BROKEDOWN PALACE

"New ideas need old buildings" Jane Jacobs

The last blog about all the good places being gone took me to the box which had the picture of Ye Olde Pilot Inn, Tiger Bay, Cardiff. In it there was also this picture of The Ritz Ballroom, Skewen. Without stating the blindingly obvious this was taken before The Ritz was demolished to create a car park for the adjoining railway station. I do not remember taking the picture. There is an estate agents board on the building - I may even have contemplated buying it for sentimental reasons. It was originally a cinema but in the 60's fell to bingomania then became a 'club' and dancehall. A significant percentage of that part of my youth which was mis-spent but could not truly be said to have been wasted was spent there. It was the sort of place your parents warned you about.  In the mod phase you could down half a flagon of cider, take the bottle back for the deposit, go to the Ritz, snog on the dancefloor - or get your head kicked in- or be lucky enough to find yourself in the seats of the surviving balcony locked in exploratory fumblings with a companion of your choice, get chips on the way home and still have change from half a crown.
Cue the music from the Hovis commercial played by The Who and you get the idea.
The Who played there, and the Small Faces, The Moody Blues, Wayne Fontana, Manfred Mann (probably), Dave Edmunds in Love Sculpture and more local heroes - The Eyes of Blue, The Bystanders, Quicksand, Dream, The Iveys. It had a particular acoustic quality which, in the late 60's, made you forget you were only pretending to have taken some exotic recreational compound, man. You had to really pretend. The smell from the toilets would have snapped someone out of a heroin overdose.
It was a time of open experimentation in contemporary music, when anything went. Sometimes it went straight to hell but most of the time most of the bands seemed to have something new and original to say. And they had the opportunity to say it and play it. By that time there was a live band playing somewhere around Swansea Bay every night except, for some strange reason on a Wednesday. That was why it was wise to save most of the exotic recreational compounds until Wednesday. Otherwise it was Skewen Rugby Club on a Thursday where Thin Lizzy were once laughed off the stage. The Patti Pavilion on Friday which for a long period seemed to be dominated by the United Artists roster of British psychedelic and long forgotten prog rock bands. Then the Ritz on Saturday. Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays there was a band playing somewhere between Bridgend (Klee Klub) and Llanelli (The Glen Ballroom). I saw bands play in the social clubs of a Clock Factory in Ystradgynlais, a Cardboard Box Factory in Melyncryddan and Pink Floyd in the sports hall of the Afan Lido in Port Talbot. 
Of the above only Skewen Rugby Club survives. Others have come and gone, some pubs and clubs still offer the opportunity for fledgling bands to build a following in front of people not a computer screen. I, for one, am glad I was born when and where I was and I could walk from my house to a place where The Who were playing.
The Council should put up a plaque.

AND NOW IT'S DEJA BAYVIEW AGAIN.................

At lunch in Cardiff Bay last week a good friend asked me why the place didn't seem to work. It appeared to be an oxymoronic question - we had, after all, taken the trouble to drive there, find a place to park, search around to find a parking meter that actually functioned then walk through the pouring rain to sit in a chain restaurant in Mermaid Quay. Ergo, it must have some attraction I sought to reason. Or perhaps we simply go on believing that the Bay has something to offer, that we accede to the blind faith demanded by the regenerators and marketeers. Constantly telling ourselves that what is there is better than that which it replaced does not make what is there good. 
Or perhaps in my case there is simply a lingering attachment to the Bay, nostalgia in the precise meaning of the word; " a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations".
I have fond memories of the Bay, a sense of affection for what it was. One of the reasons suggested by my friend as to why ' Cardiff Bay doesn't work' was that it still feels separated from the City. By my recollection that was precisely what made it attractive in my early teens. There was a very distinct separation, a sense of excitement down The Docks (or in Tiger Bay if you must) in a time when Cardiff really was a dreary, dull and dusty provincial town. Going under the railway bridge into Bute Street from Hayes Bridge Road was like going through the tunnel into Toontown in 'Who Killed Roger Rabbit'. Crossing the river from Grangetown on the old girdered Clarence Road Bridge had a sense of ceremony. 
Tubby Alexander's bike shop on James Street was a place of wonder, a tottering pile of crumbling masonry that looked as if it would burst and spill forth an avalanche of ancient  bicycle bits. There was a seamans outfitter who sold Levi's when they were still rarer than hen's teeth, the holy grail of the discerning mod. There were women who reputedly did unspeakable things for ten shillings but no one I knew had the courage or the cash to establish what those things were. They may have been the fat ladies with scars who took their clothes off at lunchtime in the New Haven or other clubs at lunchtimes.
Then later on there was the back room of the New Dock, well after closing time with the pile of policemen's helmets at the end of the bar as the afternoon shift from Butetown nick wound down. Packed to the rafters at 11.30 on a Saturday night then on to the Casablanca. There was one great warm summers night outside the Quebec, Vic Parker playing inside, when I thought 'this is how I imagined life would be'.The late Jed Williams, godfather of jazz in Wales, once told me it was the ultimate quest, to see a great band in a great venue. That was a privilege that one had to recognise and seize upon. Jed did that for us, got great players on the way up and great players on the way back down and put them on at Brecon and the Four Bars and, above all, The Coal Exchange. I walked past the shattered hulk of the Coal Exchange after lunch last week. That was possibly the best venue ever and I recognise what a privilege it was to see the bands that Jed, Mike Johnson, Alan Jones and others put on there. 
Even in relatively modern times it was worth the trip. Good people played at The Point until it was shut due to complaints about noise from the nimby scum moving into the 'luxury' apartments. Anywhere that you can see Richard Thompson or the surviving remains of Jefferson Airplane play should take precedence over the aural comfort of residents for an hour or so a week. Great bands beaten by the bland.
Then there was Buff's on a Friday lunchtime, with Harry Holland holding court in the corner and sometimes a dozen more artists and artisans arguing the toss long into the afternoon. Afternoons when, again, I would reflect that this is what I imagined life would be like, when Bohemia was a bus ride away. 

All of this is now gone. What we now have is a place which is corporate not cool. It could be anywhere and feels increasingly like nowhere.  What we now have in extensive areas of The Bay is public space with no public. Callaghan Square, for example, has the singular distinction of being, simultaneously, a square which is not square and a traffic roundabout which is not round. It is the largest and best appointed traffic island in Wales suitable only for skateboarding and sinister loitering. It was perhaps a deliberate insult to the second marquess of Bute that his statue was relocated to the 'square' which was to have borne his name. He gazes over the travesty that replaced his vision of a broad avenue and Georgian Squares. Admittedly that vision went to shit quicktime even then but at least he had it. The statue should be replaced by a monument to Jim Callaghan- a pile of uncollected rubbish or perhaps a seasonal snowman to immortalise the man who gave us the winter of discontent.
Lloyd George Avenue, which was originally intended to be the great avenue that connected the city centre with the waterfront ended up more aimless than Ramblas, our very own Chumps Elysees. There are plans to give the avenue another going over and those responsible could do no worse than look at the plans of the second Marquess of Bute and give it another go. However, it is doubtful that the Bay can ever again be what it was. The domination of gated apartment blocks make it very unlikely that a proper sense of community can prosper in such a place. That many of these have been sold to speculators and buy-to-let chancers means that neither owner nor occupier will become proper stakeholders in the place. It may remain no more than a transit camp for yuppies indefinitely. The Whine Bars and boozeramas of Mermaid Quay or occasional funfairs in the old West Dock basin do not a place make.
So its back to Pontcanna for lunch next time...............

THE HOUSE FOR THE FUTURE IS CLOSED FOR RENOVATION

Having recently visited the Museum of French Architecture at the Trocadero, Paris, the notion of having such a place in Wales was revived. We can, as always, learn something from the French. When you leave any of the major Paris museums you do not have to ask the question "Do the French have a word for chauvinism?". The Trocadero does not disappoint in this respect. Whilst the exhibits stop short of claiming that the Abbe Suger single handedly built the Basilica of St Denis using only French culinary implements they do not tire of reminding the visitor that before the term "Gothic" came into common use, it was known as the "French Style" . The principles of Opus Francigenum are applied to architecture as they are to other areas of culture. The history of architecture is given a resolutely French perspective; any inconvenient gaps being gracefully spanned and highlights breezily annexed. Just as their most famous local artist, Picasso, is celebrated in the Marais, Le Corbusier is given pride of place at the Trocadero. (The latter may in fact have better credentials as a Frenchman than the former. He at least made the effort to collaborate with the Vichy government). I cannot swear I saw a drawing labelled Franc Le Wright or a specific claim that Monsieur Lord Rogers had only ever built in Paris and Bordeaux but, hopefully, you get the general tone of the exhibition.
My proposition is that we could learn from this in setting out the history of architecture and urbanism in Wales by application of the reverse principle. For example, a hypothesis may be constructed on the fact that, under the Normans and Plantagenets, Wales was French. Ergo, the best of our castles are French, the remains of our great abbeys are French. We are not, as has been claimed 'Italians in the rain' but Fortified by the French. From this we might lay claim to some percentage of the overweening  self-regard of the average Parisian. This may appear to be an oxymoron as few, if any, Parisians would considered themselves average but therein lies the point. Civic pride is pathological, the city is celebrated, the concept of patrimonie ingrained. We need to get a bit of that in Wales. 
The most obvious place to do this is at the Museum of Welsh Life in St Fagans. Established by the great Iorwerth Peate in 1948 it offers an outstanding collection of Welsh buildings but does not, in its present form, tell the whole story. As part of a  £24m revamp of the main museum building, two new gallery/ exhibition buildings will be constructed and it is unclear what will be in them. Some may share my nervousness that the success of St Fagans as 'Wales' most popular heritage attraction' may be driving such investment and the agenda is about increasing its capacity as a wet weather visitor centre with capacity for weddings and conferences. Those who have heeded Banksy's exhortation to 'Leave Via The Gift Shop' may already be left wondering whether Wales has something more to offer than lovespoons and laverbread. Overall there is the feeling that a central part of our story, that of human settlement and building, is somehow being slowly subsumed, that entertainment takes increasing precedence over education. Such priorities may very well be an economic necessity essential to the well being of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales who, like all public amenities and services, face constraints and cuts at every turn. However, to see St Fagans fall to the curse of the Heritage Theme Park would be a very sad day for those who value the built environment and its history in Wales. On a grey day in the school holidays it is already appearing to be the premier suburb of Llandisney. 
If, as appears to be the case, we are faced with a relentless inevitability of dumbing down of our museums as we are in other walks of life, then it might be suggested that the new facilities be supplemented by an additional area which does tell the whole story of architecture and the built environment in Wales - one which educates, informs and entertains the visitor with that story. One which serves to foster and develop a greater degree of pride of place, that much vaunted sense of belonging - hiraeth - which is seemingly evidenced largely in foreign bars in the course of an international season. The construction industry and professions should see that supporting such a proposal would amount to no more than enlightened self-interest. The worst that could possibly happen is that their client and customer base becomes better educated and come to demand better places. This may have partially informed the House For The Future project at St Fagans some years ago, a worthy effort but, unfortunately, nothing dates faster than the future. It is clearly in the right place, having already become a museum piece. There is nothing remarkable about this.  In 1544 Yr Garreg Fawr was The House of The Future. 
Museums have to keep re- telling the story.