It's the usual portmanteau post where I show you half a dozen disparate photos.
This is the ABBA Arena in the Olympic Park*. It opens in just three months' time so they'd better be getting on with building it, and indeed they are. A veritable army of hardhatters is busy outside knocking up an entrance lobby topped with tessellating hexagons. It's all a bit plywood-looking at the moment but that'll be because this is a building with a limited lifespan and it'll look a lot snazzier once they've painted/covered/decorated it. I've also watched the temporary flooring being manoeuvred into place over the last few weeks, which is about 50cm off the ground so visitors won't be walking on the old car park when they gather inside in the spring. I haven't been able to see inside the building since the walls were completed in October but I trust they're proceeding speedily with the holographic encounter space because time is ticking. The big news this week is that the sign on the front now lights up with rippling rainbow colours, which seems very ABBA-esque, although the strips aren't always lit so don't come specially.
* I wouldn't have said the hardstanding outside Pudding Mill Lane station was part of the Olympic Park, being on the wrong side of the railway, but it does belong to the LLDC and last week they erected a pink QEOP map outside the container hotel perhaps to make the point that it is.
This is Hackney Wick station where ticket barriers* have recently been installed. They haven't been activated yet because at present you can just walk round them, or you could last time I looked, so everyone's still using the validators. This smart new station opened in 2018 after substantial rebuilding works and ever since then it's been possible to wander straight in (or out) while a member of staff maybe watches from the ticket office. The subway only opened in November, however, so the appearance of ticket barriers may be connected to some sort of completion phase.
* I wondered how many other Overground stations still don't have ticket barriers, and the list below is the product of two minutes idle thought so is undoubtedly both incorrect and incomplete. comments Overground stations without ticket barriers: Anerley, Brondesbury Park, Bruce Grove, Bushey, Bush Hill Park, Caledonian Road & Barnsbury, Cambridge Heath, Clapham High Street, Clapton, Crouch Hill, Emerson Park, Finchley Road & Frognal, Hackney Wick, Harringay Green Lanes, Kensal Rise, Kentish Town West, London Fields, Penge West, Rectory Road, Silver Street, South Acton, South Hampstead, South Kenton, Stamford Hill, Upper Holloway, Walthamstow Queens Road, Wandsworth Road
This is the American Carwash in Shoreditch, or rather the NCP car park* above it, which in recent weeks has been emblazoned with multi-storey graffiti. It's very text-based, very neat and very colourful, but that's the tagger Helch for you. I'm aware of his oeuvre but not especially informed, so I'm grateful to the youngfolk on Reddit for pointing out that this is just beautiful, sick and awesome. They also confirm that the fade on No Half Measures is amazing because they must have been using rollers and that the gradients on Measures are totally insane (and even more beautiful irl).
* Apparently the NCP car park closed since January 2021, which helps explain how a team of sprayers gained access and had the time to finish.
This is 1 Trusedale Road* which is not your normal London house, but then Beckton is not your normal London estate. It was laid out in the 1980s across drained marshes, part of the London Docklands Development Corporation's mission to build new houses for private sale across an unloved corner of Newham (and you can read a full backstory here). Today the backstreets of Beckton are a throwback hotchpotch of low-density architectural styles tucked away up meandering cul-de-sacs with ample parking - a lot more Milton Keynes than Manor Park. You won't find many houses like this particular high-pitched monster, which is perhaps just as well given the amount of wasted roof space, but it's fared better than many of the better-hidden timber-fronted terraced ensembles.
* You'll have passed this house if you've walked section 15 of the Capital Ring. It faces New Beckton Park on the corner with Savage Gardens, which is an excellent name for a road although it predates the pop group by several decades.
This is an empty* shop unit on Roman Road (at the Mile End end of the Bow half). According to the sign in the window it's going to reopen as a 'Dog Shop, Hub and Bakery', and that is the most bonkers retail trio I've seen in yonks. I assume a Dog Shop sells food and accessories rather than actual dogs, but goodness knows what a Hub is in this context, and the idea of adding a bakery seems both perverse and unwise. All I know is that Dogbliss is currently a dogcare service based in Bethnal Green, and on one level I wish them well with their diversification but mainly I worry that Bow is heading completely up itself.
* It used to be Spencer Hair where Janet styled Afro-Caribbean locks for over 20 years, but then the rent went up and she was sadly forced out.
This is a footbridge over the A12 in Leytonstone*, and I liked the combination of garish colours and menacing spikes. Come this way, it beckons, but don't you dare drop anything or try scrambling over the edge.
* David Beckham's first house is a few doors down on Norman Road, but he moved out long before this replacement bridge appeared.
