culture

FlixFixer — a new type of cinema at the Custard Factory

FlixFixer is Social Cinema at the Custard Factory Theatre. “It allows you to choose movies you love, find a venue to screen them and invite friends, family or other like-minded film-lovers to share in a screening where you set the rules – be it dress-up, dress down, no hats or no food. It allows you to build a community of friends around your shared love of movies and get together regularly to celebrate that. We screen here on Wednesdays… or you can screen here whenever you want” Loads of special nights already booking, including an offering from the Dirty Bristow team.

Danny Smith: Requiem for a piss stained short cut

It was a shocking moment when after nineteen years of living in Birmingham I realised it will never be finished. The building work will never be done, some part will always be being demolished for another part to be built fresh: no one will ever take a step back, with their hands on their hips, and turn around with a ‘TA-DAA’. The ubiquitous cranes will always be part of the skyline, they’re not visitors they’re residents. Cities are the bodies of our collective souls, and like bodies they change, regenerate, and can be easily marred. Ever see Ground Zero from up high? It looks like a fuck-awful scar across the face of pretty girl. The Queens Drive staircase is an access staircase that travels from the bottom of Station Street up to the passageway that connects the Pallasades to the Bull Ring, with an exit to New Street station halfway up. And it’s to be closed soon. This staircase is one of my favourite little short cuts from New St. You have to duck up the tramp ramp (named ages ago because of the amount of beggers that used to line it, they’ve all been moved on now but...

Home of Metal from I am Birmingham

Nice vid from I Am Birmingham.

Should you be interested in the music known as Heavy Metal, or the history of the West Midlands, then this summer there’s an afternoon at least of your time that needs to be dedicated to the Home of Metal. Wassat? Let the blurb tell you: “Four decades since heavy metal was unleashed onto the world, Home of Metal arrives this summer, presenting a series of ambitious exhibitions and associatedevents which explore the foundations, social context and heritage of heavy metalculture, which has gone on to be a global phenomenon. .Curated by Capsule, Home of Metal is a celebration of the music that was created in the West Midlands, its legacy and influence across the world. Home of Metal focuses on the Midlands-born innovators of the genre and those thatcontinued to develop it. From Black Sabbath, unquestionably the founding fathers ofHeavy Metal, Judas Priest, defenders of the faith whose twin guitar attack paved theway for multitudes of melodic metal acts in their wake to Napalm Death, whose first two albums introduced grindcore to an unsuspecting world.” But it’s about so much more than music, behind the huge gothic drapes lurks threads of your local heritage from the immediate post-war to today’s...

…to line the rabbit’s hunch mainly. Losing relevancy to the faster, closer to “the kids”, world of the music blog the NME is in real circulation trouble. It knows it has to get back to the roots of music rather than keep putting the bloody Libertines on the cover every week, so what better to do than to praise the small venues around the country—to show just how much they know about your life. And so it’s a bit of a shame that, despite quite a few shouts for such venues as the Hare and Hounds, they decided that ‘Custard Factory, Birmingham’ was our local representative in such a poll. Shame really that that’s not much of a small venue containing as it does a few spaces sometimes used for gigs, and one quite large —but “not officially connected”—venue space in, er, Space2. Great as the Supersonic festival is it’s probably the only gig/festival/event that takes place at ‘Custard Factory’—and that is bloody huge, not small. They might have course meant ‘The Factory Club’ which was in the Custard Factory, but that closed some time ago. People on the Tweets are not happy. ...

Birmingham’s Third Rate Reputation

Nothing too new here in this Independent piece about “Britain’s ‘Second City’ a third-rate reputation”, but they’ve done a fair amount of research —Adrian Goldberg, Trevor Beattie, Siôn Simon, Khalid Mahmood all quoted. “In other parts of Britain there is an almost wilful ignorance of Birmingham’s attractions; a determined refusal to acknowledge that there is anything worth tasting inside its spaghetti swirl of motorways. “It’s seen as this grimy manufacturing city with an impossible one-way system – when it’s actually long-gone,” says Clare Short, former International Development Secretary. “Then everyone despises the accent. That’s the sneer at Birmingham.”" That they go on to use a stock picture of could-be-anywhere canalsde living, sort of undermines or re-inforces the lack of identify we suffer. As ever, cover your eyes before the comments if you don’t want to see the bile.

This is bleeding cool (and was found by Danny Smith on Bleeding Cool)—a Brum superhero: “According to the News Of The World, and I use that statement with all the baggae that brings with it, The Statesman is a real life superhero patrolling the streets of Birmingham in the West Midlands to prevent crime. He fights drug dealers, drunks and helps out homeless people in trouble. And what’s more, his secret identity is one under much attacjk right now – he’s a banker. No wonder he feels the need to do good. Apparently his friends and girlfriend doesn’t know about his four-times-a-week patrols. But with that frame and that beard, well it’s a bit like Oliver Queen isn’t it? Who wouldn’t know? The News Of The World states his accomplishments; He helped three other superheores and Police Community Support Officers capture a drug dealer and managed to scare off burglars breaking into builder’s merchant.” and the links go to the News of the World (but I haven’t seen what’s there as you have to sign up).

111111 2010

On the eleventh of November 2010 you are invited to take part in a pyschogeographical epic. A window of eleven hours to complete a circuit of Birmingham’s number eleven bus. 2009′s results were recorded here… including MoxyPark’s wonderful 11 bus song:

An unexpected treat this weekend, when the Invisible Architecture tour I was on stumbled across what might just prove to be a little independent gem. Shakes is a milkshake bar and coffee shop, it’s up Cannon Street almost oposite The Windsor and sort of behind Urban Outfitters. It does coffee and more usual stuff as well, but the milkshakes are something special: you can choose from cakey-biscuity ones, chocolate-bar-y ones, fruity-ones and even ones with things like Wham! bars in. Odd and brilliant. They’re not paying me, but I’d take bribes in Fry’s Peppermint Cream Shakes… mmmm. It’s got a sort of American diner vibe, loads of papers and magazines, free wifi and a table-top MAME machine with PacMan and Donkey Kong. What’s not to like? On the website you can see they’re continued the retro theme, with both a flash into AND a hit counter. Good skills.

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culture

FlixFixer — a new type of cinema at the Custard Factory

Danny Smith: Requiem for a piss stained short cut

Home of Metal from I am Birmingham

Home of Metal clocks in from tomorrow

I use the NME

Birmingham’s Third Rate Reputation

A New Breed of Hero

111111 2010

Milk and honey on Cannon Street

@onBirmingham – Breaking Brum News on Twitter