This is the Willesden Library Centre. When it was built, legend has it that a disgruntled worker settled a dispute in an expensive manner, by filling the drains with concrete.
The centre has a cinema with reasonable prices, the Belle Vue. Gigi's bar is a great place to meet, day or night. There are jazz sessions there two nights a week, no cover charge. Exhibitions of work by local artists are usually on display in the upstairs gallery and on the walls of the main concourse, where there are occasional fairs. The library itself is a magnificent resource, arranged over two floors, with cds and videos, as well as the usual books sections and reading tables usually fully occupied by studious youngsters needing a quiet place to work. I nearly forgot the well-stocked bookshop, with its corner windows that can just be seen in the picture (above) where you can find such things as chapbooks of poems by local chaps who print books of poems.*
It's worth passing through the centre if only to see what's new on the central noticeboard, and to steal a glimpse of the leotarded, perfectly fit individuals doing aerobics, or to listen to the holy rollers whooping it up in the various rooms that are available to hire. Gigi's is a wonderfully cool oasis, which is dark enough inside that it cannot be seen into fully but spills over slightly into the concourse. However I have more or less boycotted the place since they banned all but guide dogs. Yes, I am a dog. (Did I mention that?)
By the way, it was to one of those phone booths that Osama Bin Laden made dozens of calls from his satellite phone.
*That's why they're called chapbooks. Ed.
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