London Overground

I'm on my way to Pre's.

I'm on the Overground.

Okay.

Hot girl gets on the Overground.

Oh.

I'm immediately, like, clocked her.

Didn't really think anything else of it.

Probably would've forgotten all about it.

...

[laughs]

Okay? It's a branch of the-

London does something similar, but at the municipal scale.

The Oyster card launched in 2003 as a unified ticketing platform across the tube, buses, the DLR, London Overground, and eventually some national rail services.

One card, every mode.

And then in 2014, they extended contactless payment.

... ground gives...

No, overground-

Overground is okay

There's fresh air, bro.

It's fresh air

Overground is okay.

Jubilee Line is okay

Overground gives, uh, um, Finney-

So that would save you a third on off-peak rail journeys.

But the real trick is if you live in London, you can link your rail card to your Oyster card, and then that will save you money when you're traveling on the Tube, on the Overground, on the DLR, all of those things as well.

And I feel like all of those tips can make such a big difference.

I mean, you know, if you can cut the cost of your food by simply timing your shop, as you mentioned, it can save so much money.

I worked on a number of kind of bids around King's Cross, so like the Francis Crick Institute, the King's Place opening.

I worked on, uh, a lot of the stations, so the Underground and the Overground station.

I won various bids on that.

Yeah.

Where's the nearest useful station? Useful matters because London, it's not just the Underground system.

There's the Overground, Elizabeth line, DLR, National Rail, buses, boats, trams, and even a cable car.

Ask, "Where can I easily get to from here?" You're evaluating two things, what's around me and how easily can I reach everything else.

Remember our Paddington principle? Proximity and connectivity are not the same thing.

So I was wondering, yeah, can you talk about what that being underground meant and what the expectations were of interacting with the overground or the mainstream music?

It's a curious thing, and there's this little bit of an unresolved tension, or it could be like a vital contradiction in a way, hopefully, that's a more positive spin, in this idea of the underground, because on the one hand, I'm celebrating it, but I'm also saying just doing stuff that not many people are paying attention to isn't interesting.

I feel like the underground has this dynamic relationship with the Overground and is constantly trying to break into it.

And it should do.

And so the Smiths wanted to be They had hits, but they wanted to be much bigger than they actually were, and there was this constant feeling like they should be, like, number one all the time, and they were, like, number 12 at most, sometimes number 24 in the singles chart.