Gridskipper

Words: Alisa Gould-Simon

British phone booths, Parisian saunas and London’s gritty past are covered in this month’s dispatch from Gridskipper.com, the world’s best travel blog

WATCH out. London’s iconic red phone booths, which have graced Britain’s streets since the 1920s, may soon be a thing of the past. Thanks to an increase in cell phone usage, British Telecom has removed “about 30,000, or a third of all pay phones, from the streets since 2002.” Out of the 61,700 remaining, only about one-fourth of those booths are made with the red wood or cast iron that is stereotypically British. In turn, fewer and fewer booths on the street mean people are paying top dollar to collect them. The UK has seen a decline of more than half of all pay phones in the last ten years. Yet Britain isn’t the only state to let a little venerable heritage slip in the face of economic change. Kim Jong-Il is getting into the hotel business. The communist leader is converting part of North Korea’s Berlin embassy into a hostel in order to earn foreign currency. The Kim Jong Il-approved Cityhostel Berlin will offer 37 rooms for rent each night, and will charge around €20 ($31) per head.

The hostel will also include a reception with a grand piano (we know North Korea’s “Dear Leader” loves classical music) and a Korean restaurant. It’s due to open in May.

Want grittier scandal? Then alight in the City of Lights. As part of our continuing effort to show the sticky underside of postcard Paris, Gridskipper presents the sauna mixte. Just like the city’s clubs échangistes, these saunas are for having sex with strangers.

Saunas mixtes, in comparison with the clubs, are less tolerant of voyeurs, and there’s a lot more sausage on offer – they’re not for the curious onlooker. We recommend Sexodrome (3 Boulevard de Clichy). It’s worth a view, if for no other reason than to master the French pronunciation of “face-sitting.”

For more cultural smut, try Bow Street Runner. British broadcaster, Channel 4, has introduced an ideal method for learning about the capital’s history – a video game set in the 1750s and based around the activities of an early incarnation of London’s police force. The historically accurate – “and therefore grim, violent and salacious” – online game takes place in Covent Garden, where the Bow Street Runners are attempting to impose law and order. Gamers are guaranteed full exposure to “sexual practices, commercial activities and raw criminal acts”.