Birmingham: It's Not Shit loves Birmingham and has loads of news and features. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.
then Centro go and do it for you.
One weekend a year or two back I spent taking photos of those statues you get on bus timetables round Brum. I was intending to get pics of them all and put them on some sort of interactive map, but I never got round to it.
The good news is that Moseley Festival’s Music in the Park no longer clashes with Rootsville - it’s been moved to 11th and 12th August.
The bad news is that Rootsville now clashes with Betty Boo at the Nightingale!
The video for Misty’s Big Adventure’s ‘Night time better than the daytime’ sees them akip all around Moseley - see how many places you can spot. Nice jim-jams.
Searching through the council website on an unrelated matter (and no I couldn’t get the www.birmingham.gov.uk/google search to find what I wanted either) I stumbled over a page of ‘Conservation Publications’ which includes this gem (from 1997) ‘Signalling the Sixties’. It’s a brief guide to some of the sixties architecture in Birmingham, and not just in the city centre either. Despite my suspicions that every bit of our late twentieth-century heritage is being wiped out, all the buildings are still around - which maybe indicates that the well deigned, built and maintained are here to stay.
As Marvin Gaye sang it’s important to know what events are coming up in Brum - we’ve had a feed of upcoming’s event listings in our sidebar for some time. To make sure there’s no chance of you missing anything tho’, we’ve done a yahoo pipes mashup that also adds listings from Birmingham Alive.
You can get it here of course, or it’s direct RSS feed is here: What’s On In Brum.
If you can think of any other listings feeds that should be added, drop us a line or add a comment.
Via The Stirrer. Urban Splash, who have taken seemingly ages to refit Fort Dunlop and the Rotunda, have been chosen by Birmingham City Council to transform three tower blocks on the Birchfield estate in Perry Barr. The idea being to create ‘city living’ style apartments that are also “affordable housing”. Nice to see ‘regenration’ of housing outside the city centre - I hope these won’t be snapped up by people to rent out to UCE students, and that proper controls to stop that are in place.
This Saturday it’s Rootsville - don’t forget that it’s free until 6pm, and that should include; Steve Gibbons, Chrissy Van Dyke, Soweto Kinch and loads of other stuff. It’s still pretty cheap for after that and there’s The Destroyers, Misty’s and the Inspiral Carpets.
And I reproduce here a stop press (how quaint) from their myspace page - so I dont’ have to transpose it all out of capitals.
STOP PRESS - IN EVENT OF BAD WEATHER-(SURELY NOT AFTER 3 SOLID WEEKS OF BLOODY RAIN!! AND WITH OSIBISA BOKKED TO PERFORM THEIR SMASH HIT SUNSHINE DAY), ANYWAY IN THE EVENT OF RAIN, WE WILL BE PLACING MASSIVE MARQUEES OVER PERFORMANCE AREAS. THEY DON’T GET THAT AT GLASTONBURY.
I’m certainly going, if only to see Osibisa ‘bokked’…
Despite being welcomed by Lord Mayor Randall Brew**, Ozzy Osbourne won’t be getting a drink when he opens the Birmingham Walk of Stars on July 6th, as apparently the “area is an Alcohol Restricted Zone and the consumption of alcohol will not be permitted in Centenary Square.”
Should still be fun - and with the ceremony kicking off at 4pm, you should have plenty of time to get a pint somewhere on Broad St afterwards.
*Doesn’t really work, sorry.
**He should definitely form a charity cricket team called the Brew XI, shouldn’t he?
I’ve just bought this old Evening Mail sign and am about to screw it to my shed door, or maybe the door of our outside lav.
Beach two : Originally uploaded by bounder.
Despite the official opening, and the chance to see Mike Whitby in Bemuda shorts, being postponded due to inclement weather - Brum’s second beach opened today. In Chamberlain Sq, it does have water in the shape of the Joseph Chamberlain memorial and is slightly larger than the Bull Ring’s beach.
Two scantily clad ‘Rio Carnival’-style dancers with headdresses were enjoying the sand, along with a class of schoolkids and a metal crocodile, while the big screen played soothing seaside scenes and (really) seagulls circled over the council house.
(Is it just me, or do the rest of you whistle Vanessa Paradis’ no 6 smash -not the Taxi one- whenever you’re confronted with a bmi baby logo?)
