LoveBrighton

2003-07-25T09:47:00.000Z

Wow. What a long hiatus. Congenital laziness does not a good blogger make. Still, national press interest in Brighton can always stir us out of our torpor and make us put on our contrary hats.

Today's G2 was entirely written, edited and produced from Brighton beach, which now has wireless internet. So, hurrah, we can all go and work from the beach. WHAT MADNESS. The whole POINT of the beach is that it's for indolence, beer, children, paddling, fish and chips, frisbee, snogging, reading, painting, and staring out to sea with an entirely empty mind. It may be just what employees of new media companies want: to be able to crouch over their laptops and have calls to the switchboard put straight through to their mobiles, but what about the people who may have come to the beach to get AWAY from work? Do they want to hear phones constantly ringing around them and see people having video conferences, dictating copy, negotiating deals? I'd guess not.

The leading article in G2 complains that the bright sunlight makes it difficult to see their monitor screens properly. Well, DUH. And that the internet reception is in fact a bit dodgy so they've had to walk up and down the beach waving their laptops around in the air. Poor them. Heaven forbid journalists should look like idiots. Here's some free advice: stay in the office to work and come to Brighton on your day off - you'll enjoy it much more.

The subtext of all this is of course that the boundaries between our work and our lives are becoming ever more blurred. I'm not sure I like this trend. OK so we may be able to surf the web at work, and work from the beach, but if we never switch off our laptops, or our minds, won't we burn out?

2003-06-24T13:08:00.000Z

HOME COMPUTER IN MELTDOWN... UPDATES SUSPENDED... SORRY!

2003-06-17T10:27:00.000Z

Food Festival Choice: Macrobiotic Japanese Dinner @ Oki Nami Japanese Restaurant, 208 Church Road, Hove. £39. A rare opportunity to dine on ancient Japanese foods, prepared in traditional ways to maintain maximum vitality. The meal is preceded by a lecture.

2003-06-16T14:55:00.000Z

Food Festival Choice: Gastronomical Quiz @ Food For Friends, £2.

2003-06-14T11:45:00.000Z

Food Festival Choice: Sainsbury's Feastival Boulevard, New Road, 9.30am - 5.30pm today and tomorrow. Various stalls offering the best in continental and Sussex produce, including cheese, wines, vegetables, preserves... and you would have to have an iron will to resist the French patisserie stall.

2003-06-12T08:40:00.000Z

The Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Lover's Festival
From today until Sunday 22 June.

Now this is my kind of festival. One thing you're never short of in Brighton is places to eat, and although this festival does feature the usual expensive, trendy suspects, there's also some surprises and genuine treats in store. Today's pick: More than just beans n sprouts @ Coriander, 5 Hove Manor Street, 6-11pm. Discounts on creative vegetarian dishes.

2003-06-11T09:04:00.000Z

Tonight: Hot Mikado. Modern adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta by Brighton and Hove Operatic Society, incorporating jazz, soul and gospel tunes. Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex @ 7.45pm, until Saturday.

2003-06-10T09:41:00.000Z

Tonight: open jazz jam session @ the Open House, Springfield Road, Brighton. Every Tuesday, 7.30pm.

2003-06-09T09:49:00.000Z

Tonight: The Phil Collins 3 @ the Freebutt, 7.30pm.

2003-06-06T12:53:00.000Z

I can't help but look forward to the Southern FM Party in the Park, much as I fear teenage girls and high-gloss corporate sponsorship. Where else in Brighton would I get to see Sugababes, Mis-teeq and Busted share a stage? Where indeed - our provision for large scale concerts is currently woeful. Outdoor gigs are all very well, but the sooner the hideous Brighton Centre is consigned to history and music venues in the town catch up with fabulous theatres like the Komedia, the better.

2003-06-05T12:33:00.000Z

Tonight: Tindersticks @ The Old Market, Hove, 8pm.

2003-06-03T08:43:00.000Z

Tonight: The Chimp That Spoke - the David Glass Ensemble present the story of a psychology student who, in the 1960s, taught a chimp sign language. 8pm @ the Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex. Until tomorrow.

2003-06-02T09:31:00.000Z

Tonight: inimitable LoveBrighton favourite Alvin Hall does his money guru thing @ Borders, 6.30pm, FREE.

Proof if you needed it that the window of Infinity Foods is still one of the most interesting places in Brighton...

2003-05-29T12:20:00.000Z

Tonight: Melting Vinyl presents the New York Anti-Folk Tour - Herman Dune, Matt Mason USA, Jeffrey Lewis & Misty's Big Adventure. 8pm @ The Freebutt, £6/£5.

2003-05-28T09:00:00.000Z

Tonight: Get Involved - mixed-up media with Geoff Smith (hammer dulcimer & V-drum virtuoso), Chimp, The Matzo Boys, visuals, spoken word from Samizdat, & the Get Involved DJs @ the Hanbury Ballroom, 9pm, £3.

I have to agree with Norman Baker about 4x4 vehicles. There are several parked near my house, and by the look of them the nearest they've ever got to 'offroad' is riding halfway up the kerb and obstructing the pavement. The fact that one of them has a number plate reading 'BI9 CUM' also suggests not so much 'sports utility' as 'complete twat'. OK, I wouldn't go so far as to BAN them from built-up areas, but if you choose to drive in a city - and for the majority, it IS a choice not a necessity - you are part of a problem and should take steps to minimise the environmental impact, not increase it in the name of fashion or 'convenience'.

2003-05-27T09:54:00.000Z

Tonight: Howling At The Moon rises again, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Festival. 8pm @ The Full Moon in Boyces Street.

It's all over. Brighton residents can once more walk the streets without encountering stilt walkers or giant paper mache seahorses. But there's fallout: when is a Fringe not a Fringe? I confidently expect further complications in the fight for all that's not mainstream next year, with the appearance of the Real Fringe and perhaps the Fringe That Is So Fringe It's Fallen Into The Sea...

2003-05-23T10:43:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
I slightly object to the Charleston Festival on the grounds that it's impossible to get to using public transport, but if you CAN get there, check out Margaret Atwood reading from her new novel Oryx and Crake @ 7.30pm.

I had a cappuccino and two lemon and poppyseed muffins for breakfast this morning, made from scratch in my own home (not actually by me, but still...) It goes to show that you do NOT need Starbucks to have a good time.

A few too many muffins is perhaps what has led me to Alive, a health and fitness centre tucked away on Castle Street off Western Road. Now, it is very much the policy of LoveBrighton not to frequent gyms, but Alive do offer a good range of dance classes, martial arts etc, in a relatively non-scary environment (the studio IS lined with mirrors, but we'll let that pass). In fact, three or four new gyms have sprung up in town recently, a sure sign of an over-affluent society I'd say. What's wrong with swimming in the sea for exercise? Oh yeah...

2003-05-21T13:24:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
This is chosen almost at random (not for nothing did we go to Luke Rhinehart), but it does look interesting - Into The Crucible - an alchemy of dance and music @ St Bartholemews Church, Ann Street. 7.30pm. 'Spiraldance, overtone singing, live music from Mongolia to Mozart combine to tell the story of a magician and a mute...'

2003-05-19T10:05:00.000Z

Yesterday LoveBrighton attended the Mackerel Fayre on the seafront, a throwback to the days when Brighton still had an industry that didn't involve computers or wearing Carhaart. The centrepiece of the morning was the Blessing Of The Nets ceremony, where the vicar of Brighton traditionally says prayers for the fishermen and their catch for the coming year. It was terribly poignant to be part of such a jolly event - Salvation Army band, people collecting for Lifeboats and all - when the fishing community is in the doldrums. We even sang For Those In Peril On The Sea...

I don't really like fish, which makes it difficult for me to support local fishmongers directly, but YOU CAN make a difference by doing this, and similarly by going to the fantastic monthly farmer's market in Bartholemew Square.

2003-05-18T15:38:00.000Z

Luke Rhinehart, Friday 16 May

George Cockcroft, aka Luke Rhinehart, aka several other Luke Rhineharts, was always going to be one of the more interesting propositions of this year’s Brighton Festival. The jacket of his 1971 novel The Dice Man confidently proclaimed that it would ‘change your life’, and indeed many readers have since sought to follow the Luke Rhinehart of the novel in breaking through convention and inhibition, making life decisions on the roll of a die. Whether The Dice Man was intended as a satire on far-fetched experiments in psychoanalysis or as a genuine manifesto for a liberated individual no longer matters. Few novels have had their premise taken so literally, and George/Luke still corresponds with hundreds of ‘Dice Livers‘. Come to see a cult author who has rarely appeared in public, the audience that filled the Corn Exchange would no doubt have been happy to listen raptly to the man for ninety minutes. But this event was hosted/engineered by Gavin Robertson, an actor, writer and director who has recently revived his 1986 play based on the Dice Man, The Six Sided Man. Robertson was at pains to point out that, in keeping with the crazy world of dicing, this would not be a ‘traditional literary event’. But anyone who has seen much genuinely experimental performance would not have found anything startling in Friday’s format. There was an introduction by the festival literature programmer, Robertson put questions to Rhinehart, which were answered, extracts from the books were read out, and there were questions from the floor. Nothing radical or randomised here. The clumsy attempts at audience participation (I hate it, but that‘s being inhibited and British for you), the comedy strait jacket, and the supposedly rebellious selection of alcoholic beverages on stage did not stop this event being eminently traditional. Perhaps this was in keeping with the ageing, mellowing Rhinehart, who admitted that he has become more or less the kind of ‘patterned’ entity his books tried to deconstruct, and that in practice, a balance between order and chaos is necessary for a functioning society. Something which is already obvious to critical readers of The Dice Man. Like all the best novels of ideas, it raises niggling questions about everything you took for granted, but also keeps you awake at night constructing arguments against it. Most of us are attracted by the idea of putting our decisions into the hands of chance and so perhaps liberating other sides of our personality, but also repelled by the implications for social interaction of becoming an entirely inconsistent, overtly multiple entity. Rhinehart was illuminating on the origins of the book, as well as its problems, and his own early experiments with dicing, but - I can’t help but moan about this - he would have been able to be so at much greater length had there not been extensive interruptions from Gavin Robertson with his own interpretations, questions and stories about his play. Not to mention the appearance of writer Ben Marshall, who wrote about his own dice living for Loaded magazine. All interesting, but superfluous padding when an author has as much to say for himself, and as much to explain, as Luke Rhinehart.

2003-05-16T08:44:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
It's got to be Luke Rhinehart @ the Corn Exchange, 7.30pm. Review to follow...

2003-05-14T12:16:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
Literally Live: the openest of open mikes as part of the Fringe Literature Festival @ the wonderfully seedy Marlborough Theatre. 7.30pm.

2003-05-13T12:46:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
Oh Susanna @ Komedia, 8.30pm.

The West Pier's been getting it from the saboteurs/mad arsonists again. Still, if you're going to die, you might as well go out with a bit of style. Pyrotechnics are at least appropriate for this festival-addled, firework-dazzled city. And what will emerge in the place of the much-mourned Old Lady? According to various pundits in last week's Observer, Brighton is going to be the new Bilbao, gleaming with virtuoso architecture and all the better for it. And is the 21st century city going to provide affordable housing, reliable council services, solutions to the drug problem, and all the other things that concern those of us who live and work in Brighton as well as admire it? The national press is rather more vague on that score... Brighton's arts and tourist industry can look after itself. Trumpeting our city's charms (present and projected, real and imagined) will only push the cost of living even higher. It's time to make it a city worth living in as well as the Place to Be.

2003-05-12T15:43:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
Well, it's obvious really - seven naked Brazilian dancers in Such Stuff As We Are Made Of @ Komedia, 9.30pm. (All week.)

2003-05-09T13:58:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
King of self-deprecation Richard Herring gets in on the Vagina Monologues act with his Talking Cock. Komedia, 9.30pm tonight and tomorrow.

Last night LoveBrighton witnessed (and assisted with) the gruelling selection of the new Brighton poetry slam team. You can see Sharon, Simon, Moonie and Reverend Mike (yes him again) in action next Tuesday at the Full Moon in Boyces Street, when they will battle a team of hip hop MCs. It'll end in tears, hopefully of laughter, but possibly of intense pain if Mike decides to 'diss' the other team...

2003-05-07T12:36:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
Lou Reed @ Brighton Dome (Concert Hall). 8pm. Music and poetry including material from his new album The Raven, based around the poems of Edgar Allen Poe.

The presiding spirit of Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! is a loud one, in the form of the very tall and quite possibly certifiable Reverend. The format (not to mention the venue) is arguably not quite big enough for his persona, and it’s a relief when a fairly sedate evening of acoustic noodling and poetry is allowed to begin. It’s a night that demands, if not audience participation, then at least collaboration. The separation between performer and audience is nicely blurry (an impression not hindered by there being just the barest suggestion of a stage in the cosy Sanctuary cellar). But the welcoming atmosphere welcomes everything from the forgettable to the bollocks just as readily as talent, which is a pity. Some form of greatness may possibly beckon for duo Tom Tom the Piper’s Son, if they play up the resemblance to Nick Drake with Liz Fraser on backing vocals and adhere a bit more closely to their key. Simon Clayton (the sane one, or ‘Dec’ as he puts it) also hosts, and he’s a funny funny man.

2003-05-06T13:42:00.000Z

FESTIVAL CHOICE:
New Venture have a crack at Oleanna, David Mamet's provocative play of sexual politics. New Venture Theatre, Bedford Place, 7.45pm. And just down the road @ The Sanctuary in Brunswick Steet East, new poetic force Stop All The Clocks present the mad cabaret styles of Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy! 8pm (£3.50).

2003-04-30T15:42:00.000Z

Big props to the enigmatic Plume, who provided a pleasant Sunday morning pastime for fellow bookcrossers in Brighton, leaving a large selection of lovely books along the seafront. We were also treated to a sample of her artwork in every package - lovely stuff. Bookcrossing is thriving in Brighton, so keep an eye out for seemingly abandoned tomes - they could be just waiting to be found by you!

More seafront shenanigans tomorrow: the Guardian is coming to Brighton to stage the Keep Your Tunic On installation, a reaction, apparently, against all those silly (and chilly) naked people 'masquerading as iconoclastic works of art'... You can be part of this artwork just by turning up outside the Concorde 2 at noon tomorrow (Thursday 1 May) BUT you must be wearing at least three layers of clothing. 'Thermal underwear, hats and gloves encouraged. A duffel coat will guarantee a prominent position in our ground-breaking event'. Email g2@guardian.co.uk for more information.

2003-04-23T14:31:00.000Z

Tonight: The Arlenes @ The Hanbury Ballroom, 7.30pm.

2003-04-22T12:43:00.000Z

Tonight: Games Night @ the Fringe, Kensington Gardens. Win prizes at chess, backgammon etc. Every Tuesday, 8pm.

Finally we're back after our Easter break. We found time to unselfishly sample some local beer gardens though - top tips for these unseasonably sunny lunchtimes are The Office (secluded, verdant and surprisingly quiet given the North Laine location) and The Open House (airy, artsy, big and bustling).

2003-04-04T09:33:00.000Z

Tonight: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Broken Family Band @ The Freebutt. 8pm, £5 + booking fee.

Went running this morning, well, a short run then a bit of panting and a walk really... Preston Park does look lovely in the sunrise though, and fantasies about living in the Rotunda/bike chalet/cafe are easier to sustain when there's nobody about. I love this place, and I hope the restoration project gets going properly soon. Unfortunately they've temporarily filled in the pond with wood chips, so I can't laugh at toddlers being cocky with the stepping stones and falling in any more.

2003-04-03T08:29:00.000Z

Tonight: The South presents Altered State: new Polish Poetry @ Grand Central, Surrey Street. 7.45pm, £5/£3.

2003-04-01T10:02:00.000Z

LoveBrighton went online a bit too late to comment on the West Pier fire as it happened, the cause of which now looks like it may never be discovered. But as the city goes newbuild crazy, let's hope it's not curtains just yet for any more of our older, elegantly wasted architecture.

Good news for star-gazers today though, as the City Council takes the lead in announcing that all new streetlights will be installed with downward-directed fittings to prevent light pollution. Small mercies... (Full story.)

Last night we wedged ourselves into a corner of the Full Moon on Boyces Street for cosy yet unpredictable open mic night Howling at the Moon, a feast of grungey agitpoetry, boy angst and masturbation (as a subject matter, not a live activity.) It's every other Tuesday, starting from from 7.30. Or 8 or 9. Ish. Highly recommended.

2003-03-31T11:26:00.000Z

Hi, welcome to LoveBrighton! An entirely subjective, utterly non-definitive site for everyone who lives and loves in Brighton. Eventually there'll be news, views and reviews in this space - for the time being you can find actual information by clicking on the links on the right.

If you live in Brighton and would like to contribute to this blog, please contact me.