Paradise Circus

The Flapper is to be demolished as part of a redevelopment and while I’m not surprised, I am bloody furious

Me and the Flapper have a chequered history; in my early teens a lot of my friends had there first gigs there, the cheap booze and out of the way nature of the place soon led it to be the perfect pre-XL’s stomping ground, and then a little later because of the rowdy circles I moved in the bar staff would phone the police if they so much as smelt our leather jackets as we swaggered past. Currently the Flapper is my secret bolt hole a quiet afternoon escape where I can take half an hour to watch the sun set over the canal.

But its not nostalgia or personal convenience driving the affront, it’s the creeping homogenisation of our city centre, a bleeding of every scrap of individuality and independent spirit, until Birmingham becomes just another yuppie temple of Mammon a bland glass pit stop on the road from London to Manchester.

We are doomed to live in a city of ubiquitous name brands. Fated to have to drink in identikit Wetherspoons or those hatful Ember Inns that are decorated in neutral coffee house banality designed not to appeal to anyone just as long as the don’t offend anyone either. Every music venue will be corporate sponsored and controlled by vacuous PR machines.

I’m not saying creativity will not survive in this atmosphere, it will. But that’s all it will be; surviving, not flourishing or growing, just a loose knit collection of people fleeing to the suburbs playing at local pubs to a handful of friends and a confused man with a dog.

The soul of any city is its culture; unfortunately this city’s soul is being sold to the redevelopment devil one “regeneration” at a time.

*written in a pub and posted with the help of the lovely bounder*