The Palace Pier

To me, this is an emblem of the depressing shit that Brighton has come to represent. The entrance welcomes you with the potent smell of exchange students, drug addicts and rotting burgers served by some poor immigrant who day in, day out has to make slop for the horrid foreign kids with their neon rucksacks. There is a distinct air of misery on the Pier. Hardly anything is ever open, even in summer. The poor fucks that actually have the misfortune to work here must have the daily reminder that their life is shit.

Don’t bother going into the Arcades. If you were to go all CSI shit in there, I’m pretty sure that you would find buckets of semen, piss, blood and whatever else. I’ve seen people fucking on those driving game-seats so you can only imagine what horrors the machine guns have seen. The prizes you can win are laughable. They are so awful and all fake. So, unless you want to waste money or win a ‘cuddly’ toy that is probably a fire risk, don’t bother.

The rides are an option for you, should you wish to be gawped at by the grim staff who have nothing else to do with their day apart from press buttons and stare at you as you try to ignore the fact you & your friend are the only people on the Dodgems, or even on the pier. I’ve never liked or enjoyed the ‘ride’ section of the Pier. It’s not just the safety aspect (growing up, there have been innumerable rumors of people falling off rides into the sea etc etc) it’s just that there is no sense of fun or anything. I wish Brighton had that strip like the one in Lost Boys. So avoid the pier, it’s a waste of time and you’ll probably need to get pissed afterwards to wash the disappointment and sadness away.

The North Laine & The Lanes

The North Laine is basically a set of parallel streets containing a vast array of bullshit shops and cafes with the odd crap hairdresser thrown in. It hasn’t changed much since I was young; although now I always think I can smell regurgitated Innocent Smoothies, probably because I always see these three-wheeled-pram using mothers force feeding their bratty (and weird named) kids organic slop instead of Mr. Juicy which was good enough for me as wee’un. There are those shops where you can get dildos, vibrators, and gimp masks right next to some bland beige boutique where someone like Judi Dench would perhaps shop. There are a few cafes selling overpriced lentil shit or ‘meat-imitation pasties’. There are one or two good pubs, but it’s normally hit and miss with the people inside. I’ve seen far too many middle-aged, seemingly alcoholic Mods for one lifetime. There is nothing really to buy. Even the places that were once good, e.g. Snoopers Paradise (an emporium selling everything old and strange) has now become infected with pretentiousness and is ridiculously overpriced).

The Lanes consists of an amazing amount of rank jewelers and the only decent record shop in the whole bloody city. Just don’t bother.

Clubs

There is not one good club or even club night in Brighton (Smack That nights apart). Seriously. The biggest ones are on the seafront and you can normally find any STD you want in these places. The music is normally so mainstream and dire, the people so vacuous and dressed head-to-toe in River Island, afterwards you would probably want to wade into the sea with rocks stuffed into your pockets and die, just to avoid the same experience. The stench of semen dribbling out saggy vaginas from the night before is always too much for me to bear. Even the people that are relatively ok, are not, if they venture into these shitholes. Away from the seafront, there is no real night that is worth going to. Most of the people that go to the club nights that are tolerable, are pretty uninteresting. I’m pretty sure almost all of them are illustration/graphic/photography students because they are all fucking boring. I have no idea where the interesting people of Brighton hang out. In all the good pubs, they are never to be found. To be honest, all the good people have probably returned to London.

Students

The ‘human rats’ proliferate the streets like rubbish. I have no idea how many there are, but it must be a lot. Too many than is normal. Everything in Brighton seems to be controlled by the student population in some way. They are everywhere…they are the ones who do all the shit nights, the ones who are in every pub and cafe (no matter where you are in the city) and the ones who have exhausted all supplies of K. If I have to talk to, or just encounter another curly quiffed, quilted jacket, deck shoe wearing prick with a bow tie again, I’m going to sew up my vagina and remove my womb so that in the event of an apocalypse, I do not have to procreate with one.

Probably best to stay where you are.

Words: Nina Lily Gill
Photos: Sam Hiscox and Google

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