The Alley Project

 
Does this look like the kind of man who would leave his meat in an alley?
 
 
He says he ain’t, the health inspector says he did. And some pesky neighbor is involved, too.
 
 
 
Spike Mendelsohn, who didn’t quite go the distance on TV’s "Top Chef", did have some problems with the Department of Health in Washington D.C. [...]

Some interesting things are going on at Catalyst Cocktails. New wavey music and parties and DJs, oh my! Tucked away on Harriet St. across from the imposing Hall of Justice on Bryant Street, Catalyst seems to have a lot of potential that it has yet to realize. I mean, the 300 lb. longshoreman (below) is [...]

 
Around the corner from the famous Tosca Cafe, where it’s not unlikely to spot Francis Ford Coppola doing espresso shot after espresso shot, is a little old bar called Specs. Specs is the kind of place where you’re unlikely to see anyone of note, ever. Specs is cluttered with crap from beat generations past and [...]

Walking around with Emily after checking out some footie (Fulham kicked ass), we found ourselves in the Hoxton area. I couldn’t resist snapping this shot of Bacchus Walk, a mini-alley. It seems to be named for the adjoining restaurant (with some notoriety) which you can spy a corner of at frame left.
Not far away [...]

 I found this alley mural and graffiti next to Saffron Restaurant on Brick Lane. If you were able to see up and just a bit to the right, you’d see the spire of Christ Church Spitalfields, the "Devil’s Church".

 
 
 
Here’s a classic London alley (there was even a hidden little pub in the middle but I [...]

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese has one of those names that only a Brit could say without having a mixed metaphor pop into their heads. The interior is an amazing maze of small rooms and interlocking bars. The stairwell to the loo is built for midgets, but the cottage pie and mashed peas is excellent. Waking [...]

 
There are so many alleys in London and of such variety that it makes an alley-lover like myself re-assess what it is that he, she, or it loves about these spaces. See above for examples of what I’m not looking for.
As attractive as these little lanes are, there’s no intrigue. Like the new-ish pub we [...]

 
Freemans is a restaurant at the far end of Freeman Alley. After an intense Korean BBQ experience near our hotel, we made it here just in time for last call. Mark ordered us two Manhattans… and they say irony is dead. The people around us who were finishing their meals all seemed happy and none [...]

McGillin’s Old Ale House (someone forgot the "e" on the end of "Old") is supposedly the oldest continuously running bar in Philadelphia proper. It has retained a lot of the old world charm and has matured out of its former "peanut shells on the floor" paradigm.
After a couple of beers, my dad and I hoofed [...]

Tying to locate the famous The Smell, I walked the wrong way down one-way Harlem Place past a place that smelled really bad. A man approached and asked, "Are you looking for The Smell?"
 Frank, my guide, took me back to a closed grated door, exactly at the epicenter of the horrible odor. A [...]