The great capital of the Promenade Country, a glitzy, trashy, low brow mass of humanity, where you can't smell the sea air, more the distinct odour of a huge seaborne sewer... this is Blackpool, grimy, unpleasant jewel of the North, Lancashire's soon to be den of gambling iniquity, synonymous with seaside resorts, donkeys and rock, and I hate every inch of the place with a deep, irrational passion that amazes even me.
I'd had a pretty jaundiced view of the whole sordid place well before the dave27 clan made its fabled journey north in 1997, relocating from the heart of the Midlands, 90 miles up the M6 and turn left at the M55, to Kirkham, nine miles west of Preston and about the same east of Blackpool Tower, and up close things got a great deal more depressing.
A Saturday afternoon or a Sunday morning
in Blackpool at the best of times is an unpleasant experience, but make your way over to the place at the height of the Illumination season, when the Great Unwashed are flocking to New Tack City and all you feel like is a good weep. Spend an hour and a half in a huge, slow moving convoy of cars, trekking past the pier, seeing mile upon mile of the same trashy lights, showing Stan and Hilda Ogden, or Ronald McDonald, or a couple of seahorses and Martians, and something very peculiar happens. The first 100 yards or so the first time you get up there it's quite attractive and exciting, but the interest soon wanes, especially when you hit the bit where unlicensed peddlers of tat, including those foul luminous yo yos and light up devil horns, roam with their nasty little chants and sales patter. It can get a bit hairy at times, especially when you can't move because of the traffic and the guys who ply their trade on the Pleasure Beach try to get them to move on, sparking all sorts of unpleasant little scenes.
Mind you, things don't get an awful lot better after the sun comes up. The packed and thronging streets are normally filled to the rafters with crowds of thick necked drunken Glaswegians, loud mouthed hen parties with low tops and high hemlines and hordes of screaming kids wanting to buy strap on plastic Gazza breasts and a Big Mac. The lowest common denominator has found its natural home in this odd Lancashire town, crowned grimily by the Tower and boasting a shopping centre which is like every other faceless shopping centre the length and breadth of this country, apart from the gift shops, the tattoo parlour and row upon stinking row of B&B's and guest houses, all ruled over by hideous landladies, full of the traditional Lancashire welcome.
Don't get the impression, however, that Blackpool is 100% bad. It's actually quite a nice little shopping town with some individual shops. But the endless throng of British youth intent on sowing their wild oats and soaking up the Great God Alcohol give the place a menacing and claustrophobic air that I've never quite experienced anywhere else.
Okay, just for a minute let's give a run down on some facts to guide you through this place.
Blackpool sits on the west coast, just past the Zimmer Frame town of Lytham St Annes but a fair way before you hit the spacious seaside towns of Poulton and Anchorsholme and a long way south of the fishing capital of Fleetwood, complete with the foul smell of landed fish. It's getting on for 20 miles North West of Preston, and a few miles off the end of the M55, which runs for three or four miles on from the Northern Preston junction of the M6.
It boasts a Football League second division team which boasts the place's name and used to be quite a major force in English football, playing host to the late wizard of the dribble, Sir Stanley Matthews. The club are located at a shabby stadium on Bloomfield Road, a couple of miles outside of town.
There is quite a lot of car parking in multi and single storey parks, while if you're happy to cruise around for a while you can find free parking on some of the side streets.
Blackpool Pleasure beach is packed out with some of the best rides around, including the ominously titled Valhalla, as opened by Jonathan (W)Ross a couple of years ago, along with the Pepsi Max and the Big One.
For the time being the Labour party have elected to drop the town from its list of conference locations on the basis that it can't cope with the needs of this modernising bunch, and the town's great and good are eagerly trying to win back their previous status, but seem to still have a long way to go. They're also eager to see the place gain city status, but are unlikely to be successful in the near future, so have opted instead for plans to turn it into a British Los Angeles, the gambling capital of the UK.
Blackpool is an okay seaside resort if you steer clear of the Pleasure Beach area, where it gets very crowded and full of drunks, but it's not my cup of tea (or even my stick of rock). The dave27 clan does quite a lot of shopping over that way, but makes a point of not setting a foot over the threshold on a Saturday afternoon if at all possible.
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Sep 15th, 2001
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