"Underground Magazine" - New Satirical Free Paper handed out on the Tube

Last week I was rushing outside Hammersmith Tube on my way to the Crossrail viewing when I saw a guy carrying a large sign (like one of those Golf Sale signs) saying "Free Satire". I was curious but didn't have enough time to stop & pick up what he was handing out. However, I remembered that a Twitter account called @undergroundmgzn followed me & the people behind it sent me an email, which I've finally got around to reading. I'm pleased I did.


Underground Magazine sets out to "fill the gap between Metro and The Evening Standard in bins across the capital." It has a print run of 10,000 copies and the people behind it started handing out the first edition last week.  You can read the whole thing online as a pdf.

As you can see from the image above it pokes fun at many of the stories we read in free sheets like Metro & The Standard as well as having a number of Tube & commuting related features. There's the "help me find this woman of my dreams on the Tube" story: "Atwood expressed his gratitude: “Normally I’d have to spend ages on Google finding all that stuff. But Underground really saved me a great deal of time. I’ll let you know how the first drive past her house goes!”

Plus the featured in the picture, a way to stop people from reading over your shoulder on the Tube "it has turned out that Underground Magazine has chosen, on this very day, to target the kinds of bastards who think it's OK to lean over you and stare at your stuff. If he or she is still reading at this point, he or she's really taking the piss".

Like most papers justifying their existence they have various claims to show they are the biggest on certain subjects. I like their claims on being the big on womens' sport online. "THIS GROUNDBREAKING ARTICLE, entirely devoted to women's sport, has single-handedly guaranteed that 50% of Underground's online sport section is devoted to the subject. Writers of the article, reflecting upon their success in smashing the glass ceiling, commented, “Well we wanted to do something controversial for the website, you know for the publicity and that. At first we couldn’t think of anything, and then we remembered women.”


Best of luck to Underground Magazine who also have a Facebook account and I look forward to seeing the second copy.

You might also like
e-Reading on the Tube
Freesheet bins outside Tube stations
Three Ages of Reading on the Tube
CoverSpyLondon - Tube Reading  

The King of Lifestyle: Wadih Elnajjar takes over Dubai!

There is no event complete without the touch of Wadih Elnajjar, 

A face not only to remember but a Talent to appreciate! 

Of course nothing is complete without a unique fashion sense & a STAR is born! 

Wadih clearly turned our heads on more than one occasion with his style

so FG10 wanted to show him off as the Face and Ambassador of one of the hottest clubs in Dubai

Cirque Du Soir and one of the HOT 100 Nominees for AHLAN!

This is only the beginning...

FG10 will be telling you "I TOLD YOU SO" very soon!

JOIN HIS FAN PAGE for all the HOTTEST EVENT PICS HERE!

&

Get the dirt on the sexiest Nights in Dubai with Twitter @Wadih_Elnajjar  

*images belong to fashiongossip10*

PFW: FOR the LOVE of BALMAIN Fall 2012

The Paris Fashion Week began and im in Dubai wishing i could go! cause if there was one i would LOVE to come face to face with is BALMAIN!!

just when i thought BALMAIN was over with their switch of designers! 

it has made me fall back in love and could be for good!

let me show you why.... 

London Transport Museum feature Thoughts of Angel Tube

Many of us know that some London Underground staff do try to make their stations more welcoming. It's good to hear that over the last few months London Transport Museum Friend Stephen Barry, a retired journalist, has been on a mission to track down attempts to make stations a more pleasant environment.

Stephen visited stations across London, speaking to staff, meeting passengers & taking photos of the great projects which are taking place. These stories and images are being shared on the Museum's blog starting with Angel Tube station’s Thought of the Day which I've featured regularly on this blog too.

Stephen writes "It all began in 2011 when Customer Station Assistant (CSA) Ken Walters, who works at Angel Station on the Northern Line, heard about a suburban station where passengers dropping off their partners in the morning were banned from kissing them goodbye.

“Apparently it was causing traffic holdups in the station car park,” said Ken. “I thought this was quite funny and wrote on our ticket hall whiteboard that ‘Kissing is allowed at this station’. As it seemed to make our customer smile, after talking to colleagues we decided to continue to put up regular light-hearted quotes. The aim is to get customers to stop and smile when they pass through the station, as they are often in a rush and feeling stressed.”

Helping Ken with his daily dose of ticket hall wisdom are fellow CSA’s Devika Webb and Rathees Kadadcham."

They've  also have put up a comment box in the ticket hall where people can leave their own quote suggestions, which usually go on display within a couple of days.

It was good to see the Museum picking up the exposure other bloggers including myself have given the site & the thoughts "The site has been picked up by blogger Annie Mole and is featured on her ‘Going Underground’ blog, which takes an irreverent look at aspects of the London Underground network. It also features on the Time Out and the islingtonpeople blogs.

“Annie, who lives locally, takes a picture of the ‘thought’ every day and downloads it onto her site, which has a link back to our site,” said Rathees."

Actually I don't live locally, but worked locally, but it's the thought that counts!

Seeing the thoughts on my blog also led to the station being featured on Japanese television.


“NHK, their national broadcaster, found out about our web site and sent a crew to interview us and also some customers,” said Rathees. “The item featured in a documentary they made about the world’s underground systems, where we are described as the ‘human face of the underground’.”

For more on the Thoughts of Angel team read Stephen's full post for London Transport Museum's blog.  H/T to Ianvisits for letting me know about this.  And congratulations to the Angel Tube guys and gals they certainly do brighten up the day for Islington's commuters.

Related Posts
Thoughts of Angel Tube Big in Japan
12 Days of Tube-Mas - Signs of Xmas on the Tube - Thoughts of Angel
Angel Tube's Thoughts of the Day go Online

Photos from visit to Crossrail Site - Tunnel Boring Machines

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to be invited to a press & bloggers site visit of the construction of Crossrail’s western tunnels. This is happening between Royal Oak and Farringdon and is a joint venture between BAM Nuttal, Kier Construction and Ferrovial Agroman. Although it will be a few years before Crossrail appears on the London Underground map I was pretty curious (to say the least) to see what was going on.


I'd never visited the construction of a railway before and it was quite an amazing sight to see the Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM) and the level of activity taking place at the Westbourne Park site where over 150 people are working.


I was too busy taking gawping at the machines, taking photos & tweeting to take too much notice of the technical stuff. Also with protective gloves, a hard hat, goggles and slightly oversized protective shoes it was hard to take notes. So here's the low down of the progress from Crossrail themselves.

"The first Crossrail TBM is due to undergo testing ahead of the start of tunnelling. Work is well underway to re-assemble the second TBM that will launch from Royal Oak Portal in April.


"In March, the first TBM will be launched into one of the twin bores at Royal Oak Portal tunnelling east towards Farringdon. A second TBM will subsequently be launched in April through the second bore. At over 140 metres long and weighing around 1,000 tonnes the TBMs will travel 6.4km (4 miles) eastbound under London via Paddington, Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road before reaching Farringdon in 2013.

"This will be followed later this year by the launch of a further two TBMs from Limmo Peninsular in the Royal Docks that will travel a total of 8.3km (5 miles) towards Farringdon via Canary Wharf, Whitechapel and Liverpool Street.


Towards the end of 2012 another two TBMs will begin construction of the south-east section of the route, launching from Plumstead portal in the south-east and travelling a total of 2.6km to construct the Thames Tunnel. Two TBMs will also be used to create nearly 3km of twin-bore tunnels between Stepney Green and Pudding Mill Lane."


Apparently each TBM is like an underground factory and as they move forward, precast concrete segments are assembled into rings which line the tunnel behind the TBMs. "The excavated material is carried out on conveyer belts emerging at portals or shafts. Construction of the concrete segment factory for the western running tunnels between Royal Oak and Farringdon is now complete at Old Oak Common. The plant has begun manufacturing the 75,000 segments that will be required for the western tunnels."


A total of eight tunnel boring machines (TBMs) will construct 21km of new twin-bore tunnels (42km in total).


So much for the facts and figures. What was it like being there? Strange & fascinating. In the saftey briefing beforehand the Crossrail staff made sure we knew what hazards to look out for (not that we needed to be reminded as there were tons of warning signs everywhere).


They were also at pains to tell us how clean & tidy the construction site was. Now everyone knows the phrase "This place looks like a building site" implying that something is going to look a mess. But once we got to the site, I discovered they were correct. There was not one piece of litter. It almost looked like a film set of a building site.


Once I got used to walking around with a hard hat on, I could take in more of the atmosphere. The workers all seemed reasonably happy, and everyone I saw was actually working and not hanging around smoking fags or looking into holes or tunnels scratching their chins and shaking their heads saying "Mmmm not sure when that will be fixed", which is my general experience of constuction workers.


The guys who showed us round were also keen to point out that there hadn't been an accident since work had been started on the site. The site is up for a Considerate Construction Site Award which I reckon they stand a good chance of winning.


Health & safety was definitely rigourous and I did see a number of workers making some of these hand signs when cranes were moving enormous tubes, girders and other tunnelling equipment around the site.

You can see the full set of pictures from my Crossrail Site Visit here.

Also John Bull from London Reconnections was on the visit with me and has a great post with a more photgraphs too. Although we weren't given a date as to when the first tunnelling would start, he said "I would place cold, hard, cash on the first TBM launching on the 17th of March."

I'd like to thank the team at Crossrail for inviting me along and also for their patience on the tour.  It can't be easy herding a team of bloggers and photographers around a construction site.

You might also like
What will Crossrail uncover?
London Underground Map for 2015 and 2019

Tube Driver saves fallen Child as Arguments for Driverless Trains continue

Hot on the heels of Boris Johnson's "vote catching" pledge for driverless Tube trains trains today, train drivers union Aslef have shown how real drivers are still needed in emergencies. A five year old boy had fallen into the gap between the carriage and platform on Sunday & was rescued after the driver of the London Underground train spotted a hand reaching up from the track at Finchley Road station.


Busy Finchley Road by brapps
General secretary Mick Whelan said: "On Sunday all the automatic devices showed the platform was clear. Only a driver could have averted a potential tragedy. Boris Johnson is wrong to continue to push his policy for driverless tube trains when it can threaten the lives of London’s travelling public. I want him to accept that it is a mistake.

Anyone can make an error, but only an irresponsible person will persist with it.."

London Underground's network services director Nigel Holness responded by saying "The whole design and operation of the network would be different with driverless trains and therefore we cannot compare the two.

"Many incidents on the network are, and will always be, customer-related and we will of course always provide fully for handling those safely and efficiently."

Bob Crow, General Secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, used this as a chance to pipe in on the argument too and said: "The lethal reality of Boris Johnson's driverless trains plan is exposed in this one incident.

"From 7/7 through to a child rescued from the tracks by a vigilant driver, Londoners need to understand the truth that you cannot play politics when lives and safety are at stake every minute of the working day."

Amongst the political battle of words do you think the unions have a point? Or are they ignoring the other safeguards that surely would be put into place to prevent potentially dire consequences of having driverless trains?

Related posts
Tube MD hits back at Driverless Train Job Loss Figures
RMT in a stew over Driverless Tube Trains by 2021 

THE DUFFLE PROJECT: INTRODUCING ANNA SUI FOR COACH!

What happens when a Coach classic gets interpreted by a designer with a decidedly rock ‘n’ roll vibe? You get two covetable and collectible versions of the Duffle Sac, Coach’s most iconic bag, created by Anna Sui!

This is the 1st look of the bag from Anna’s Fall runway show in February where the bags were revealed for the first time.

“Coach’s iconic Duffle handbag represents such a significant part of their history,” says Anna.  

“It’s truly an honor to put my own spin on this seminal design.  The Anna Sui version adds a Boho feeling with whip-stitching, big tassels and appliquéd art nouveau dragonflies.”

The two limited-edition Anna Sui for Coach bags are the Fleur-de-Lis Duffle, which is unlined like the original version introduced in 1972, and the Dragonfly Duffle, which features vintage Anna Sui printed twill lining. Crafted of vegetable-tanned, hand-burnished leather, each bag is numbered and features solid brass hardware, signature hangtags and a removable interior logo wristlet.

The bags will be available this fall at select Coach stores worldwide and on Coach.com

A limited quantity of the bags have been ordered exclusively for the UAE, 

and will be available from the Summer 2012!!