Pollock's Toy Museum

Pollock's Toy Museum in Fitzrovia takes its name from Benjamin Pollock, a designer of toy theater in the Victorian age. Inside is a warren of dusty rooms joined by impossibly narrow, winding staircases. Floorboards creak ominously underfoot. Imprisoned behind glass cabinet doors, forlorn wax dolls and broken robots watch visitors pass by as though powerless to warn them of a similar fate should they fail to escape the museum by nightfall.











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A Visit to Sherlock Holmes

Let's face it, the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street in the Marylebone district of London is unarguably a tourist trap. Yet one no devotee of the stories could resist.


Inquisitive schoolgirl: "When was Sherlock Holmes born?"
Curator: "He's a fictional character, so he wasn't born."


Detecting equipment.


Holmes kept his tobacco in the Persian slipper over the fireplace.

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More paraphernalia.


A scene from "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual."


"The Man with the Twisted Lip."


Holmes always liked to keep a souvenir of his cases. In this instance, the dreaded Hound of the Baskervilles.

The Troubadour

The Troubadour is a historic coffeehouse in Earl's Court that first opened in the mid-fifties and figured prominently in the British folk revival of that period. The main floor is a respectable restaurant where patrons sip and chat in relative peace, but down the narrow steps in back to the low-ceilinged cellar is another story. Here, driven solo artists wielding guitars or mandolins confront the mic while a gathered audience of aficionados downs tall brews and spicy popcorn. Bands shove their tottering equipment onto the humble stage and hope for the best.

Some notable names that have descended these stairs over the years include Richard Farina, Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch, and Linda Thompson. An unknown Bob Dylan played here the first time he visited London. The place fairly reeks of musical posterity.


The Troubadour on Old Brompton Road.


This soulful young viking maiden performs under the name Mallie.

Broadstairs

Broadstairs is a coastal village in England about 16 miles northeast of Canterbury. In the nineteenth century smugglers dug elaborate tunnels in the chalk cliffs to hide their swag. Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor and finished writing The Pickwick Papers in a house overlooking the sea, now a museum. He also wrote David Copperfield here. John Buchan came to Broadstairs to recuperate from an illness and was inspired to write his novel The 39 Steps, based on a set of wooden stairs he found in the cliff face near his nursing home.

Highgate Cemetery

Highgate Cemetery, near Hampstead Heath in North London.

The Andy Monument

I could've sworn this chrome statue of Andy Warhol ornamented with Campbell's Soup cans and flower stems wasn't there last time I passed through the northern perimeter of Union Square.



The statue, designed by Rob Pruitt, is located near the Decker Building at 33 Union Square West, which was the location of Warhol's Factory from 1967-73. It was also where Valerie Solanas, brainchild of the Society to Cut Up Men, delivered to Andy a near-fatal critical review. The building now houses a Puma shoe store.