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...............
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