The Monocle Minute

Every day, on my 10-minute commute, I see at least one person (often two or three) forcing their way through the station barriers to avoid paying the Tube fare. I have lived in London my whole life and while fare evasion is by no means an unusual sight, it is becoming more common – proven by both the amount of revenue that the network is losing (about €160m between 2022 and 2023) and the anecdotal evidence proffered by friends, family and colleagues. The numbers are important but the feeling of lawlessness that fare evasion engenders arguably has a more pernicious effect. It is no coincidence that, as the practice has increased on the network, so have other crimes.

Since 2023, incidents of violent crime have risen by 75 per cent, while thefts have gone up by 83 per cent. Seeing someone brazenly dodge a fare as a London Underground worker stands idly by, as is almost always the case, sends a signal that the Tube is a place where rule breakers can act with impunity. It creates a division between passengers based on compliance but also age and gender – fare dodgers are almost exclusively young men.

The other side of this epidemic is poor enforcement. Most Londoners, however incensed, wouldn’t suggest that ordinary staff members should physically intervene every time they witness someone jumping a barrier. But enforcement can’t just be left to the highly conspicuous groups of officers who occasionally appear past the barriers at larger stations. Their ineffectiveness is obvious: last year, Transport for London spent almost £22m (€27m) cracking down on fare dodging but collected only £1.3m (€1.6m) in penalty charges. That this toothlessness comes at a time when the government is urging a 4.6 per cent increase in already high fares is extra galling. With more than three million people using the Tube every day, the network serves as a rather large microcosm of the wider city. Anomie pervades, both below ground and above.

Following a unanimous cabinet decision, the Israeli government has sanctioned Haaretz, the country’s oldest newspaper. The liberal publication, with a circulation of more than 75,000, will no longer receive communications or advertisements from any state-funded body. The decision was made in response to the paper’s longstanding criticisms of the war in Gaza and its investigations into alleged abuses by the IDF. Last month, Haaretz’s publisher, Amos Schocken, suggested in London that Hamas soldiers were “freedom fighters”; his remarks are also said to have contributed to the decision.

“I cringed a little bit [after Schocken’s comments],” Yossi Mekelberg, senior consulting fellow at the Mena Programme at Chatham House, tells The Monocle Minute. “It was clumsy and the wrong thing to say but he apologised.” Israel’s move should be seen as a freedom-of-speech issue, suggests Mekelberg. “Haaretz is an excellent newspaper and Israel is supposed to be a democracy.”

Fashion retailers in Japan are taking a stand against demolition culture by repurposing old buildings. Recent openings include a Lemaire flagship that has just launched in a pristinely restored 1960s residence in Tokyo’s Ebisu district. The sympathetic brush-up by designer Yuichi Hashimura retains the intimacy of a home while creating a warm backdrop for Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran’s garments.

This Saturday, much-loved Tokyo leather shoe and accessories brand Hender Scheme will open a new outpost in Fukuoka. Its founder, Ryo Kashiwazaki, favours an interior style that allows the character and history of a building to shine through. The designer likes to layer new elements over existing features – or, as the label puts it, “adding rather than renovating”. The new shop in central Fukuoka is in an otherwise unremarkable former saké store – the kind of building that is a key part of the fabric of the Japanese city but is too often demolished without a second thought. Let’s hope that it’s the start of a bigger movement.

Hope for a greener New York is picking up steam. Beneath residents’ feet are some 160km of steam pipes providing low-carbon power for heating and cooling systems in high-rises in Manhattan’s business district. This vapour, which goes unseen other than the odd cloud emanating from an orange pipe, is in fact a fraction of the city’s energy supply. Con Edison Inc, the largest supplier of steam in the US, provides electricity for 3.7 million customers in New York but steam to only 1,520.

But the company has recently announced that, over the next 10 years, it expects to invest €1.5bn in the vapour system, which hasn’t had a major expansion of its customer base in years. The aim is that this technology, which dates back to 1882, will help to power a move towards a net-zero greenhouse-gas-emissions grid by 2040. The city’s corporate high-rise customers are among those pinning their hopes on its financial and environmental benefits. Full steam ahead.

The appetite for a gastronomic read has never been bigger. If you’re looking to sate that hunger the first thing in the morning, look no further than Morgenmete, an Atlanta-based magazine dedicated to breakfast. We spoke to Tim Lampe, its editor in chief, over a pastry and a coffee.

How seriously do you take the idea of breakfast?
Breakfast is always our starting point but where the story goes is up to the writer. I don’t mind if they slander breakfast, as long as it’s done with a sense of humour.

Tell us about the magazine’s design and logo.
Naturally, I wanted something syrupy for the logo. I’d worked with type artist Tina Smith previously, so I knew that she would understand my pitch. You can see that in the final product. I was previously a creative director, so the design is really important to me and I love the feel of a print magazine.

Finally, what’s your breakfast of choice?
No surprises here: every day I get up and make scrambled eggs for me and my wife. We also like chicken sausage, as well as sourdough bread and cold-brew coffee.

To listen to the full interview with Lampe, tune in to Monocle’s dedicated show on all things print, ‘The Stack’.

Hank Willis Thomas is a US artist who works across media to explore themes including identity, popular culture and mass media. We meet him at his exhibition of collages, Kinship of the Soul, at London’s Pace Gallery.