Saturday was an unusual, yet also oddly familiar kind of night in Camden Town.

You probably saw it too; cutting through the autumnal evening’s darkness with unflickering, heavenly-bound, megawatt-power. After all, it was visible for miles, right across the capital.

A single laser beam, that was proving quite the hot topic as I passed by clusters of smokers outside pubs, the conversation cycling through ‘wow!’ to ‘hold on, what is it?’ and onto a mix of wild theories, with just a touch of alien foreboding.

By chance, but not - it would soon become apparent - by coincidence, we were headed down Albany Street on foot, only to realise we were passing the very source of the mysterious light, which was in fact a tight cluster of military-grade beams of different colours, their vertical trajectory appearing to yield to impossible new angles of celestial infinity as we moved past.

Higher Power is an experimental artwork by Chris Levine, which had last been visible piercing the sky above the Venice Biennale back in May, and has apparently been reported as visible from the International Space Station, 250 miles up.

It was situated in the garden of The Danish Church, where another of Levine’s light-based artworks, Angel Presence, was busy shooting more lasers through assorted Swarovski crystals inside, as part of the neighbouring Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park.

But this more unrestricted beam of truly, unapologetically public art was part of the Light Eaters weekend at Townhall by Bottaccio, which I spoke about here last week.

Frieze may be best known for drawing in the private jet set, but it does offer plenty of satellite attractions for the average bod in the street, too. Imposing public art that’s in-your-face-and-visible-from-space? Not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it made a shared moment in neighbourhood feel curiously exciting, no matter who you were, or what you were doing.

In our case, that was heading for a free party in celebration of Kentish Town-based photographer Rankin’s Hunger Magazine music offshoot, Sound Bite, taking place down in the vaults of the Grade I-listed One Marylebone.

Better known by locals as the site of exceedingly glam and extravagant weddings each summer, the main space was hosting yet another Frieze-adjacent do - the altogether more democratic new Fair Play Art Fair, with Rankin running one of his portrait shot pop-ups in amongst displays of the work of 70-odd artists.

Down below, the evening crowd was a nicely intergenerational mix of arty and musical types, celebs and rising stars, all sinking bottomless Johnnie Walker cocktails.

Suitably warmed up, we headed on to Parkway, and the second free bash of the night (also previewed in Camdenist last week, remember? You snooze you lose 😉). It was the preview event of Plaza Camden, where the defunct Odeon Cinema has become a promising meanwhile community arts venue while it awaits its ultimate sad demolition.

Up the grand staircase, where the pick ‘n mix and popcorn temptations once lay, a swish bar has been installed, with a dancefloor populated for this gentle opening night by a decidedly older-skewing crowd. Plenty of veterans of Camden’s long musical history enjoying a mini reunion or two, plus a curious nose around a familiar lost local spot, which has suddenly come alive once more.

With the building’s history stretching back to the 1930s, when nearly 3,000 people would flock to see the latest movies packed into a single auditorium, the party evokes a strange mix of local pride and sadness, tinged with excitement about what might happen at this last hurrah, as Camden’s creatives get to use it as a canvas for their wildest artistic impulses, before the wrecking balls swing.

Inside Screen 1, the front few rows of seats have been removed to make way for main room-style dance space, with DJs playing in front of the sizeable silver screen. Expect this hybrid cinema setup to be used in all manner of performance-based ways in the months ahead.

Community film club Midweek Cinema have already sold out tonight’s double bill of Cronenberg classic Videodrome and Talking Heads’ concert movie Stop Making Sense, but you can catch Scorsese’s After Hours, complete with an in-the-dark vinyl LP playback this Wed 28th Oct.

Then look out for a wonderfully varied programme that’s still taking shape, ranging from Saturday morning kids events to an upcoming all-nighter from dirty techno punk theatre cabaret mashup crew Nachtlicker, featuring globe-trotting play/gig/rally Pussy Riot: Riot Days, a performance based on the memoir of Pussy Riot's Maria Alyokhina, on Fri 20th Nov.

The band’s provocative resistance to Putin is, of course, a sharp reminder of the pervading gloom we can all feel about the messy state of the world, where even the temporary release of a night out dancing and drinking has been squeezed by the bitter realities of Late Stage Capitalism.

But Saturday’s unexpected and free art and parties crawl was equally a reminder that Camden is still a veritable crucible of diverse cultural production, despite it all. Not only that, but there are still things to do out there that don’t exclude anyone on the basis of cost.

You’ll find out about more such pleasures by reading Camdenist each week, and why not share it with a friend (or three) who could do with inspiration…

IMMERSIVE ⚠️ If memories of Covid have started to fade, how about a visit to an immersive horror experience based around an outbreak of a deadly fungal infection to bring back that sense of impending dread? That’s what’s promised at Spore, where you and your friends are thrown into a quarantined outbreak spread across six floors of infected labs in an ‘abandoned dental school’ on Gray’s Inn Rd. It runs to to Sat 7th Nov.

FESTIVAL 💀 From this afternoon, Fri 23rd Oct - Sun 25th Oct, food, drink, art and culture website Mexibrit is hosting a Day of the Dead / Dia De Muertos Market at the (mercifully covered) Canopy Market in King’s Cross. All the produce and culture they champion from Mexico can be experienced, alongside live music and dance performances at the weekend and the Sagrado Bar in the middle of the action.

STAGE 🎃 A week-long fright-fest runs across Halloween over at the Courtyard Theatre in Islington with their Horror Festival 2026. It runs 27th Oct - 1st Nov with various ghoulishly pun-tastic events including Night of the Stripping Dead and Improve of the Dead to enjoy.

FOOD 🍍Masterchef 2026 winner Jhané Gibson is joining the kitchen at York Way’s excellent Half Cut Market tonight and tomorrow 23rd-24th Oct for a very special menu of Jamaican cooking including things like escovitch fish with scotch bonnet brine on coco bread, fish tea soup with green banana and yam or jerk smoked pork collar and rum pineapple with cornmeal porridge, plus a special Guinness punch, to boot.

MUSIC 🎶 Uruguayan musician, composer, and singer Jorge Drexler is one of the most influential voices in today’s Ibero-American music, and brings a new live show with a 7-piece band to Camden’s mighty Roundhouse this Tues 27th Oct.

STAGE 🥗 Join the gorgeous clown Trash Salad as she embarks upon a genre-bending burlesque adventure at Camden People’s Theatre this Sat 24th Oct. You’ll find lip sync, strip tease and song on her mission to understand intimacy and find real connection.

CLUB 🪩You’ll find rolling tech grooves and stripped-back underground rhythms as Dutch agency SUBVRS lands at Egg London for an all-nighter dedicated to emerging DJs into the deeper shades of the underground on Sat 24th Oct, and it’s even free entry before 11pm.

FESTIVAL 📽️ For a final highlight at the end of this month’s Bloomsbury Festival, head to Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Sat 31st Oct for a late night screening of the 1922 classic silent horror masterpiece Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror where award-winning organist Aaron Hawthorne will create an improvised live soundtrack on the church’s famous pipe organ, aka ‘The Bloomsbury Beast’ for a rather special way to get thoroughly spooked.