system. It has been a long agony as they tried to first convert part of the shop into a caribbean food shop for takeaways. No luck. After a few months it closed completely and it has been converted into a tools shop.
You can still buy their stuff on:

dubvendor

As promised here she is! I finally put together few parts and pimped up my Pug to a new standard. No more gears for her, just 1 nice 19 teeth fixed cog. Well it's not true, on the other side of the hub I have a 18 teeth freewheel so... all set up and ready to ride. More parts have been ordered and are taking serious time to be dispatched from the states. I promise I will post the complete make over / conversion into single speed, hopefully will be useful to others as well as some blogs have been for me!

Maybe 35 it's a turning point. If you try not to think about it, someone will probably make you notice that. That's how i felt when I received a wakeup call regarding my post about a BMX (mine...) for sale, the morning of my birthday. The guy, a very "trendy chav" turned up after an hour, picked the bike up and drove off. It's a new day... the truth is that I'm ready to get a fixie! Peter Pan is still alive.

It's now kind of public that I'm the sabotage! When I perform on the decks for a few reasons I like to call myself "tage sabo". I've been recently playing with Serato Scratchlive which I still prefer to NI Traktor Scratch for the simplicity of the GUI. This picture (thanks to M. Loubser) is from last week party D-Late - Alwayz fridaze @ The Egg. I was Djing on the 1st floor spinning some minimal techno and house beats. I was really impressed in seeing the crowd pleased from the whole selection especially considering that downstairs one of the guru of electro house was playing (!).

It looks like a picture taken in the 70's. It's actually from last thursday. That's a georg neumann disc cutting unit, one of the most recent, manufactured in 1978. We spent the whole morning cutting the master lacquer of naturelle ep, our hit for the summer! Yes probably I forgot to say that I recently set up an independent record label.
I'm still working on the websites but you can regularly check the links below to see what I am up to in the meantime:

ianus71 records
system of survival

and my alter ego dj identity:
tage sabo

big thanks to :
curved pressing

He looks like him, but it's actually him. One of my dream just came true. Last week at the cans festival I finally met Xavier Prou the father of stencil art, back in the 80's. He has been in my mind since I was passing by his pieces in the narrow alleys of Naples every day when i was a student, without a clue of who could have painted that Jesus silhouette on that wall. After a few years I finally realized that Blek was the artist making more interesting my everyday walk to the  university. I missed the opportunity to see Blek on Sunday painting in the tunnel at the show, but I then bumped into him and after looking at his fingers all painted in black I decided to stop him and ask for a picture. We had a quick chat and then i left him. That made my day. Thanks Blek and.... yes Banksy ;-)

This is a picture from my lounge window few seconds before they tried to stop and take down the Olympic torch held from that guy in the middle of the open top bus. The funny thing is that on Ladbroke Grove we've never seen any hybrid car that apparently the council uses. That day these cars were parked strategically every here and there (you can see one behind the bus) just in case the tv camera was recording...

In the last two years in London people have been very proactive in order to fill that missing bit in the wide offer of food range. I've seen burger places  coming up at each corner of high streets. Up to a few years ago the only good burger in Central London was the one of Lucky 7 in Westbourne Park Road. Today i can count about five chains of "American style diners" and to be honest they are all quite average and far away from the real stuff. I mean a burger is made of few ingredients:  bread, patty and pickles, lettuce and tomato,. If you got them wrong, well, it's not a burger anymore! This thoughts remind me of all the track I did in February when I had a "spare" 14 hours during a flight stop in LA coming back from Hawaii. I decided to take a bus from the airport to Santa Monica, rent a bicycle on Venice beach, cycle to Washington  Boulevard in order to have my in-n-Out Burger. as you can see...
I made it!

As it happened in Greenwich , chains are eating the small and family owned shops all over england and i would have preferred the pie and mash to "one of the many" burgers from GBK...

Naples is such a controversial town. Most of the time its worst aspects become the most interesting ones. Art is left to age with no prevention but i believe that none would have ever protect this stencil in case of a refurbishment of this 2 centuries old building. That's why i could bump into this original Blek le rat piece which has been waiting for my look since 1988. To be honest I've been walking into that square for about 7 years during my university stop in Naples over the 90's and never spotted it. Last week after eating the unavoidable pizza I usually get from "Di Matteo" when I'm walking in Naples, I had to take a detour because of road works and spotted this beautiful holy lady with gun on the wall. Blek was in Naples in the late 80's at the early stage of the street stencil art and apparently some spray paint is still up on the walls to be enjoyed. At least banksy admit that everything cool he thinks of, has been done already 20 years before from Blek.

More to read about here:
http://blekmyvibe.free.fr
http://bleklerat.free.fr