urban75 blog

Although the beautiful West Pier looks unlikely to rise from the depths again, there’s still some quirky attractions to be found around the south coast city of Brighton.

One of my favourites is the Volk’s Electric Railway, which runs parallel with the beach for around one and a quarter miles (2 km), with several pedestrian crossings (above) giving sunbathers access on to Brighton’s famous beach.

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With the remains of Brighton’s magnificent West Pier now doomed to slowly rust away into the English Channel, the West Pier Trust have lent their support to what they believe is an ‘appropriate successor to the historic West Pier.’

This comes in the the shape of the i360, a tall observation tower with a passenger pod that rises 150m above sea level to offer dramatic views of the area.

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By 2003,  storm damage and two arson attacks had all but destroyed the entire structure of the West Pier.

Although there is an active campaign to create an ‘appropriate successor to the historic West Pier’ one thing is for sure – the wonderful pier ain’t coming back.

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I fell in love with this pier when I first saw it used as a backdrop for some of the photos in the photo supplement that accompanied The Who’s Quadrophenia double album.

The elegant, Grade I listed pier with its trademark neon ‘WEST PIER’ lettering on the concert hall had brought pleasure to millions over the years, but, sadly, I never got to walk on its wooden promenades.

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Worth a repost (with new photos!) is this account of our trip to the Goldstone Ground in Brighton, 8th February 1997.

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We took the train down to Brighton on a chilly February day in 2002, and armed with my old Sony Cybershot DCS-F55E camera, I grabbed a few photos around town.

On the way down to the beach, we passed this shop that was nearly overflowing with books.

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Taking a nap on the Palace Pier, Brighton.

Regulars to this blog may have noticed that it’s enjoyed something of a revamp, with a shiny new interface and new features being introduced.

As well as posting up all the usual drunken photos, obscure railway pics and urban75-related news, I’ll also be slapping up photos from the archives that I hope you’ll find interesting.

With summer coming up, here’s a few photos from a  delightfully sunny day spent on the south coast.

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Back in 1997, Brighton & Hove Albion were deep in financial trouble, courtesy of dodgy directors and iffy land deals, and with the prospect of the club going under for good, a “Fans United” day was organised.

This involved inviting fans from other teams to come down to show solidarity with the club’s plight at their home game against fellow strugglers Hartlepool United.

Thousands of fans turned up with their colours, and it was a great day out – with the Brighton players responding to the terrace love by thumping Hartlepool 5-0.

Sadly, Brighton’s problems have now become almost everyday for many clubs as big money continues to infest the game I love.

Here’s a photo as we made our way to the game in proper football weather.

I’ve just been sent an interesting YouTube animation of one of the most bonkers railways ever built – Volk’s Brighton to Rottingdean Seashore Electric railway.

This mad piece of Victorian eccentricity saw what amounted to a part-submerged moving pier travelling through the sea from Brighton to Rottingdean.

The whole venture lasted less than seven years, but you can see a short animation of the electric railway tram, ‘Pioneer,’ which was officially classified as a ship and had to be piloted by a trained sea captain!

Took a day trip down to the south coast yesterday and enjoyed walking around a delightfully deserted Brighton beach.

Sad to see the old West Pier continuing its decline.

More photos here

Blog updates coming soon:
Tons of stuff lined up including Offline photos, New York photos and reports and loads more stuff!

New Brighton photos!

I’ve just added about thirty new pics to the Brighton photo gallery

Sad to see the West Pier looking so moribund – here’s how it looked just ten years ago:

Brighton 1 Cardiff City 2

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Cardiff win, but I was a happy bunny on Saturday, even if the ‘field of dreams’ looked more like a playing field.

Here’s an excerpt from my report in the urban75 CCFC section

Brighton 1 Cardiff City 2 Championship, Saturday 15th October 2005

This was my first away game at Brighton for many years, and the first time I’d visited the Withdean Stadium. And what a horror the place is!

Stuck out in the middle of nowhere, with all the atmosphere of a deserted lunar base, the Withdean has to be one of the worst grounds I’ve visited for many years.

It’s not that I don’t empathise with Brighton’s plight – I was there at the ‘Fans United’ protest at the Goldstone in 1997 – but the prairie-like open spaces made it feel more like I was watching an egg’n'spoon race at the local school.

I hope Brighton sort out their proposed ground at Falmer soon because I never want to come back to this ground.

The facilities at the ground bordered on spartan, with a handful of portacabins providing basic toilet and food provision for the away fans.

The view from the jerry-built away stand was atrocious – the sun was directly in my eyes for most of the game and I was stuck in an uncomfortable plastic seat right in the front row where I kept banging my knees against the scaffolding.

If the seat had been any lower I would have been chatting with the moles, and despite being at the front of the stand, the nearest patch of football pitch was some way in the distance.

Standing up was declared verboten by stewards who insisted on constantly winding up the crowd further by blocking their view while they had occasional chinwags right in front of the stand.

And if all this wasn’t bad enough, they had the audacity to charge me 23 ruddy quid for the privilege…
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Site updates

If I say so myself, there’s some great new stuff on the site.
Taking pride of place is my spod-tastic Abandoned stations and disused railways section, offering photo reports on long forgotten lines.

Did you know that a remote Dyke near Brighton once had its own branch line, a ‘Steep Grade Railway’ and an aerial cable car, attracting crowds of up to 30,000?

It’s all long gone now, but it must have been an amazing place to visit in its heyday.

Elsewhere on the site, I’ve add a chapter from Chris Robert’s superb Cross River Traffic Project book, called ‘Gods of the River and Bridge’ and a chapter from Andy Worthington’s book documenting the 1985 clash between police and the Stonehenge Peace Convoy, known as the Battle of the Beanfield

I’ve finally finished updating my New York photo gallery, adding a new Shops, Signs and Graffiti section and the Glastonbury 2005 photo gallery is now online.

In response to the ever-growing range of urban75-related activities, there’s now a Community homepage and a separate section for the Walks In And Around London.

Readers can also keep up to date with the blogs of urban75-ers via a new Blog Listing.

Finally, coming up next Thursday (28th July) is the next Offline Club night, featuring the infamous ‘comedy terrorist’ Aaron Barschak and highly rated electro-poppers ROC.

See you there!

A day spent walking the South Downs, near Brighton

I’ve just posted up a two page photo report from the Sunday’s urban75 walk to Devil’s Dyke, and what a fabulous day it was!

The weather was beautiful, and we enjoyed a lovely ride in a vintage open top bus up to Devil’s Dyke before indulging in a relaxing day of picnicking, walking, drinking and, err, more drinking.

Earlier on, I’d photographed the sad remains of the once-wonderful West Pier in Brighton.

I’ve just learnt that the West Pier Trust have now thrown in the towel on their 30yr campaign to reopen this once-beautiful, Grade I listed structure…such a shame…

Oh, and keep this to yourself, but we’ve got a very special live act lined up for the next Offline at the Dogstar on Thursday, 26th May!

The tragedy of Brighton’s West Pier

I spent a few hours in Brighton today and I was saddened to see that the concert hall of the moribund West Pier has finally sunk into the sea.

It seems a disgrace that a listed building could be allowed to fall into such disrepair, and it’s equally disgraceful that no-one was ever arrested for the highly suspicious fires that wrecked the West Pier pavilion a couple of years ago.

I’ve posted up a few photos from the trip here.

After growing up with ‘Quadrophenia’, I’m really quite depressed to see the pier so completely fucked up – it’s a disgrace that the pier has been left to rot like this.

Checking with the West Pier Trust website doesn’t give much hope for the future either, with a (broken) link entitled ‘is this the end‘ on their homepage…