After having a very long, marathon sleeping session I think I’ve just about recovered from my 12-hour New Year sit-in in the new Birmingham Coach Station. It was a great night and surprisingly good fun – I cannot recommend enough that everyone spends a little time watching the world go by in the nearest coach or train station, to experience where you live as a traveler. You’ll see a truly different side to your area and get to talk to some very interesting people passing through it, who all have their own stories to tell.
Midge passes through before going to a Sheldon house party
I’ll be writing up some of the stories I got to hear here under the heading NYE Express, a title thought up by Midge, who kindly popped by to see me with a little something to see me through the night. He wasn’t the only one:
Ben Mabbett was at the station waiting for me when I arrived with a little bottle of bubbly in a brown paper bag, which was ever so thoughtful.
On the morning of New Year’s Eve I was on BBC Radio WM chatting to Daz Hale – you can listen again here for one week (I’m at the tail-end of the show, roughly 2:18 in).
Roughly twenty-two hours later I was back in Radio WM studio chatting to Brett Birks about the experience. The programme is not available to listen again but Alan Colson took a sneaky audioboo:
I managed to collect quite a few stories during the night. Watch this space for future NYE Express posts to read all about them.
Another Byte Of Banality: All Quiet On The Digbeth Front – Midge is telling porkies – he’s no slacker, he’s a very busy boy. He gives an update on the Eccentric City Auction, working at the newly opened Urban Village and getting Raynauds in his fingers for his trouble (I like a man who suffers for his art) and blogging for Fizzpop (Birmingham hackerspace).
So now all you’ve got is ‘The Kitchen’ which i find really sterile and Yummi which i’m told does great food but no interior seating and definitely no Rod spinning Northern Soul obscurities. Coupled with the building work currently going on i’m wondering why people would want to make the effort to come down in the week at all which can’t be good for the handful of traders left.
Fingers crossed someone will spy an opportunity and move in there soon.
As you know, I pretty much missed out on the weekend, but thanks to the internet I get to see what happened all the same. I get to see pictures of pretty Irish dancers by Very Quiet via Created in Birmingham:
And I get to see the parade on YouTube.
The crowd awaits expectantly and here it comes! St Patrick on a bus:
St Patrick ditches his bus for a tractor:
How do the dancing girls curl their hair like that?:
Possibly the most bored looking carnival queens I’ve ever seen:
The idiot, bum-baring element, and probably the reason for the street drinking ban the Big Cat Group were so disappointed with. The Doyenne of Digbeth is not impressed with the King of Stourbridge:
These guys were probably some of the people who made Digbeth High street look like a zombie film set later that night. It was like 28 Days Later, with the infected blindly chasing after taxis.
Also check out Midge Diabolik’s Flickr set of the St PatROCKS stage on Bradford Street, which has some photos of The Destroyers in full force.
The Birmingham Post today featured the problems faced by The Rainbow, who have been threatened with a Noise Abatement Order by Birmingham City Council after complaints from just one Abacus tenant.
Mr Davis said this would signal the end of the venue, as it would not be able to afford the work necessary to prevent the sound of music escaping from the pub. “At the conclusion of the noise survey we will have to look at how we can mitigate the volumes and that will involve structural work which will run into tens of thousands of pounds that we just haven’t got. We will end up with a noise abatement order which we will contest but ultimately the cost of doing that will mean that a great institution in Digbeth will be lost – it’s a tragedy.”
Birmingham City Council has identified Digbeth as a creative quarter for the city, and most local residents are in favour of venues which they say enhance the character of the area and provide a space to nurture the much-vaunted creativity the council is striving for.
Too right, this whole thing is ridiculous. To threaten something that brings culture and colour to the ‘creative quarter’ on the strength of one complainant, rather than work constructively with the venue to tackle the issue, is just madness. Digbeth Slacker Midge agrees, calling the drama Fiddle and Bone Round 2:
It’s baffling that someone would buy a residence that was sold to them as being in a ‘vibrant city centre location’ and then bitch when they realise the vibrancy doesn’t work 9 to 5 hours!. Birmingham regulars will have seen this depressing tale unfold before in the late 90’s with Jazz/Blues live venue The Fiddle and Bone, unfortunately many letters to MP’s and the press came to nought and now that place now stands like some beer themed Marie Celeste. The Rainbow story could be more devastating as it sets a presidence for the whole of Digbeth’s future in The Big City Plan. Watch This Space!!.
Birmingham’s Twitter community was also very vocal in its support for the pub. Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the many tweets:
