NikeLab 1948 (CLOSED)

With Oxford Circus’s Nike Town catering for the masses, it seems Nike’s army of more refined sneaker freaks were feeling a little overlooked. The trainer brand’s clubhouse for their most loyal (and obsessive) fans, 1948, was hidden under the railway arches on Bateman Row, a sidestreet connecting Great Eastern Street to Curtain Road, until it closed its doors for a while – before rising spectacularly from the ashes in 2014 as NikeLab 1948. A space made of recycled e-waste is the appropriately forward-thinking setting for the shop – one of six NikeLabs across the world, it’s a shrine to the the brand's flyest inventions and releases. It even has its own running club, if you can bear to get those new kicks dirty.