Nice site with historic photos

XTM of TMG

I discovered a website which has a lot of historic photos and you can also check just specific decades, so naturally I picked the 80s - link here.

One good example, this set: Pictures of Birmingham 1976-1987 - even though I have never lived in the UK, the photos look similar to those of Germany from my childhood, so I can still relate. There's just this gritty atmosphere those photos have in spades, probably also thanks to a lot of postwar dereliction here and there which nowadays is steadily being replaced by posh (and sometimes just plain ugly) buildings made for the privileged while affordable housing is getting scarce ... yeah, obviously this is happening more in the big trendy cities everybody wants to move to, but you get my drift.

I like how back then, every city still had plenty of unique shops while nowadays it's the same chains nearly everywhere on the planet: Primark, H&M, Starbucks, GameStop, McDonalds/Burger King/Pizza Hut to name just a few ... hell, even Aldi/Lidl which probably 20 years ago didn't exist anywhere outside Krautland ... there seems to be less and less variety everywhere. Not to mention domestic chains in each respective country - every city in Germany I visit there's just the same local domestic shops everywhere, big chains gradually taking over, pushing everything else out of the market ... Unless it's a little shithole town of course, the big chains won't bother so you'll get shisha bars, betting stores (bookies) and half a dozen crappy eateries all next to each other. I'm sure it's similar in the UK or wherever you live.

Well, this has turned into a bit of a rant, eh. I just don't like how our cities are "evolving" ...

XTM of TMG

Oh, there's probably a young dm_boozefreek somewhere in here ;)

dm_boozefreek

Elswick was the upmarket shithole in the West End believe it or not, those photo's make it look a bit worse than it was but a lot of the more wide open spaces look like they were taken in Summerhill Square, or Suicide Square as it was sometimes known. Made me laugh the first pic has Super Mac painted on the Wall. A pointer no doubt to ex-footy player, and radio personality/football persona Malcolm McDonald.

Who incidentally we used to occasionally see walking his dog down the park with a small bottle of Bells Whiskey in his arse pocket. I remember new years maybe 1998, or perhaps 2001, it wasn't the millennium, or the phony post millennium...millennium, we got a taxi to a party driven by Paul Kinnell, the Newcastle player they called "The Yank". I mentioned I'd seen Malcolm walking his dog with booze in his pocket, and he went f*cking mental on me. I said sorry mate I know Super Mac is supposed to be off the drink, but every time we see him he's p*ssed up and staggering round the park with his dog :))

Oh and the one pic that has the kids hanging round "Muggers Corner", once again nowhere near that bad, but I knew a load of people who lived round there years ago. There's some really nice houses, and rich people live a stones throw from that eastern European type "ghetto" they're trying to portray there, yup there's shitty areas in Newcastle, but Elswick isn't that bad, it's dog rough, but it's not as bad as those pics make out, been through there many times, know people who live there, never been mugged on "Muggers Corner" or been jumped or anything horrible like that. People round there are like any scummy motherfuckers basically, if you know em' you know where you stand, if you bark louder than then if they do confront you they tend to crawl back under their rocks. But there are some dangerous suit n' tie gangster types round there as well. Gotta know who to bark at, and who to walk....or run away from ;)

Personally I'd say Daisy Hill, or Pottery Bank in Walker were way worse than Elswick, but they're in the East End not the West End....and West end radgees always say "The West End's the Best End"....Dunno why the east end has it's fair share of grimy shitholes, but the west end is literally third world in some places :))

Surprised that photographer didn't go half a mile down the road to Scotswood, or "Skotchy" as it's known, not so much these days, but f*ck me Skotchy back in about 1991 was a terrifying no mans land :))

XTM of TMG

Thanks for the lenghty reply, even though obviously neither me nor most of the WOSsers (since they didn't live in your area) can relate much. Still interesting to read the usual dm_rambling - I bet there were plenty of "non-oriental" slags there, too ;)

That particular set really did look grimy, also thanks to the b/w photography. I remember you posting about the look outside your window in Newcastle when you were a kid, there was a dirty factory there, right?

Didn't have too much of the really ancient architecture where I grew up, as uncle Albert would say "during the war" most of the larger cities were nuked from orbit (after all, it's the only way to be sure innit) and it was just boring and functional 50s/60s buildings after that ... now we have some old buildings near where I live - in fact the combustion engine was conceived right there so very historical indeed ... they've been derelict for quite a few years, now finally a lot of it is gonna get knocked down and they'll just spew more identikit posh crap into the area, gentrification ahoy ...

dm_boozefreek

It was train yards I could see from my window when I was really young, the Blue Circle Cement factory was literally at the end of my street though, along with a load of other oddball industrial things. None of that stuff is there now that whole area is student accommodation now I think.

XTM of TMG

I guess it's like that?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/14778966@N06/5464746068/

Edit - Photoset here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/14778966@N06/albums/72157625975664491

dm_boozefreek

Yep that first pic there if you follow the left curve round , and my shitty council house was to the left, just past the monstrosity on the left, and before you hit those houses you can faintly see past it, they were the "nice houses" that weren't council owned, they were round the corner and a little bit down the lane from my old street. Of course I think we moved away from there in about 1982. Weird thing is that image even though it's from 6 years before I was born hasn't changed that much really :))

Scottie_uk

There is something way more interesting about towns not in the south east corner of the UK (with exception to London which is fascinating). I found Wales just as interesting as some of the photos shown here.

Its why I always preferred living near Cardiff to living in Oxford.

Scottie_uk

Stephen Dowle (AKA Fray Bentos) is has taken some very good photos in the 70s and 80s and has them all up. He mainly focuses on bristol but has photos from all over the county mostly of buses, trains, and towns.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fray_bentos/

XTM of TMG

I'm grateful you brought that gallery to my attention, Scottie ;)

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, some nice old stuff going back 'till the 70s. It's interesting how you can often see from the thumbnail already, despite a shot being in black/white, if it's old or more recent. You'll notice from the amount of kids (if there are any) and their hair colour ... and obviously from people's clothes.

dmsmith

Fangs for the memories.

Ahh the days when a ten year old could jump up and down on the boot of some old banger with no wheels, and not get refered to social services.

:-)

After music videos like Invisible Sun, and Belfast Child I kind of wondered if little angels with grubby faces only existed in Northern Ireland.

I see we are not so different here after all.

dmsmith

dm_boozefreek wrote: »

Made me laugh the first pic has Super Mac painted on the Wall. A pointer no doubt to ex-footy player, and radio personality/football persona Malcolm McDonald.

I noticed that graffiti too. That appeared on walls in NI too, although as a child I thought it was an allusion to out of town shopping centres, which came to the UK with the opening of Supermac in October 1964...

Other kids would point at the graffiti and say to me "whats that?"

To which I replied in some bewilderment "Supermac!"

b-(

so your guess may be more plausible.

https://eastbelfasthistory.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/nbreda5.png

murtceps

The first picture and one about half way down in the Birmingham section show the bottom of lower temple row, just as you come out of new street station. The scourier nyncentre is long gone, and is a cafe nero, but amazingly the contact lens place is stil there.

XTM of TMG

To follow up this topic, I've found another cool website featuring old crap. There's a catch though - it's not in English, but don't worry about that. Let me explain ...

So there's this German website which aims to be "the digital archive of the analog days". Users can submit their old photos and videos shot in the past and it will all be digitalized for them, then made available for everyone to be viewed on the website.

Since people in the past also travelled quite a bit, there's plenty of material from all around the world - including the UK, of course. Check out the links below:

- Pictures (search term "England")
- Pictures (search term "Großbritannien" which means "Great Britain")

You may also try other terms in the search bar at the top of the site, e.g. a specific year. Just be aware that unless you search for a specific place name, the majority of pictures will be from Germany.

XTM of TMG

Look, even 50 years ago chavvy kids (minus baseball caps and tracksuits) were damaging stuff out in the streets ...
https://digit.wdr.de/entries/16286?index=140&q=eyJ7Yn0iOiJsb25kb24ifQ==&qt=search