Music in East London
Before I left for my London trip, a co-worker of mine said I should look up her niece Lizzie while I was over there. I contacted Lizzie yesterday and on the spur of the moment she invited me out to see some live music (since she's in the business) with some friends of hers. After leaving work I headed to the tube and met Lizzie in northern London. It's always interesting meeting people you've talked to over the Internet or over the phone; you never know what they will be like in person. But my fears were quickly dissovled after meeting Lizzie since she is very gregarious and was a great host. We met at a pub and chatted about Kathy (my co-worker) and talked about work and family. Since Lizzie's mum is American she has spent a lot of time over in the States and we were laughing about differences between the two countries. Anyways, after a quick beer we headed over to meet her friend Lucy for dinner in East London at a small Vietnamese restaurant. The food was quite good, but I must admit that it took a few seconds to get over the legs and eyes on the prawns I had to eat, since these are usually cut off of prawns when served in the US.
After dinner we headed over to Hoxton Square, which is a city square around a small park with large trees. The grass in the park was covered with young people sitting around on blankets and talking the night away, enjoying the beautiful evening weather. Around the square were pubs and art galleries, and people were streaming in and out of the buildings. I wish San Francisco had areas like this. I made this comment to my friends and Sophie--who had just joined us and had been to San Francisco--commented that the Mission district was similar. I agreed, but there was something a little more here in London that took the square to another level. At any rate, I quite liked it.
Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen (review) was pretty cool--a small patio led into the building, which was a long rectangle, mostly of brick. It had the feeling of a large space, but was made intimate by the throngs of young people inside the pub. The bar was dimly lit in a lounge style, but its openness made it more warm than intimidating. The building ran all the way through to the street on the other side. As you walked into the pub, the long, dimly lit bar was on the left and the entrance to the music stage on the right.
We had just arrived in time for the band Original Cast, who had been bugging Lizzie for a while to come hear them play. They were an okay band--the last song sounded similar to Nirvana, but mostly their sound was a combination of spoken or screamed lyrics in a rap style, filled out with a guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums. We laughed quite a bit at the antics of the band--they pretty much jumped and screamed the entire time. During the music, I noticed a bloke wearing a Michael Bolton shirt, which brought back memories of Office Space...too funny. Lizzie took a picture since I had forgotten my camera. 
It was good to be Michael Bolton in 1995
After the band finished, we walked back out into the pub to talk. A hilarious lecture on pronunciation of English words ensued, but I still think the US pronunciation of Leicester and Gloucester is more phonetically correct. The conversation was fun and then we went in to catch the last band. Lizzie pointed out a guy there who was famous for dating someone on a reality show...we were all laughing that he was still trying to ride his 15 minutes of fame.
After that, we parted for the night and I headed down to the broiling Tube to catch a ride back to Paddington. Over all, quite a fun night and a great taste of some of the unique things that make up London.