This doesn't quite marry up with the description on the Fierce site but that's not necessarily a problem.

Lovely Laura's Gig Listings are up. I'm not going to parse these anymore until I've got some better first hand knowledge about what the current crop of bands are like. Take a few months off the gig circuit and, boom, you're a n00b again...

I may well check the Hibernian gig on Monday on her advice though since it's just down the road.

Found on LJ:

by Matt Murtagh.

More Pride Photos from Amortize, Matt Murtagh, Candice Smith and Sophie Marie.

I'm really liking this Flying Saucer blog that B:INS found. Lots of good writing and ideas there even if it's fashion based and I really don't understand clothes.

The Street Style post is particularly genius:

Bored stupid by revision, me and Meleesa decided to become face hunter types for the day. But there was the problem of getting random people to let us take a photo. This is where the genius plan came in. We made little laminated id cards for round our neck, and a form to 'sign' and posed as magazine interns. Is that illegal? Maybe! We also felt seriously guilty after telling many people that they could be in a magazine street style article and seeing their happy faces.

I'd love to see someone do this legitimately and consistently, building up a portrait of interesting looking Brummies. There certainly are enough out there.

You've also gotta love any blog that has a Blythe Doll obsession.

Edwards No More


by cactusinthesea.

These were taken on June 22nd so I'd imgine the work has been nearly completed by now. Still going to have a quick look myself though. Maybe salvage a brick or two.

Aparently the external walls are going to be kept for whatever is built in its place.

via B:INS

Here's a pretty niche weblog: the Westside One Residents' Association, Westside One being a tower block, sorry, "residential building" on Suffolk Street Queensway. It's obviously of no use to anyone outside the building but is a good example of how this kind of platform can help such an association get information out.

Birmingham Pride happened.



It were very wet!

My photos are here. More as I find them.

In an stupendous demonstration of intellectual disconnect I only just realised that Tom Watson, the first MP to start blogging in 2003 and who in doing so sensibly and with understanding furthered the "cause" of blogging significantly, is a local MP. Sandwell, specifically. And I'd never made the connection. So welcome, Tom, to the blogroll.

Welcome, also, Will Buckingham, a novelist who's also responsible for the Birmingham Words blog amongst other things.

A cache of photos of Birmingham from the 1960s to 2000 has been discovered and it's quite mindboggling. Kudos to Keith Berry for keeping it up all these years. Picking one image to post here is difficult so I'll plump for a colour one of Rookery Road, Handsworth, in the 1980s.



You'll probably be wanting the Old Birmingham gallery to begin with but do check out the rest.

Thanks to Lee Jordan on Flickr for the heads up.

Steve Thorne, Language lecturer at Birmingham Uni, played a variety of British accents to non-Brits to see what they thought of Brummie and discovered "foreign people unaware that it is the working-class accent of a formerly heavily-industrialised area, and who are not bombarded with stereotypical images of Birmingham speakers on a daily basis by the media, find it a very attractive accent indeed."

via RussL.

Blogroll: Candice Smith has a photoblog.

Birmingham Forum. It's a forum! For Birmingham! I'm not a big fan of the forum model but I appreciate some people love it and it's nice to see another Birmingham-wide community in action.

Cheers to Jonny B:INS for this excellent video of some enterprising chaps waterskiing along the canals of Birmingham. It really kicks in 1:30 before the end if you want to skip.



I love how the Birmingham Post doesn't approve. You can tell they're all stern and serious because they call YouTube a "filesharing website" because filesharing is naughty and so is this.

Personally I think it rocks. There's some serious ingenuity going on here and it should be rewarded.

Blogroll: Robert Sharl has a couple of blogs, Usergland for the longer posts and Newsgland for the shorter, and he's also on Flickr.

[Note date change]

Spaghetti Gazetti is a PDF zine about Birmingham! via B:INS

A comment on the Birmingham Metblog from Steve Bosman (another blogger for the list) points out an interesting paragraph on the Walk of Stars site.

The criteria for nomination is the star(s) must have made a recognisable impact in their specialist category, performed, played or attended one of Birmingham's major venues, including the International Convention Centre (ICC), National Indoor Arena (NIA), Symphony Hall and Brindleyplace or be originally from the Midlands area.

My emphasis there, specifically on "attended", although "a recognisable impact in their specialist category" is a pretty wide field too. You think maybe they thought there wouldn't be enough famous Midlanders to sustain it?

Also noted is a discrepancy in the Duran Duran formation pub. Here it's stated to be "Broad Street’s infamous Rum Runner club" whereas the England Rocks website, as reported on this blog, has it as Saramoons.

So which is right? Well, it seems both of them are. Kinda. Nick Rhodes and John Taylor may well have decided to form a band called Duran Duran in the pub now know as Saramoons but it was while they were rehearsing at the Rum Runner that the barmaid suggested Mr Le Bon as vocalist thus completing the formation, at least according to Wikipedia.

And I have no sodding idea why the hell I'm writing this.

Jesus wept...

Gig heads up: Dufus are playing the Actress and Bishop on June 2nd. The two times I've seen them have been radically different shows and very entertaining.

My photos from their last gig here.

Here's the official Broad St Walk of Stars website where you can nominate who should be honoured.

The show I was attending on Saturday night finished much earlier than I was expecting so I went for a stroll around town and stumbled upon the Birmingham Astronomy Society who has set up their telescopes in Centenary Square as part of International Sidewalk Astronomy Night and were encouraging the public to have a look through.

A great idea and I'll certainly be investigating them further, especially as they make their own telescopes.

FOURTH Urban Beach planned for Centernary Square. Okay, it's technically a vollyball pitch but it keeps the joke running.

Copied from LiveJournal Birmingham:

"As part of International Sidewalk Astronomy Night, both Birmingham Astronomical Society and University of Birmingham will be taking a collection of telescopes out and about on the streets of Birmingham tonight.

"If you're around Centenary Square area tonight and there's a clear sky why don't you pop over and say hi."

Third beach announced for Brindley Place. It's landlocked seaside madness gone mad!

Salutation to Ganesa

I'm not sure how new Neighbourbood Fix-it is. Similar services has been around from a while but a national version from the mySociety people doesn't ring any bells. Like most of their tools it's very simple and exists to encourage communication between the people and their elected representatives, in this case when complaining about rubbish in the streets and other minor but important irritants. There's a brief intro from Tom Loosemore but the best way to experience it is to just throw your postcode in the box and see what needs fixing. And then when you spot something wrong you can tell the site and they'll inform the council on your behalf.

via James Thornett

The Birmingham Walk of Stars?

Ozzy Osbourne is to be become the first inductee in The Birmingham Walk of Stars. The West Midlands' answer to Hollywood Boulevard has been created along Broad Street to honour the city's most famous people.

The brass stars will form a pavement trail along Broad Street. Other famous Brummies include comedians Jasper Carrott, Lenny Henry and Frank Skinner, TV presenter Cat Deeley, pop stars Duran Duran, Jamelia, Robert Plant, UB40, racing driver Nigel Mansell, conductor Sir Simon Rattle and actress Julie Walters.

Countdown to "I threw up on Ozzy Osbourne" jokes begins..

via Up Yer Brum

Blogroll: Gordon's Gofer. "Musings on Brummie Politics from a Labour angle." I appear to have hit a seam of political blogs. I wonder, should I quarantine them in their own section on the blogroll? ;)

Search Birmingham.gov.uk using Google and actually find what you're looking for. A revolutionary new way of interacting with you local council.

A Good Movie Out Of 202 Bad Pictures



Bigger

How it was done

And while I'm at it, add Moayad.com to the blogroll.

Birmingham Bulletin is a new service from the Council that promises to deliver tailored information to your inbox. Could be handy especially if you're blogging about the city. I, naturally, have subscribed. via B:INS who also inform that the council website is getting an absurdly overdue overhaul next year.

We the undersigned petition Birmingham City Council to remove the Big Screen from the historic City Centre and forget about the imported beach.

I think this could be quite a special gig. Stick it in your diary.



Einstellung
Rich Batsford
Lucy Mclauchlan

Tickets are £5 and available from the Theatre Box Office (0121 200 0945). Sold out!

Blogroll: Ken Davidson is a graphic designer in Solihull who has a blog. Actually, he has a couple: Solar Plexus appears to be his personal blog while the former is more work related.

In the latter he posted this great photo which ties into my previous post on Big Top. This is quite possibly the caretaker's flat, taken from the roof of the old Littlewoods circa 1986:



I love the greenhouse!

I'd figured Birmingham:AAH was just going to look at the pretty Victorian redbrick buildings of the city which, while nice and interesting, is all a little bit predictable. Thankfully they're developing a nice line in brutalist history and appreciation with a fascinating post on this building.

The site was cleared almost immediately after the war and was used as a car park for visitors to the Bull Ring coming along New Street. It was a massive site, and a prime plot for development. Times passed slowly still and institutions came and went. The site was the scene of a brutal death when a circus performer, who was displaying an array of animals to a crowd on the site, was mauled to death by a tiger. This was in front of a large crowd and many newspapers of the time described as ‘a sight no one deserves to see, not even the most of wicked’.

That collection of concrete actually has a name - Big Top - and was Birmingham's first shopping centre with construction starting in the mid 1950s. The name comes from the circus that used to be on the site, though how the family of the man mauled by the tiger felt about that is unrecorded.

More here.

Coupla non-Brum blogs for the list:

Some Random Thoughts is in Bearwood (which, being on the Number 11 route, could be considered to be in Birmingham).

West Brom Blog is in West Brom and has the distinction of being a political blog that doesn't make me want to vomit over the screen.

The former came via the latter, while the latter came via The People's Republic of Birmingham which, somewhat annoyingly, seems to be more about football than communism. Still, you can't have everything.

Save the Moorpool Estate is a nice example of community action using internet tools for very local issues. The following is taken from this circular:

We live in one of the most beautiful parts of Birmingham and one of the first Garden Suburbs in Britain. The Moorpool Estate was started shortly after Bournville, 100 years ago and about the same time as Hampstead Garden Suburb. The Garden Suburbs were intended to provide a healthy and attractive environment for their residents, as well as a ‘green lung’ for the rest of the city. They are characterised by low density housing and above all by green spaces – gardens, allotments, green verges, mature trees and breathing space between houses.

For the first time in its 100-year history, the Moorpool Estate is under threat from developers. Many residents will have been shocked by the sudden letter from the Estate’s owners, Grainger PLC, who wish to insert a large number of dwellings into areas of the Estate. Some residents will be particularly badly affected, but the Moorpool Estate may be spoilt for us all – and Birmingham would be poorer - if these proposals are allowed to proceed unchallenged. Grainger PLC claim to be ‘improving’ the Estate! Yes, it does need maintenance in some areas (like the Valley Site), but maintenance should mean improvement, not increasing the housing density with all the accompanying problems of extra traffic and parking.

Meanwhile the blog is being used to distribute all the information about the development but, more critically, to collect opinions from those involved and affected.

I'd never heard of Moorpool before and it seems I'm not alone as it's "one of the city's best kept secrets" according to this nice piece of history by Steve Beauchampé writing on The Stirrer last year. I can't find any reference to exactly where it is (the campaign pages are written with the assumption you already live there, which is right and proper but not very useful) but I think it's here. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks to Deirdre Alden for the heads up.

More info on CiB.

The Birmingham Post Blog reports that Civic Society planning committee chairman Stephen Hartland has been banned from speaking to the press after expressing somewhat negative opinions on Council Leader Mike Whitby's pet project to copy the Bull Ring and dump a load of sand in Chamberlain Square. If that wasn't enough

"Whitby, meanwhile, further infuriated the conservation lobby by popping up on BBC Radio to announce that the TV Big Screen in Chamberlain Square, an essential element of the beach project, would remain in place over the summer. In doing so he naturally pre-empted the decision of the council planning committee, which meets at the beginning of next month to consider an application for the screen to stay in Chamberlain Square until September."

The more I hear about Mike Whitby the more I just plain don't like him. Lest you accuse me of political bias, the same goes for John Hemming. In fact the more I get to know how local government works in Birmingham the less I want to do with it. Which is a damn shame.

D’log reports that Omega Sektor, a “massive interactive entertainment centre”, will be opening on the site of the old Virgin Megastore on Corporation St sometime in the next year. With "400 fast LAN/online PCs and videogame consoles, surrounded by comfy chairs and big monitors and suchlike" it'll be the largest such venture in Europe.

Which is great news for gamers, but I wonder how long-term this can be. After all, isn't that whole block due to be demolished in the next couple of years in the name of regeneration? Maybe they know something we don't.

David Cameron is currently living with a Muslim family in Balsall Heath.

I’m staying with Abdullah who’s 37 and married to Shahida. They have three children: two girls and a boy, and I’ve also met many of the extended family who live in the area. Abdullah’s a great guy - born in Birmingham, he’s lived here all his life. Since leaving school at in 1985 he studied Business and Finance before he helped to run the family corner grocery shop. He’s steeped in marketing, trading and knows most of the local small business people in the neighbourhood. His main interests are TV, travelling, enjoying family life and good food. He's a Villa fan and enjoyed playing when he was younger.

Blogroll: Persuaders Media have a company blog.

Meanwhile the blog I was calling Explorations in the Second City (as "Birmingham, United Kingdom" was a bit too vague) has changed its name to Birmingham: AAH as explained in depth:

The Birmingham part is obvious. But the ‘AAH’ is an acronym for ‘Architectural And Historical’. This is also onomatopoeic in that it copies the “Aah!” sound someone would (hopefully!) make after reading the blog. It would also replicate the sound they make when they realise Birmingham is not just a dull concrete jungle and in fact a sprawling, vibrant and cultural metropolis.

I think it now sounds a bit Pirate-y, but that's probably just me thinking about pirates too much.

Mmm.. pirates...

Jet Lowe Jett Loe writes in the comments:

"Have never visited this blog before, (currently living in Belfast), but am going to be in Birmingham for 2 days starting from tomorrow - if there's ONE thing to do while I'm there what would you recommend?"

I'm always terrible at this sort of thing. What would you say?

Get free tickets to the preview screening of David Fincher's Zodiac at the AMC Cinema on 16th May.

Parsing the Shoe Woman for this week.

10th May (Thu)
Adam & Eve: Mr Bones & The Dreamers

13th May (Sun)
Bar Academy: Help She Can't Swim, The Pistolas, Kate Goes

I'm getting more and more out of touch with the local bands scene. Most of the names on the listings I don't know. I think it might be time for another Going Deaf For A Fortnight...

One for your diary.



Details of the flower and craft show are in the booklet currently available in the shops on the green.

If you're wondering why this festival is worth the heads up, check out my photos from last year.

Blogroll: Explorations in the Second City. The blog is actually called "Birmingham, United Kingdom" but that's not very useful when you're collating Birmingham blogs. It's a new blog - three posts so far - but looks really good with long entries about buildings. The mission seems to be "Explore the back streets and the hidden eye-openers that keep this city great." A welcome addition to the roster. via B:INS.

Be sure to set your alarm clock for 6am this week and check the skies, because the CBSO will be performing from hot air balloons flying across the city.

Yes, really.



The takeoff is at Summerfield Park on City Road near the Edgbaston Reservoir (map) should you want to witness it all starting. Where the performance goes next depends on the prevailing wind, I guess.

It's either going to happen on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday morning depending on the weather which, frankly, isn't looking too hopeful. Still, the BBC 5 day forecast is notoriously inaccurate.

This is one of the many events making up the Fierce Festival which runs until early June. More details here.

This + this / him =



Apparently there's a song, quite probably featuring Sir Cliff, titled "Brumburger". A prize of no consequence to the first person to furnish me with an mp3.

Symphony Organ Silent Movie: Phantom of the Opera.



15 June 2007 7:30pm at Symphony Hall

"Widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time, this moving masterpiece is the definitive version of the classic monster fable. Lon Chaney gives a legendary performance as the mad, vengeful recluse seated at his organ in the bowels of the Paris Opera House. Renowned cinema organist Nigel Ogden, presenter of Radio2’s The Organist Entertains, will improvise a stunning accompaniment, taking us back to the golden age of silent cinema."

Tickets start at a fiver.

Birmingham Gay Pride takes place over 25-28th May and entrance is free this year, which is relief after then nonsense with wristbands last time.

Posted by Ned Trifle to Flickr:



On the other side it says:

Birmingham
Hello Eve and Dec,
Arrived here 10.30.
All in good form.
Brenda and family here.
Sat and Sun - very wet and cold.
Hello Ronan, John and Bruno. Will drop line at weekend.
Love Mama
xxxx

and was sent to Clonmellon, County Neath.

Any other postcards of Birmingham online? Let me know.

It's fair to say The Stirrer is technically somewhat circa 1999. Of course good and engaging content can save you from any level of shonky web design, even resizing popup windows, but I do find I have to employ an army of Firefox extensions and Javascript blockers in order to drag Adrian Goldberg's site into the future.

Almost as a concession to us web 2.0 folks Adrian mirrors his features on a Blogger blog. Except he also embeds a huge video in the sidebar which, in my browsers at least, overlaps the article I want to read. Judicious use of Adblock will sort that but it does mean referring people to the Blogger blog is out of the question.


So, just how are you supposed to read this?

There is some good news though. The RSS feed from the Blogger blog (not the one from the main Stirrer site - that one's beyond useless) has recently gone Full, which means once you're subscribed to it you'll never need to visit the web pages again (unless you want to link to them of course). Here's the link for you to subscribe to.

It's worth pointing out that while I may be taking the piss a little here the fact that I consider it worth going through all these hoops and hacks in order to monitor Adrian's site says something.

Here, then, are the Birmingham City Council election results. As expected the numbers look incredibly low but I can't find a turnout percentage right now. If you come across it do let me know in the comments.

Don't forget to vote, if only to help the volunteers in the poling stations feel like they haven't just wasted hours of their life.

By the most holy gods of fuck!

Devo are playing the Symphony Hall on June 22nd!

That's Devo!

Wooooo!

(£35 though - eek!)

ta B:INS

SFGS Listings are up. I'd recommend...

2nd May (Wed)
Barfly: Nick Harper, Vijay Kishore, Jim Gipson

3 May (Thu)
Barfly: The Rumble Strips, Buffalo’77, Finka, Mendicant

4th May (Fri)
Jug of Ale: The Courtesy Group, Mills & Boon, Betty & the Id

5th May (Sat)
Spotted Dog: The Outer Circle, a) Pars Defect, Strange Time

6th May (Sun)
The King Edward: DJ McQueen, Los Crocodilos, Drunken Gypsies, BustMyFlex (A Slice of the Pie)

8th May (Tue)
King Edward: Blakfish, Ack Ack Ack, Mills & Boon, Concrete Belly

Laura has the links. I just copy and parse as the mood takes me. I reckon, if any, I'll be at the Jug of Friday to finally see The Courtesy Group and Betty & the Id.

Just in case you forgot there's a war on, Drop Beats Not Bombs, the "massive grass
roots type event celebrating peace and music" (Rich Batsford), is on this weekend at the Custard Factory. Eight rooms!