Birmingham

capt_slog

Last week I went to the O2 arena in London to see Monty Python; a good show, and the arena itself is quite a spectacle too.

When we came out of the dome, we had a bit of a walk around, and as it was nice weather with a lot of people around, it reminded me and others in our party of being in one of those Mediterranean cities where people just wander around in the evening for the pleasure of it.

Someone mentioned that there was a bit of Birmingham that is just like this too. I scoffed, but they assured me it is true. Anyone know where this is in Brum if it exists?

Velonutter

Broad Street

Yellow Peril

Brindley Place/canal basin?

arran77

Curry Mile?

sloppyschleckonds

Its Birminum

southdownswolf

Yellow Peril wrote:

Brindley Place/canal basin?

This

mamba80

Alabama ?

capt_slog

Brindley Place looks like it. Thank you.

florerider

to be fair to Brum - the difference is that Brindley Place, Broad Street and the Gas Street Basin are all parts of a city centre, with restaurants, hotels, bars, museums, concert halls and theatres a plenty.

tangled_metal

I've heard a lot of good things about Birmingham these last few years. I think it has really improved to the level England's second city should always have been.

VTech

Broad St is very poor, clubs closing through lack of trade and dead as a dodo in the week.
Lack of decent funding and regeneration has left the place in a lagging condition and personal friends of mine have been pulling out over the past 3 years.
I have shares in a restaurant and club in blindley place and lucky enough these are in profit but things have been better. Its a shame.

rolf_f

http://www2.b3ta.com/birmingham/

laurentian

Was at "Tech" (remember them?) in Birmingham in the early 80's. Although I loved the big city then, the regeneration there over the past 20-30 years has left it unrecognisable from the place I knew then . . . in the best way.

VTech

laurentian wrote:

Was at "Tech" (remember them?) in Birmingham in the early 80's. Although I loved the big city then, the regeneration there over the past 20-30 years has left it unrecognisable from the place I knew then . . . in the best way.

Im not so sure, its a white elephant of a place and the gorgeous building left by the victorians have been swamped with concrete monstrosities from the 60's and 70's blended in with ill fitting state of the art designs that were designed as show pieces rather than making the whole city blend in.

Im Birmingham born and raised but the place is horrid, money wasted on poor projects and potential for making the city world class squandered by mismanagement.

city_boy

I'm sure I read somewhere the the earthquake in Birmingham back in 2008 caused £40 million' worth of improvements

rolf_f

VTech wrote:

laurentian wrote:

Was at "Tech" (remember them?) in Birmingham in the early 80's. Although I loved the big city then, the regeneration there over the past 20-30 years has left it unrecognisable from the place I knew then . . . in the best way.

<br abp="837"><br abp="838">Im not so sure, its a white elephant of a place and the gorgeous building left by the victorians have been swamped with concrete monstrosities from the 60's and 70's blended in with ill fitting state of the art designs that were designed as show pieces rather than making the whole city blend in.<br abp="839"><br abp="840">Im Birmingham born and raised but the place is horrid, money wasted on poor projects and potential for making the city world class squandered by mismanagement.

Agree with you completely. What I notice about Birmingham is that the scale of the civic architecture is that bit bigger than Leeds - Birmingham ought to be more impressive but it's just a ruined cack hole that the new Bull Ring has done nothing to remedy and the ugly new library shows the lessons still haven't been learned. Of course, Leeds is now trying to catch up with large scale destruction of sympathetically designed old buildings in the City Centre to be replaced by clumsily designed future slum shopping centres that Leeds of all places has no need of.

Yellow Peril

VTech wrote:

Broad St is very poor, clubs closing through lack of trade and dead as a dodo in the week.
Lack of decent funding and regeneration has left the place in a lagging condition and personal friends of mine have been pulling out over the past 3 years.
I have shares in a restaurant and club in blindley place and lucky enough these are in profit but things have been better. Its a shame.

ooh which one? I'll patronise next time I'm there.

secretsam

I love Brum. I loved it before it was improved.

Reason: I had three very happy years at Uni there!

Sorry to hear that the revitalisation hasn't really got the legs it should have had. Not surprised that the new Library is hideous, but Brum is hardly alone in expressing civic pride through vile architecture.

wongataa

SecretSam wrote:

I love Brum. I loved it before it was improved.

Reason: I had three very happy years at Uni there!

Sorry to hear that the revitalisation hasn't really got the legs it should have had. Not surprised that the new Library is hideous, but Brum is hardly alone in expressing civic pride through vile architecture.

I like the new library. Some people are like me and some people don't like it. There is no universal opinion.

capt_slog

Well, this weekend was my trip to Brum.

We arrived at around mid-day Friday and checked into the Jury's Inn, and then had a walk around the city. Very pleasant it was too. I'm impressed. The bit around the canals is excellent, and I like the way we could walk for ages and not have to cross a road.

It does have it's oddities, The Bullring being one of them. We passed one entrance to it about three times and never found the way in, it was only when we came out that way that we realised that it wasn't the entrance into Nando's :roll:

But on the whole it was a great place to visit. Although it's only around 50 mins away from home, I can't think that I've ever been before unless I was taken there as kid. It's always been somewhere that we head towards but skirt around and avoid, that's not going to happen any longer.