East London Life

The Paragon Gym in Spitalfields brought home an unprecedented 5 Golds and 2 Silvers in the Kickboxing British Open Championships recently.

WAKO, the worldwide governing body of kickboxing, held its British Open Championships on Saturday 17 February at the Hadden Leisure Centre in Nottingham and fighters from all over the UK turned up to compete in the annual championships. Read the rest of this entry »

Ilyena Vailievna Mironov, better known as Dame Helen Mirren, added an Oscar to her already impressive trophy case for her turn in The Queen.

Ilford born Dame Helen, who plays Queen Elizabeth II in the British independent film about the Royal Family’s reaction to the 1997 death of Princess Diana, said

“For 50 years and more, Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hairstyle. Read the rest of this entry »

The continuing saga of the relocation of Travellers’ from Hackney Wick to make way for the 2012 Olympics has a new chapter now as Hackney councillors decided to give Olympic chiefs the go-ahead to build seven pitches for the Travellers on Hackney Marsh.

The Hackney Marsh Users Group (HMUG) protested the decision, citing promises made by the council that there would be no permanent construction on Hackney marshes as a result of the Olympics.

So, assuming this decision stands, there are now only seven families left out of the original twenty who as of now have nowhere to go once they are forced to move from Millfields Road in the summer.

Today the Tate Modern opens it’s newest exhibition - a massive retrospective by east London’s second-favourite duo (after Chas ‘n Dave) to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their meeting at Central Saint Martins.
Well-tailored double-act Gilbert & George’s occasionally shocking, always irreverent art has been pouring out of their Fournier Street digs (a stone’s throw from Old Spitalfields Market) since 1968, and in that time they have hardly ventured out of East London at all, so it is quite an event that they should allow some gallery way out there in SE1 to host this show…
[via Flavorpill]