…the neon hub blog…

Attention boys! If you need help with your Valentine’s day booking Neon ladies have come up with their venue wish-list.

Umu
The badboy of Japanese restaurants. Super refined and defined Kaiseki menu of a sequence of delicate small dishes.
Fave Valentine dish – Asujiru: sake soup with amberjack, bean curd, Japanese parsley
The deal – £110 p/p for 9 courses and an aperitif

L’Anima
Contemporary Italian cuisine in sleek minimal dining room, lots of glass, white tablecloths and bare brick walls.
Fave Valentine dish – Scallop & langoustine carpaccio with sea urchin & orange dressing
The deal – £70 p/p for 4 courses and a glass of fizz

Bleeding Heart
Cosy, intimate and homely French restaurant with fine dining service.
Fave Valentine dish – Valrhona chocolate torte with compote of marinated cherry with Grand Marina (sic) with Pistachio Biscuit
The deal – £39.95 p/p for 4 course, champagne and amuse-bouche.

P.S The ladies would like to add with a reservation at Bleeding Heart it is not out of your way to take a romantic stroll from Chancery Lane via Hatton Garden.

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Neon is looking forward to celebrating Burns Night on Monday at Paramount for their Monkey Shoulder event. Neon loves Paramount, equally by day or night because the bar, restaurant and viewing deck are all worth a visit regardless of being 385 ft in the air. The views are an added bonus.

Burns Night and Suppers are a celebration of Robert Burns, author of Scots poems including “Auld Lang Syne” that you probably belted out on December 31st. The suppers may be formal or informal but are always entertaining hence the longevity. Neon has been to a formal Burns Supper. The event was ‘opened’ with a speech, everyone sits for dinner, someone says grace and the food follows – normally soup before a huge haggis on a dish. When the haggis arrives everyone stands as it is addressed – this bit was quite difficult to follow. Following the supper there is a toast to the haggis, the lads and lassies and then in accordance with the volumes of whisky drunk by this point, dramatic speeches, gusto readings of Burn’s poetry and enthusiastic renditions of Auld Lang Syne continue throughout the night.

The Monkey Shoulder event is billed as a ‘contemporary Highland fling’. The event ‘opens’ at 7 but London Mean Time is +2 so not sure if anyone will be there to hear the speech (if they even do one). Canapés are replacing the traditional supper and will include Haggis wrapped in pancetta followed by Mars Bar tempura. Drams of Whisky are updated to cocktails inspired by Burns Night. Neon will be heading straight to the bar for a John Barleycorn – a combination of whisky, Innis and Gunn, ginger and apricot.

Edinburgh’s Tokyoblu will by DJ’ing and entertainment is from modern piping band The Red Hot Chilli …….(drumroll)……Pipers!

Neon is looking forward to Monday (What! it’s not even a Bank Holiday).

Tickets are free but limited. Neon e-mailed hannah@ldrlondon.com and each request allows a + 1. The list closes on Friday.

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Thanks to a Twitter tip off from St John NEON are fervently debating how to get our bums on this little contraption.

Events In The Sky is a 120 tonne crane dangling a 5 tonne table 50 meters above the ground. With lights, heating, sound, TV screens and customising options the vehicle can be used for dinner, meetings, events and the oddball marriage option.

Dinner in the Sky seats 22 people plus three staff (chef, waiter and host) in the middle. No flames are allowed but electric appliances or a gas bbq can still whip you up a decent meal. There are no fixed menus, food depends on budget (natch) however “clients have been served sushi to lobster, tapas to gastronomic dinners”.

In The Sky can be hired for periods of 8 hours and with the 22 capacity, can be divided by as many sittings as desired, and for high-flyers price for purchase is upon application only.

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Following the success of the last two 501® Jeans Live Unbuttoned art installations, Levi’s and VICE have come together to find the UK’s most talented painters, illustrators, designers, sculptors, artists, whatever to have their work displayed on HUGE sites throughout London.

There are absolutely no guidelines for this project, other than that your work should try and capture the essence of what it means to “Live Unbuttoned” – living un-restrained and celebrating self-expression and creative freedom. This may involve freedom, creative expression, full-frontal nudity or however else you interpret the project. Basically, this is an offer to have your work displayed in the capital on a huge scale, no strings attached.

If you are selected from the teeming hordes of hopefuls to have your work featured as part of the Live Unbutton campaign, your work will be blown up to HUGE proportions, and displayed in Camden (The Lock Tavern), Shoreditch (Village Underground) and Soho (The Breakfast Club).

The winner will work with the project mentor, Ben Freeman, a regular Vice contributor and general expert on design, graphics, photography and the publisher of all round amazing magazine FUN, to translate their work from small scale, to ‘size of a large building scale’. Once up, your work will remain on show for one month (21st September – 21st October).

Your work need not be in any fixed medium or format, be it oil painting, papier-mâché, carved granite – whatever, we want to see it. All entries simply need to reflect the essence of the 501 jeans Live Unbuttoned campaign.

The competition opens on the 3rd of August and closes on the 1st of September.

For further information on the competition or to submit your entry please visit www.viceland.com/liveunbuttoned

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The VICE Photo Exhibition 2009 will run for two weeks at London’s The Printspace 74 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DL – before touring Spain, Italy and France. The exhibition celebrates the VICE annual photo issue – the biggest edition of VICE Magazine with 205 pages published in 22 countries simultaneously.

The exhibition will showcase work by leading VICE photographers and includes highlights from the 2009 annual photo issue, both of which use portraiture as their starting point. The exhibition includes newly commissioned work, material from previously unseen archives and new work from the likes of Richard Kern, Angela Boatwright, Maggie Lee and Dana Goldstein.

The exhibition is FREE to attend and runs from the 13th – 26th of August. Opening Hours – Monday to Friday: 9am to 7pm.

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There are lots of great things about working on Old Nichol Street, afternoon ‘fresh air’ down Brick Lane, Time Out’s First Thursdays mini-blockparties when local galleries and museums open late and crowds spill out on the street, sneaky lunches at Rochelle Canteen, picking up quirky paraphernalia from Caravan, checking out the amazing clothes in Jeanettes.

Until now our favourite local cyclist was a spectacled Giles Deacon but he could be replaced by the bicycle delivery service from Farm Collective – who promises to provide the capital with farm fresh food locally sourced from the nations’ finest small farms and suppliers.

Operating between EC1-4 and WC2 they will deliver breakfast and lunches with a minimum orders of £20 from 8.30am until 2pm. NEON particular likes the Farm Breakfast Selection when we can’t be bothered to walk to Albion and the Farm Sandwich Collection delivered to our staff meetings on the grass on Arnold Circus, winter mornings of hard work will be rewarded with Tony Stern’s pie, mash and gravy, Yorkshire Provider Soups and sausage rolls made by Kitty @ Browns. Orders have to be in by 5pm the day before you would like your order ….. perhaps a farm red ruby beef and horseradish bloomer should set NEON up nicely tomorrow for a productive afternoon.

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The Twitgigs Experiment: An evening of Twitter-enabled LIVE Music
When: 6 August, 2009, 7pm – 11pm
Where: The Vibe Bar, London
Tickets: £5.50 only available from www.tinyurl.com/twitgigs

Twitgigs is an exciting music event enhanced via Twitter. The bands have been sourced via Twitter and the tickets are available to people that follow @twitgigs. The event will be streamed live and participation via the #twitgigs hashtagis encouraged. Fans are able to Tweet and RT tracks by bands through twit.fm, pass on the flyer via TwitPic.

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It’s been a while since my bout of public speaking awards circa 1995 – and quite some time since I was thanked for ‘an interesting and thought provoking speech’ – but NEON’s appropriation of the most recent London Bloggers MeetUp went swimmingly and clients Fashion Targets Breast Cancer were super happy with the event. NEON decided it was about time bloggers and blog-readers influence were recognised and we organised the sponsorship of a LBM. The idea was to ask the aforementioned Blog lovers to advise on how well FTBC were communicating their first online campaign www.millionmodelcatwalk.com. The easy bit was arranging posters, a prize draw, live demos of the site, a £100 prize competition, some pretty cool USB flipcards plus plenty of food and drink, the tricky bit was a presentation to over 100 bloggers about how and what the campaign was doing online. All went well and we celebrated with loads of wine and tequila (apparently).

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Ever thought about submersing yourself in a G&T? … Yep, we had too… and lo and behold – t’was a reality when Alcoholic Architecture’s pop-up space just off Carnaby Street invited us to ‘drink’ gin via a room filled with G&T vapour. The concept was somewhat of a novelty but well worth attending so thanks are due to the creators Bompas & Parr purveyors of fine jelly! Despite not being able to see more than a metre in front of your face and being caked with vapourised gin this was a very pleasant experience. The event was certainly helped by the fact it was sponsored by Hendricks (exceptionally good gin especially after adding a slice of cucumber ) and Fever Tree (the best quality tonic water money can buy). Although a novelty approach to drinking I can see this technique catching on for pure comedy value. And yes we did try and stand as close to the vaporiser as possible!

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