Fortune Teller, Bonny Street, 2000

It always struck me as odd that the 'fortune teller' never painted over this advert properly -even three years after Diana died. It seemed like an advertisement for their own incompetence.

I had seen a few people trying to take a picture of the sign shooed away by stall-holders as if recording an image would reveal a shameful secret  about the place.

Princess Diana is the de-facto patron saint of Blackpool; the combination of aggressive sentimentality and resigned fatalism apparently impossible to resist for some.

Waiting for a taxi 1999

This is on the Promenade outside the Bierkeller at around Midnight, July 1999  which before the licensing laws  were relaxed used to be chucking out time. The woman on the phone is ordering a taxi. Her friend is occupied  with the  chap in the middle - who  seems to have rather large hands. You can just see his friend next to him, who didn't get so lucky looking slightly bored.

My technique here was to set the shutter speed to match the ambient light and then fill it with flash to make it sharp, with the intent of capturing the atmosphere of the scene.

The Bierkeller , just opposite Central Pier is a great little underground bar where I enjoyed a few steins with friends.

Miss Patricia's Music Hall 1999

Miss Patricia was an impresario of the Blackpool music scene at various locations in the town over the years.  Reviving the old time music hall tradition of the early 20th Century her shows were very popular amongst people of all ages, and not just the tourists.

She can be seen here to the left of the picture, dressed as Burlington Bertie & wearing a straw boater hat.

What set it apart from others like is that Miss Patricia obviously had a deep love for the music and theatre of that period.

I was taken there by a  Scottish friend of mine called Helena on wet Saturday who was adamant that they had  the best Guinness in town.

A few minutes before I took the picture, the lady on stage was serving drinks to the patrons, and perhaps to herself as she was a bit unsteady on her feet. At some point she decided that the show really needed a striptease which she then proceeded to oblige the audience with.

Here's one of the audience getting up and having a go, and then one of the audience where you can see the smoky atmosphere.

The picture below is the doorman or greeter who stood outside the entrance and ushered you in. Obviously a bit of character,  I never found out why he covered his left hand with a thick leather glove.
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Located (I think) at 103 Church St,  Miss Patricia's revue took place in a rather distressed Art Deco building which was  all the more beautiful in it's decay. You can see it as it was when captured by Google Streetview below.

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Miss Patricia 's closed suddenly in 2000, but the show went on across various different venues in Blackpool.

Grasmere Supper Rooms 1998

This Grasmere Supper Rooms on Grasmere Rd in 1998. The town  had a number of shops and business that retained their original features and this was one of the better preserved examples. Note the beautiful stained glass in the upper panes with the words Fish, Chips, & Peas - probably from the 1930s. I think it's even more interesting because the building is very much still in use as a business.

If you look below at the 2009 Google Streetview image it seems to have had a radical make-over. The lathe turned wooden panelling has been replaced by modern UPVC double-glazing. Thankfully though the stained glass windows have been retained.

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On the Promenade, June 1999

This is on the Prom on one of the first hot weekends of the year. One of the things that makes the front interesting is that the pavements are not really wide enough to accommodate everyone on them so people interact more than perhaps they would normally, often with interesting results.

This another image shot with the camera held at hip-height pointing upwards, without looking through the viewfinder. Sometimes you just get lucky!

Late........ 1998

The Co-Op  Late Shop 210 Central Drive, Blackpool 1998. I took me ages to find the location again, as not only has the branding changed, but the shop has had a complete re-model to accommodate disabled access. The council has also changed the street furniture. The Belicia beacon opposite the entrance has been moved a few yards down the street with the Zebra Crossing in what looks like a traffic calming exercise. You can see what it looks like today in the Google Streetview image below.

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A Wee English Twat 1997

My first landlady, Mrs Sharkey shopping on Abingdon Street on a rainy December in 1997. Mrs S (I never learnt her first name) was originally from Glasgow and came down with her husband for a new start in the 1960's. She had a bed & breakfast near the front for a lot of years but retired to a property on Whitegate Drive after her husband died.

30 years as a landlady had marked her temperament and she wasn't generally a fan of people. She reserved a special disdain for the English in particular,  whom she divided up into three categories; bastards, arses and twats. Being the latter was the highest position an English person could aspire to in the eyes of Mrs Sharkey, who I once overheard describing me to her sister as 'no bad for a wee English twat'. 

Sadly, others didn't get off so lightly. Whilst the rest of the country were still enamoured by Tony Blair, she dismissed him as a 'slimey bastard' whose wife had an 'arse for a face'. Which, in the fullness of time transpired to be an accurate assessment.

That said, she had a good heart and wasn't beyond overlooking the odd late rent payment or late night noise. Once she gave me half a bottle of vodka for looking after her cat for a week. Naturally it wasn't exactly a half bottle of vodka, it had previously been a full bottle that someone had consumed about half of and then forgotten.

RIP Mrs Sharkey.

Merelene's Cafe 1997 - 2000

Merelene's Cafe, formerly on Deansgate. In the town centre, but strangely hard to find unless you'd been there before. Stepping through the door was to be transported back into the 1950s; leatherette seating and aluminium tables with a Melamine fascia -  a real gem of Modernist design.

Merelene's was my main retreat in Blackpool if the weather got bad. I never saw it really busy and there was always plenty of seating to be had. Although judging by the way they stared at you as the door creaked open it was mainly patronised by regulars, most of whom were elderly. I suspect for them it was one of the few constants in a changing world.

The above picture is looking through the window at night with the brake lights trails reflected in the window.

Merelene's sold things that you thought didn't exist anymore, like those individual marshmallows wrapped in foil and pink wafer biscuits. But her particular speciality was coffee - instant coffee made with steamed milk from a machine on the counter and the addition of heart-stopping amounts of white sugar.

If you look at the images below,  you may notice something very unusual. People smoking in a public place! This was a good few years before the smoking ban which sounded the death knell for a lot of establishments that catered for working class people.

In the last image a customer is rolling a cigarette, without once glancing up from his paper.

Sadly, a few years ago, in something described as a 'Regeneration Project',  Merelene's was demolished to make way for   a car park. You can see it's former location in the Google Streetmap image below.

 I have been unable to find any reference to Merelene's anywhere else on the web, so this may be it's only memory. Please get in touch if you know different.

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Hair Braiding, Blackpool 1998

This is June 1998 between the South Pier and the Pleasure Beach, possibly Osborne Rd. There were quite a few of these little 'pop up' businesses along the pavements trying to catch the visitor's eye; balloonmen, three for a pound lighter sellers, gypsys selling heather  etc.  Working beneath the radar of the the authorities they disappeared as quickly as they appeared when the weather turned bad or the council inspectors were spotted making their rounds.

Note that high-waisted jeans were currently fashionable.

Queens Park, October 1997

Looking out over Blackpool at night from the top of the multi-storey car park on Talbot Rd, October 1997. The Queens Park estate is a great example of Brutalist architecture beloved of Councils in the 1960s. Comprising of five towers they were built with the idea of them being  'Streets in the Sky'.  They never really seemed to work as intended  and became associated with a lot of social problems. They have been scheduled for demolition in 2013, to be replaced by a low-rise estate. Not everyone is happy to see  them go, only about 20% of the 1500 residents voted for demolition. You can view some photos of what it looked like before and as it was being built here .

Below is the same scene but just before sunset when the towers were lit up by the last rays of the day.

If you look towards the lower right of the picture you can see  a road leading up to the flats. That I think is Caunce St.  My friends Rob & Andy lived there in a fairly grotty first floor flat. Below them lived a youngish couple who were notable only for having about six teeth between them. He worked on the trawlers. One night I was over watching a video of Fritz Lang's Metropolis when we heard them having an argument. At some point through the floor we heard him scream at his missus that it was his intent to go and 'kill those fucking poofs upstairs if they don't shut up'.

Not a word did we make for the rest of the night.

Here is an  image of Caunce Street, unusual now for having a advert for cigarettes on a billboard.

Made in Fleetwood, August 1999

August 1999 was a hot one. During the Summer break from college I would spend the morning writing my dissertation in the public library on Queen Street and then stroll back along the prom in the afternoon. All the men seemed to go about shirtless, except for me who favoured a t-shirt and a woolly jumper, which pleased my Mother, if not the merciless fashionistas of the North West.

Fleetwood is just up the road from Blackpool. Concentrating on the belly tattoo I  missed the swastika on his right hand and the sores on his chest.

Bed & Breakfast Houses on Central Drive 1997

The traditional cleaning of the front step. Very important if you are a landlady, apparently.

A lot of students stayed in these places. The going rate was about £42 per week in 1997. To say the quality was variable was something of an understatement.  One place I looked at had a flattened hamster underneath the bed that had clearly been dead for some months.

The landladies were happy to have you during the off season, but come April would often throw out the students in preference to hundreds of ballroom dancers from Japan who were apparently happy to pay the hugely inflated prices. One can only imagine what they thought when they encountered the accommodation which often hadn't seen a coat of paint since the 1970s and  smelled of old vomit and detergent. I'm sure some thought it was a subtle revenge for Imperial Japanese Army's conduct  during World War 2.

Despite what you might hear about the 'loveable' Blackpool landlady, in my experience it was  often the choice of those close to desperation to take students in.  One I briefly rented a room from  was convinced of the benefits of drinking her own urine. Each morning I would be greeted with a pewter tureen of her micturition gently steaming on the cistern.

She had a breakdown when BBC2 stopped showing Star Trek and was carted off to hospital. I left shortly afterwards.

Blackpool Embraces Multiculturalism.....

The emergency services in Blackpool get dozens of calls each year about bodies being seen in the sea or by the side of the road. In almost every case they turn out to be novelty inflatable dolls which, presumably as they lack anatomical correctness must provide only a brief period of entertainment before being dumped by their owners. 

In 1998 there was a brief but lively exchange on the letters page of the local newspaper where a visitor complained about the appearance of 'ethnically coloured' dolls appearing on the Promenade. Disgusted that his ten year old daughter was confronted with the horrifying spectacle of a white and black doll tied together in a mimicry of interracial copulation, his diatribe against Blackpool, society and the world at large finished with the immortal lines "It's bad enough having politically correct nonsense indoctrinated into our children at school, but we don't come to Blackpool to have sleaze and moral depravity shoved down our throats'.

April on the Prom

This is 1998 on the Promenade near the North pier. I'm guessing it was quite early in the season - possibly around April as there are comparatively few lights illuminated. I don't think these two guys were on a stag night, there seems to be something in the beer that compels you to buy fake boobs after a  few pints.

Fogbound in Winter 1999

If I wanted to take a break from shooting or escape the weather I would often drop in on friends of mine who had secured part-time jobs in the town. One, called Alex was working at one of the theatres as an usher. As I arrived the presscall for the local panto was about to begin, featuring the apparently hilarious 'entirely clean' comic Jimmy Cricket who was holding out a poster which had his name at the bottom of the bill. Alex said to him 'If you held that upside down you'd be at the top of the bill'. A look of revelation came over Cricket's face and  he unashamedly shouted to the assembled throng Hey everybody! If I turn this upside down I'll be at the top of the bill!. For the next minute he exhibited a enormous  smug grin as he bathed the adulation of the crowd who assumed that it was another example of his spontaneous wit.

Dodi Dead, Diana Critical

This was the first ever picture I took in Blackpool. It was early on the morning of the 31st August 1997 and the newspapers for some reason had not been collected. I went down to the Promenade and after about twenty minutes someone said  that Diana had died. As I made my way along to Central Pier there was a group of four people pushing and shouting at two men, who it transpired were a reporter and photographer from the local newspaper.  The group, three women and a man blamed the press for her death and looked like they were about to lynch them. The last I saw they were beating hasty retreat off the Prom.

Looking at the masthead on the Mirror which put out a 3am edition, it would have taken a lot of money and expense to keep the presses rolling through the night. Wouldn't happen now of course, with the Internet.

The following Monday a severed human head was found in a sports hold-all in the street adjacent to my new home.

Welcome to Blackpool!

Hopperesque

 

 

 

  

These are from November 1997, when I was in the first year. Blackpool in the Winter can look like a huge Edward Hopper panorama. For some reason a lot of the B&Bs used to leave their curtains open and you could often see lone people watching TV in the lounge or dining rooms prepared for breakfast the next day.

Kissing Couple at the Interchange.

A couple embracing at the Interchange on Talbot Road 1999. Bus stations are great for pictures as there is always a bit of drama with people coming and going.

This image has plenty of 90s iconography; his curtain fringed, gelled hair and Sunny Delight bottle. Her pink/purple pastel top, the tones of which were popular at the time.

Pink Pedal Pushers & Cornrows

In the bus shelter  late at night in July 1998. This looks like about a  half-second exposure with fill flash. The clothes nicely match the mobile phone.

That washed out pink colour was popular amongst Acid House Ravers in the late Eighties and had entered the mainstream by the mid-1990s.

Tracksuit Lads

Two lads rocking the Sports Casual look in 1998. I guess being Blackpool they would have been more in the Oasis camp than Blur - especially with those basin haircuts!

 I'm not sure where this is but there is a modernish  style church on the right of the image and houses are later than the Victorian red brick faced buildings which are found in the town centre.

At some point I had seen a book in the college library (or Learning Resource Centre as they insisted on calling it) about the photographer William Klein who instead of  holding the camera to his eye held it at waist height before firing the shutter. This  allowed him to catch the subjects unaware and also from an angle where it was looking up at the subjects rather than down on them. I started copying the technique which although rather hit and miss worked well in this instance.

Family With Possessions, Central Drive, 1998

There always seemed to be a lot of this in Blackpool - people walking their possessions from  one place   to another. The town always had a big Bed & Breakfast culture. Not holidaymakers, but benefit claimants in temporary accommodation who for whatever reason found themselves having to move on a regular basis. One day I saw four families in close succession and it looked like they were fleeing some sort of economic or social catastrophe.

Waiting for the tram

This is near the Central Pier in 1999. Around January I'm guessing as the tower is unlit  and many of the attractions are closed. Blackpool can be a fairly dismal place in the closed season. Few people, even the locals venture down to the sea front as the wind and waves of the Irish sea smash against the tidal walls. The only other sign of life is the Funland amusement arcade  whose incessant blinking neon only seemed to add to the gloom. After braving the prom I'd often nip into Merelene's Cafe to steam by the radiators with a cup of frothy coffee.

I don't do much of this 'smash & grab' type photography anymore unless I have to as it can be intimidating for the subject on the end of the lens.

Apollo Bingo Hall, Waterloo Road, South Shore, Blackpool.

Formerly a cinema, the The Palladium Super Cinema opened in 1926. You can see some of the beautiful 1920s Art Deco interior  here  and a faded ghost sign which says 'Pallidium - for your entertainment'. In 1976 the cinema closed and it was converted to a bingo hall called the Apollo. In 2009, probably  due to the increase in tax on gambling the Apollo closed, and very quickly much of the fine decor was stripped. In my picture taken in 1998 you can still see much of the exterior as it originally was when it opened in the 70s.

Google Streetview shows the rather dilapidated state that  it is today.

 It looks like a modern brick fascia has been attached to the exterior fascade, but   some of the original Art Deco architecture is still visible above the entrance on the far left.

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