Pretty Christmas Lights

The lights went on today

The only question now is: how many will still be working in three weeks’ time?!

UPDATE – the middle third of the Sydney Street lights are off already. Failing after 2 days is possibly a record. They won’t be fixed, they never are.

Labouring the Point

The Labour Party conference is in town.

That means a ‘ring of steel’ preventing us using our own seafront. The helicopter has been hovering for the past two days and in the run-up police have been swooping on cars driving into the city. There was even a news report that everyone living within a mile of the conference centre was getting a visit from Mr Plod. Just to check they’re not Osama Bin Laden, or something.

Of course, the Labour Party aren’t paying for all this. Us local taxpayers are – and we get locked out of our own city as a thank you.

It’s claimed that they bring in money to the local economy, so shall I expect to see Harman and Brown shopping for quirky gifts in the North Laine? Maybe they’ll pop to BomBanes for a plate of sausages at a magic table? Or will they be spotted doing karaoke in Lucky Voice? Perhaps we’ll see Mandelsohn staggering out of the Bulldog, and Prescott balls-deep in some skank round the back of Kulture?

More likely, being the party of the working man, they’ll stay behind their security cordon for a few days, before being chauffeur-driven back to Whitehall.

Unsurprisingly, there’s not a huge number of protests planned. I would join one of them if there was. But what would we protest about?

Iraq? Over and forgotten about, despite a great number of the attendees being war criminals.

The NHS? Privatisation continues apace. They won’t listen.

Cuts to public services? Taxes for the rich and redistribution of wealth after Labour have overseen the widening of the rich-poor divide? How about a curb on bankers’ bonuses? Constant infringement of our civil liberties in the name of a vague threat? HA!

Not only would the protests go un-noticed, since we’d be kept safely behind barries under threat of anti-terror legislation, and this shower of shite will be kicked out of power in a few months anyway.

So, what’s the point?

A few years ago, I was walking back from Sainsbury’s, past St Peter’s Church. There were half a dozen police outside but I didn’t stop to watch. I found out later that it was Blair, in town for the conference and popping into a church service. I wish I’d known – I had half a dozen eggs in my bag that could’ve been flung his way.

Can you imagine the utter futility of egging Brown?!

Garnish Overkill At Bill’s

Pineapple, coconut and apricot juice. With half a watermelon for good luck.

Choking On An Apple

The Brighton Apple Store opens in a sparkling explosion of fuckwittery:

Nye Wright, 35, the store’s American-born manager, motivated his staff with a cheering, clapping and hugging routine shortly before the doors opened at 10am.

Then staff ran out of the shop giving high fives to people in the queue which stretched around Churchill Square’s upper level.

Back inside the store they lined up clapping and high-fiving their customers again as they entered the store to receive their free T-shirts and to get their hands on the Apple products they had come to try.

Twats

Bad Lighting Design Part 2

It appears the cheap lighting under the Trafalgar Street underpass wasn’t finished when I blogged about it. The latest developments are:

1. A white spotlight pointing downwards above each archway on the north side. Not bad, but should’ve been in the struts pointing at an angle for a better effect.

2. Sequenced LEDs in the attractive niches on the south side. These just add to the overall lurid effect of the colour-changers. Again, these niches should’ve been picked out by gentle spots in the struts.

3. Another row of LEDs has been added at the top, where the road comes out. Because of the slope, these are much higher than the original two runs which were already at slightly different heights. So instead of a pleasing line, we have three strips of light at three different levels.

4. They’ve covered the LED casings and wiring with what appears to be half a drainpipe. However, it’s in two colours: brown on the bricks, and white at the top, adding to the disjointed look of them. Also a note to designers: when you put something on a wall, it doesn’t disappear if you cover it with a similar coloured plasting case. It would’ve been better to have a nice, contrasting casing that was at least consistent with itself. Perhaps painted to match the existing ironwork, making it look like part of the structure. Oh, and they could at least have made an effort to hide the screws that are at 6 inch intervals. Better still there shouldn’t be anything at all ruining a nice bit of Victorian brickwork.

There’s still a crane under there, so Brighton Council might not yet be done with their wacky design hell. I’ll report back if they suddenly install lasers or strobes (which wouldn’t be at all surprising).

Brighton Station and Bad Lighting Design

The council have been installing new architectural lighting in the underpass at the top of Trafalgar Street.

What they should have done is use mostly soft white/off-white lighting to illuminate the impressive ironwork struts and arches, with perhaps a single colour to pick out either the brickwork niches on the south side, or the archways on the north (the ones that haven’t been boarded up and ruined, that is). The lighting units themselves should’ve been hidden within the supports.

That’s how architectural lighting should be: subtle, to highlight the interest and beauty of the structure, and in this particular place they could’ve added real warmth and character to one of the entrances to our city.

Instead, what they’ve done is install cheap, tawdry and multi-changing coloured LED strip lights. They’ve been bolted to the lovely brickwork in ugly strips, with the wiring and casings all visible. They’re not even one long unit – but several, much cheaper ones that don’t even all change colour at quite the same time.

It’s garish and tacky, like a bad nightclub. Why does EVERYTHING have to be colour changing LEDs?

The photos don’t quite do the effect justice – the lights don’t even continue to the top of the road because it’s low to the pavement and in daylight.  So it’s like a disjointed dotted-line of metal that begins and ends abruptly. That’s why these things should be hidden!

Does no-one with any sense of aesthetic look at these plans first?

Brighton Nonsense

The Energy Healing Centre in Trafalgar Street are frauds and charlatans, promoting all kinds of utter bullshit from auras to gong therapy. But this particular pile of bollocks really caught my eye:

Arse For Art’s Sake?

I was quite underwhelmed by the Sky Mirror. Firstly, it’s not very big. There are several of Kapoor’s mirrors, the biggest being 5 metres across. This one is less than half that.

Secondly the beauty of the sky mirror is supposed to be it’s incongruity. Reflecting a blaze of blue sky into an urban scene. A perfect circle of colour and freedom against drab architecture.

Put the mirror into a natural setting and it loses that impact and contrast. Site it near some bushes, next to one of the most startling and surprising buildings in the UK and it’s dwarfed and utterly out-shone by its surroundings: the Pavilion Gardens is not the right place for this sculpture at all.

The installation in the old vegetable market is different. This is on another scale entirely. Two huge red earth works, like alien turds 7 feet high, appear to have burrowed out of the ground leaving a perfectly oval crater. The rubble is piled nearby.

The deep scarlet red implies something like flesh and blood, the size itself and technical execution is inspiring though like much modern art although it looks cool it doesn’t have a lot to say.

The faint suspicion of pretentious twaddle lingers when you learn of the title: The Dismemberment Of Jeanne D’Arc.

Far better was the installation on the ground floor of my building, created by the Youth Offending Team. On the theme of Seven Deadly Sins, it was laid out like an empty flat – with hints of the occupant’s sins and crimes, repentances and regrets: a briefcase of forged money and drugs, TVs showing static and imploring “Why does no-one listen?”, a bathroom cabinet with medicines re-named things like “I Punched Someone Just For Fun”. It was bleak, but strangely hopeful – these were people who felt they were excluded, had moved into crime but were now coming back having identified their own weaknesses and sins.

As a counterpoint, recent news articles of the MPs expenses scandal were pasted in the kitchen. Are MPs as full of remorse and as willing to accept a penance as these young people? And isn’t everyone a sinner on some level anyway?

Of course it had it’s moments of cliché. But these aren’t artists, they’re just disenfranchised young people finding their voices. It was more powerful and thought provoking than anything that Anish Kapoor could create, but sadly not worth the £2 million the mediocre Sky Mirror commands.