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Features

Summer in London

Aug 26, 2016

Summer in London

WORDS + PHOTOS BY: BRYNN WALLNER

I honestly didn’t think I’d make it to London. It was the day before my flight and I didn’t have a passport—I’d lost it at SXSW a few years ago. Classic. I searched the internet about how to get a passport in less than 24 hours. There was one way to do it, so the morning of my flight I woke up at 4AM to get in line at the Passport Agency in NYC. I arrived at 5am—3 hours before it opened—and already 20 people were ahead of me. I ended up getting the passport by noon, departing JFK that night, waking up in Dublin, and eventually landing at Heathrow. Wild.

Summer in London is crazy. There are so many people. Bullets of my memory:

Dirty dancing with myself in the hotel room. Oyster card. Matchbooks. Picking up a Thames shirt for Jimmy. Photobooth at Rough Trade. Palace skate shop. Sunny day, floating in Notting Hill. Vintage Calvin Klein shades picked up at Portobello Market. Museums with Matt. Sketch London and its art-lined walls. Jaden Smith and his posse. Cadbury chocolate from the little shop at midnight. Seeing a fox in Regent Park. Colored lines on the underground map. Stanley Kubrick exhibit with Rohan. Sweating, dancing at VISIONS. Charging our phones in the hotel basement bar. Nando’s with Linda. Biking through Hyde Park. Ice cream by the river. Falafel sandwiches after the club. Walking endlessly. Discussing the Brexit over breakfast. No cell service. Ben’s cookies. Going off that melatonin. Listening to Black Marble. View of the train tracks. Over stimulated into oblivion. Rainy on my last day.