A grand a month for Tube delays and no nightlife to speak of, what’s even the point of living in Zone 2 nowadays, asks Matt Kenyon in today’s Notebook
Zone 2 has become openly hostile
I have spent an unhealthy chunk of 2025 wandering, longingly, around picturesque parts of West London. I’m talking about far-flung extremes of Teddington or Hampton in which I’ve whiled away my weekends. The kinds of places with only one train connection, three times an hour at best.
That used to feel like a drawback, but now I’m not so sure. Last week, a signalling failure at Stockwell took out the whole Northern line for four days. On Wednesday I got on a bus at 06:30, and there were no seats. Christ, I envied the people who got on at Streatham. It was a counter-intuitive feeling, and it got me wondering why I live in Zone 2. When I moved to London in 2020, rent was £650. Now, it’s £1,020, and that’s on the cheaper end.
There has always been an unwritten social contract: live more centrally when you’re younger, pay more for the privilege and splash your hard-earned cash in its pubs and bars. In return, you get better access to better work, more fun and the opportunity to jump off into the outer Zones and Home Counties later on with stacks of dough.
That doesn’t quite hold anymore. Zone 2 life is more openly hostile these days – your bedroom window is more likely to be assaulted by a cranked-up car radio or the dreaded “This vehicle is turning left”. All the while, the pubs and clubs that make it all worth it are increasingly shuttering.
I know a lot of Gen Z-ers currently moving a lot farther out, a lot earlier than their millennial predecessors. Good for them, I guess. It’s probably a better life. But when young people are harangued out of their inner London homes, how long until this whole service economy malarky starts to unravel?
Looking for growth – and Rishi?
Speaking of disgruntled men in their twenties and thirties… the nebulous, Bakerloo-scrubbing Looking For Growth (LFG) group hosted its biggest event yet last week. (City AM’s Mauricio Alencar has a more expansive report elsewhere in these pages.) LFG has branded itself with a promising, youth-powered vibe, but who will become its anointed candidate? Call me crazy, but I’d put an early, outsider bet on Rishi ‘Advisory’ Sunak. The Adidas Samba-clad former PM kicked off his new Sunday Times gig with a not-so-veiled hint at a comeback: “I don’t think I’m over yet.”
Olympia Theatre goes beyond bog standard
In 2027, London will be graced with its biggest new theatre since the arrival of the current National Theatre site in 1976. The new Olympia Theatre in Hammersmith will boast an extraordinary ratio of one loo for every 19 audience members – a total of 82. This will be great news for theatregoers faced with the classic interval ‘Sophie’s Choice’ between an ice cream and a wee, but do we risk turning the West End into a sort of shopping centre multiplex?
Japan Bubble haunts yuppies
Investors and media types are whispering frantically about an AI bubble. But images of a second ‘Japan Bubble’ keep me up at night. Tourists are flocking to the country ahead of a much-trailed crackdown on visitors to the country – 36m in 2024 alone. Anecdotally, I’ve seen friends bringing their once-in-a-lifetime Japan trip forward. Like Disney World Orlando, it’s an expensive trip best done once. But with a harder line stance expected from new PM Sanae Takaichi, could a surge of unruly Brits scorch the earth for those that come after?
Quote of the Week
“Their friends think they are a good match, but he hasn’t actually met a lot of her friends yet.”
An insider, to the Daily Mail, on Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau.
What I’m watching
News of Netflix’s upcoming multi-season Kennedy drama does nothing for me. Perhaps, like The Crown that came before it, that’s because everyone already knows what happens. So, I was delighted to encounter Monsters: The Ed Gein Story on the streamer.
Charlie Hunnam gives a camply creepy rendition of the original pop serial killer, in the lesser-known tale of the 1950s crime spree that inspired Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs.
As with the Menendez Brothers anthology that came before it, creator Ryan Murphy ploughs fresh snow in the hackneyed true crime genre by focusing his narrative spotlight on polite society’s pearl-clutching fixation with the macabre. Expect lurid horror and a wonderful turn from Tom Hollander as Alfred Hitchcock.
Matt Kenyon is City AM’s newsletter editor