I know that we’re closer to this Friday than la,st Friday, but I had a crazy (in a good way) day: I went into London early to go to the Building Center, an exhibition space near University College London that is also the headquarters of the homebuilder’s association.  There’s a giant model of London, exhibits on new buildings and development schemes in London (and the rest of the country to a lesser extent), a cafe and a conference space.  I met my supervisor there for a meeting, and then we walked around looking at trade posters.

I left at about 2 only to discover that, about 100 meters away, a huge chunk of street had been shut down and evacuated due to a bomb threat/hostage crisis on Tottenham Court Road.  Fortunately it wasn’t raining (it has rained every day since April 6th, I’m pretty sure.  This weather is the definition of miserable), so I had a pleasant walk north until I found an unevacuated Tube stop and chugged up to Hampstead, where I stayed with family friends (their son, who lives in New York, was in town. I’ve known him since we were tiny, but hadn’t seen him since he moved to the US, which was 7 years ago. So that was lovely).

And finally I went to a concert at the Brixton Academy, which is a really famous music venue in a really shady neighborhood:

The image above is from an Interpol concert; I went to see Foster the People, the group responsible for the cult hit “Pumped Up Kicks.” A video (the official one, which means it might get de-linked) is below, but actually the whole album stands up, so its worth some Spotify time.