{"id":1730,"date":"2011-12-20T22:45:13","date_gmt":"2011-12-20T12:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2012-11-28T18:45:53","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T08:45:53","slug":"london-2011-part-5-shopping-covent-garden-and-soho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/?p=1730","title":{"rendered":"London 2011 part #5 – Shopping – Covent Garden and Soho"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Size?<\/p><\/div>\n

Soho part #2<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the way to Covent Garden<\/strong> we decided to make a quick stop back at Carnaby<\/strong>, this time when the shops were actually open! Little did we know, it was the day of a monthly moped\/scooter meet up, right in the middle of it. There was literally over a 100 “bikers” all revving their engines filling the small alleyways with leaded fumes and the sound of a bunch of angry mosquitoes, quite the spectacle for all the senses. We took refuge in Size? but the damage was already done, this and several other store along the way were already full of exhaust fumes, yummy. Size?<\/a> did have a good selection of sneakers, some I didn’t see making the rounds online till a month or 2 later. They also had a few items on sale, always a good sign. Some clothing downstairs, most unworthy of the exuberant price tags but again there was a welcomed clearance rack of hoodies and tees.<\/p>\n

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Down to the southern bordering lane of Carnaby, Brewer st.<\/em>, resides the New Era<\/a> flagship store which surprisingly stocked a wide range of Yankees caps in just about every colour possible but disappointingly few other teams or colours over their two levels. Couple doors down is easily one of my favourite toy stores in London, Playlounge<\/a>. These guys have been going at it for years and their wide selection shows this. Like my other fave stores, they don’t just stock only the obvious stuff like Kidrobot<\/strong>, there’s plenty of obscure stuff and local pieces like The Bubblegum Adventures of Periwinkle<\/a> series. However, saddened once again with not being able to make the big (in size) purchases I dragged my feet out to Covent Garden, stopping at Sports Direct<\/a> along the way. Oh, there’s also the Vintage Magazine<\/a> store, which wouldn’t be out of place in West Hollywood with a lot of movie and TV memorabilia, celebrity related stuff, cool vintage posters and of course magazines.<\/p>\n

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New Era<\/p><\/div>\n

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Playlounge<\/p><\/div>\n

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Vintage Magazines<\/p><\/div>\n

Covent Garden<\/strong><\/p>\n

We stopped in at Foot Patrol<\/a>, kind of London’s answer to Undftd<\/a>. The name gets around thanks to some of their collabo’s but in general their range of sneakers and clothing is pretty small with a strong leaning towards “dressier” styles and higher end items. It would of course be the place to be if there was a quickstrike drop or a new limited release.<\/p>\n

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Foot Patrol<\/p><\/div>

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Foot Patrol<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

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Forbidden Planet<\/p><\/div>\n

Forbidden Planet<\/a> megastore popped up a few blocks later and a megastore it was. Very much like Melbourne’s Minotaur<\/a>, it’s a geek haven for all things comics, anime, collectibles, pop culture, cult tv and associated merch. What it lacks in quirkiness and uniqueness against Playlounge it makes up for in sheer bulk. Prices were average RRP, some a little higher compared to the States not at all helped by the exchange rate but there was a good selection of sale items.<\/p>\n

In the same area you have the London Kidrobot<\/a> store one or two London exclusives, namely the printed tees. Couple doors down is Adidas Originals<\/strong> and Volcom<\/strong>, there’s also the “West” G Shock<\/a> store, nothing you cant get online (and for cheaper) but it was cool to see rows of the watches all lined up.<\/p>\n

Neal Street<\/em> is the main drag of Covent Garden and is home to a string of shoe and clothing stores. Sole<\/a>, Offspring<\/a>, Size?<\/a> and Focus are just some of them, all have varying degrees of stock, pricing and variety. All are small to average sized stores so it wont take long to pop your head in to all of them. Round the corner in Neal’s Yard<\/em> is Slam City Skates<\/a>, one of London’s oldest and most prolific skate stores. They have a good selection of skate related products at regular prices, just don’t tell the kids off for loitering round the entrance, more than likely they work there \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

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G-Shock West<\/p><\/div>\n

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G-Shock West<\/p><\/div>\n

Next, we go market crazy at Camden <\/strong>and Shoreditch<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

London 2011 part #1 – Arrival, Soho Shopping<\/a>
\nLondon 2011 part #2 – Central London sight seeing<\/a>
\nLondon 2011 part #3 – Chelsea Flower show<\/a>
\nLondon 2011 part #4 – Shopping – Hammersmith<\/a>
\nLondon 2011 part #6 – Shopping – Camden<\/a>
\nLondon 2011 part #7 – Shopping – Shoreditch<\/a>
\nLondon 2011 part #8 – Hyde park, Piccadilly Circus <\/a><\/p>\n

London photo gallery here<\/a>
\nChelsea flower show photo gallery here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soho part #2 On the way to Covent Garden we decided to make a quick stop back at Carnaby, this time when the shops were actually open! Little did we know, it was the day of a monthly moped\/scooter meet up, right in the middle of it. There was literally over a 100 “bikers” all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1407,388],"tags":[1006,1483,1479,1478,1352,1487,1488,487,122,1408,1481,1492,708,179,1489,1485,1484,525,1480,1288,1293,1482,1491,183,1345,100,1474,378,300,770,1428,1490,2775,391,1486,444,595,1473],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1754,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/1754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}