First weekend of the lights

THE BIG switch-on seemed to go down with a bang on Friday with Robbie Williams declaring his undying love for Blackpool before flicking the magic switch and lighting up the town’s Illuminations show.

My girlfriend and I decided to have a wander through town last night to see if they were much cop and since it was their first weekend we were expecting it to be absolutely rammed.

We were not intending on staying out and lashing it up but a few liquid refreshments were on the cards. Setting off around 9pm we walked down the promenade from the Hilton hotel, past a busker who was playing an accordian and a couple of street sellers, and continued past the likes of the Claremont and eventually into Talbot Square.

All of the hotels we passed looked extremely busy, so hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

Plenty of families were strolling along and as we hit the booze zone starting with Queens Square, which had the usual police orgy around Walkabout, the stag and hen nights started to mount up. Indeed, the first hen night was a group of drunk women dressed up as air hostesses being directed by a Club Sanuk bouncer to Coral Island. Not a distance I would fancy walking in the kind of footwear they had on!

Continuing past the very busy Chubbys, we were treated to a gaggle of overweight monstrosities in skin-tight green neon lycra outfits: they’d either gone out as a group of Grotbags lookalikes or a bunch of inflatable spacehoppers tottering along in high heels. A troupe of men dressed as sailors then came staggering out of the Tower Lounge which, looking at the people going in, don’t appear to care whether you’re obliterated or not.

At this point it was evident that the menace of Blackpool was out in force. Piling up along the promenade were discarded flyers, food packaging and takeaway cartons with all bins overflowing with more of the same. The smoking ban has also, inevitably, generated gangs of people hanging around outside premises chainsmoking and dropping their cigarette butts on the floor too. Seems Cllr Fowler’s BIG CAT is more elusive than the beast of Bodmin on a Saturday night.

This is one of the major failings of the apparat in this town, and it appears that they haven’t grasped the concept that if there are no bins or bins remain full, litter will be dumped on the floor especially if the litterbug is drunk.

If Cllr Callow wants his romantic family tourist town he’s going to have to start treating it like one: promoting the Illuminations as a family event is all well and good, but not if you’re going to force families – with young children I might add – to wade through a swamp of takeaway excrement surrounded by uncouth and unpleasant gangs of drunk people directly outside mainstream attractions like Blackpool Tower. It’s not acceptable. Never mind jaunting around lap dancing bars and meddling with licensing regulation, Cllr Callow needs to see what it’s really like on the street when there are zero maintenance staff and (other than in Queens Square) zero police officers to be seen – two things he and his motley crew can have a positive effect on but continually fail to do so.

As we proceeded past the Tower Lounge and another hen night of extremely drunk girls who hadn’t dressed up as anything in particular but saw fit to write their names on their T-shirts (presumably so the hospital knew who they were when they were about to pump their stomachs) we eventually reached the new(ish) Wetherspoons, the Albert and the Lion. It was less busy than I had seen in the weeks after it had opened so we went in for a few swift ones. It’s a fairly odd place to be honest.

The service at the bar was rapid and the Duty Manager was highly visible – secret service style earpiece and all -  but the drinks prices were not what I would call cheap by any means. I could go into the Castle on Central Drive and pay much less. The menu is a mixed bag of the classic “Burger and a Beer” and other more adventurous options such as sweet chilli noodles. I didn’t notice an all-day breakfast (though there is an all-day ‘brunch’) so I presume they are not opening at the crack of dawn like many other JD Wetherspoons do.

There seemed to be a few odd groups of people in here. Evidently there’s no dress code which on the face of it I don’t have an issue with, yet there were plenty of dodgy groups of what looked like hoodie attired immigrants huddled in the corners, who turned out to have a local accent like mine. There were a couple of intimidating looking bouncers outside who were in fairness pleasant and performed their “evening, sir” and “goodnight, sir” duties par excellance.

Leaving Wetherspoon we continued southwards and around the corner below the stairs leading into the Palatine buildings. For those that have had their heads buried in the sand (pun intended) for the last year, this building is now dominated by the immense new Sands Venue following a £1m gamble by owner Peter Swann. Unfortunately this area was desolate and we were the only people walking through there, suggesting that the concept of this venture has yet to be embraced by locals. There were two bouncers at the bottom of the staircase and one was friendly enough to offer us a leaflet about the Sands, but on the face of it there was little advertising about the venue and as I say, nobody was about.

I think the main problem with the Sands is that you can’t just turn up for a drink. You either make a night of it and pay £25-35 per person for a three course meal and entertainment, or you don’t go. I like the idea of the place, and I would love there to be a lounge bar complete with a live jazz band for people to turn up and relax in, but I don’t believe this is the case unless you stump up the £35 a head and eat there. It’s only a place I’d try on one-off occasions.

We had a wander back from here, passing another hen night of chainsmoking police officers who mostly looked like drag queens and ploughing through the rapidly escalating tsunami of litter outside the Tower buildings.

Talbot Square had some kind of bizarre police setup outside the town hall; a minibus labelled as a ‘safe haven’ for people that were lost or being abused. Clifton Street looked desolate despite both Kartels and the Green Parrot both being open. It appears the council have attempted to draw attention to this area – by stringing some light bulbs across it. Talbot Road was also dead, but it was probably too early for Burger Dome to be serving up its culinary delights to the inebriated.

Walking on the sea side of the promenade north of the Metropole we noticed a distinct smell of urine as we passed over the seafront shelters but thankfully the light breeze whisked that away promptly.

So what of the Illuminations? Most of them were filthy, they weren’t particularly new or different, and some bits including pictures of tableaux architect Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen were not even lit up. The Tower looked good as always and there were three illuminated trams on the go which was good to see: the ABC Weekend Television train, the RNLI frigate and another boat. Trams in general looked very busy. Shame no rocket though.

We didn’t wander up the tableaux but will be doing so this week so I will provide some photographs of Llewelyn-Bowen’s Dino Doom and Glampire for you.

Image copyright Blackpool Aloud