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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...

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.

The global media sensation the 4am Project was a perfect excuse for about 40 photographers to get access to our beautiful Central Library in the middle of the night. From the stacks in the basement to the very roof, we got to see the lot. Nilki Pugh’s photos, my photos. Am sure there will be more an better than mine at least appearing online, feel free to drop links to any you find in the comments:

Planning your journey online can be useful, save time and money if you do it right (and if then the busses actually turn up of course) so kudos to Network West Midlands for promoting that. In a bold marketing move, they’ve got for a poster campaign all over the city to promote planning your journey online without mentioning where one might do that. Small posters and large billboards: No web address, URL, app, QR code, nor mention of any of the three online journey planning services they promote at all. Brave egalitarian move, or oversight (all of the posters they’ve got that promoting offline things like bus-passes do have their web address on)? Bold, brave. Er, Centro?

What Colour is the 11 route?

From my 111111 explorations: This year I decided to see what colour the outer circle was. I’ve been fascinated with an iPhone app called Color Identifier that does nothing else but read out the colours it detects in the centre of the camera’s sensor — based first on RGB values and then this list of colour names. I sat on the top deck of the bus and angled the camera so the colours it was reading were around eye-level for someone on the pavement. The headphone output of the phone was linked up to a recorder, recording it in real-time. The app reads a new colour about every three seconds. I got on the 11C at around 11:20am, on Vicarage Road in King’s Heath, but it took around one stop to set up the iPhone and Zoom H2 to record. So, the circuit started here, opposite King’s Heath Park. The circuit took around 2 hours 20 min — the driver had a fag break in Ward End and popped in to a house opposite Acock’s Green Garage for a minute or two. So here’s what colour the outer circle is. A beautifully relaxing two-plus hours of spoken word (please feel free to download...

There’s nothing that worries me more than consultation (still no results btw) , apart from knocking down Birmingham’s most important building. So I was a bit disappointed with only “the main themes” being released from the consultation into what might happen with Paradise Circus — out of 153 responses I know at least a few had very strong “don’t knock down Central Library” themes. Why not publish everything? Alan Crawley at The Stirrer pulls the response apart. And if you’re feeling in need of sleep, here it is published as a PDF so that even fewer people will read it.

After years of calls for Birmingham to appoint a ‘Creative Director’ — similar to Manchester’s Peter Saville, it seems the City Council have finally got the message. A source close the the cabinet revealed that they’ve even identified their man — Hollywood maverick Tim Burton. It may be that a replacement for regeneration chief Clive Dutton has been so hard to come by as officials have been shooting for the top and trawling the film world for someone with real vision, and big curly goth hair. With Dutton now working in that London it would be a coup for Birmingham to get such a creative talent to come in the opposite direction — it’s hoped that Burton would move to Brum from his current home in Notting Hill. Burton could be in place to oversea Birmingham’s year as UK City of Culture, and it would be expected to be coloured by his very particular view of the World. Plans to sell sponsorship on Council workers’ uniforms could be shelved and current hi-vis tabbards replaced with slightly down-at-heel Victorian formal dress, while the Birmingham Anchor and similar underground sites would be opened to the public. A creative director would also...

Part of the build up to Brum’s City of Culture bid is the Canvas Birmingham site, where people can either say what culture they enjoy in the city or suggest odd ideas that they’d like to see. No idea is odder than the concept of a week long play version of a Cliff Richards film, but that’s what I wanted. Fierce have produced a ‘fantasy’ festival programme — which features some of the best ideas, including a giant sculpture of Spaghetti made out of spaghetti and art on the buses (go see it all here). And the Cliff Richards play: By the way, if you still haven’t seen the film it’s online here. It did amuse me a lot to see how the Mail couldn’t really cope with the idea of a ‘fantasy’ brochure and think that the ideas are going to happen.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! If you were in Birmingham yesterday you couldn’t have missed the super snow flurry! Tweeters sprang into action using the hashtag #uksnow along with the first part of their post code and a rating of the snow out of 10. I gave Birmingham a 7/10 rating. Tweeting these 3 pieces of information contributes to a very clever UKSnow map which gives an up to date view of the UK snow flurries around the country. Snow makes everything more exciting! Will Birmingham see a white Christmas? One bookies has odds of 11/4. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed! Have a great weekend :)

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Birmingham's emotional wellbeing* on Saturday 11th of February 2012 21:50: 55.2 % (average)

environment

Danny Smith: Requiem for a piss stained short cut

Birmingham’s Third Rate Reputation

Central Library at 4am

Network WM in URL Hell

What Colour is the 11 route?

Brutal Honesty

Gone for a Burton

Making it up as we go along

Friday Photo by Karen Strunks

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