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This is quite darkly hilarious tbh. And consistent with my experience of Blackpool. I once went there on couple-week-long driving course when I was a teenager,
by padolsey 3y ago
This is quite darkly hilarious tbh. And consistent with my experience of Blackpool.
I once went there on couple-week-long driving course when I was a teenager, hoping but eventually failing to get my license. I was put up in someone's house that was run as a sort of unlicensed b&b. The entire place, the curtains, the linen, the pillow,.. all smelled of old nicotine and damp. On my first evening I went out by myself to a fish-and-chip shop, feeling like a silly city boy in a greasy gritty concrete town. Stuck out like a sore thumb. I remember walking, late evening, lonely, on a bridge over the railtrack. The entire place felt deserted, metallic and concrete.
I went back to my room and ate the oily chips on my bed. After the first day with an old crusty – but perfectly lovely driving instructor – and a rather large heavy-haulage driver who was renewing a license, we went out for some drinks. Beers. Lots of beer. And they took me to a gay club – of which there are oddly many in Blackpool – because they thought it'd be a laugh. It was actually a massive spectacle for me. It was the first time I saw older men kissing, right there, by the entrance on a old tawdry sofa. I was still on a journey of coming out, so it felt oddly enlightening or validating or something. It was an old-england gay club – the type you hear about in the era of stonewall.
The entire town was like a time capsule to a poorer apocalyptic britain. Betting shops, cheap nail salons, boarded up derelict buildings everywhere! Even the beach was deserted. It reflected the same depressing crumbling economy of coastal towns all over the UK. It felt like a shadow of its former self, but somehow, there was a old english magic to it that I can still feel. My nostalgia is probably getting the better of me, but I remember it fondly.
So yeh I think I understand this SLS thing. In places like Blackpool – forgotten remnants - you can feel the depression in the paving stones – the grey withering vitality – swallowing you whole.
- louthy 3y agoYour description of Blackpool is both eloquent and absolutely spot on! I suggested to my friend that we go there for his stag do; and even for the debauchery of a stag do it felt a bit too grim! To the point that I felt guilty for suggesting it.
- hkt 3y agoBeautifully put, an answer approaching literature. I have the same feelings about Blackpool. Coastal towns really are monuments to another time. The houses are beautiful, too - a two bedroom flat in one of the old guesthouses on the sea front with bay windows is a steal in most towns, if you can cope with the town itself. Scarborough is another one. It was clearly so much more full of life than it is now, but its status as an elder resort is part of its charm. The poverty, so much not.
- jimnotgym 3y agoOr the beach being closed due to too much raw sewage being pumped into the sea...
- acdanger 3y agoYour description immediately brought the satirical town of Scarfolk to mind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarfolk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarfolk
- Uptrenda 3y agoAmazing writing. If you have a book I'd read it.
- croisillon 3y agoWell you’ll be delighted: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1789957648 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1789957648
- NeutralForest 3y agoIdk why but this comment was hilarious, thanks!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- layer8 3y agoSome would say that SLS applies to JavaScript. ;)
- bentcorner 3y agoTable of Contents 1. Setting the Scene 2. The Tenets of Clean Code 3. The Enemies of Clean Code 4. SOLID and Other Principles 5. Naming Things is Hard 6. Blackpool's Fading Vitality and the Withering Shadow of Coastal Britain 7. Primitive and Built-In Types
- pbourke 3y agoIt’s not easy to tie two orthogonal yet equally-depressing subjects together.
- pjc50 3y agoFor slightly more optimistic well-written stories about the North, try Stuart Maconie.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y agoYou reminded me of this [0] fantastic review of Sheerness in Kent. Blackpool is mentioned several times in comparison. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/u2vu5x/i_think_i_visited_the_worst_town_in_the_entire_uk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/u2vu5x/i_thi...
- marcosscriven 3y agoI specifically went to Sheerness to go and see the UK’s only scorpion population. A local copper saw me, asked what I was doing, and offered to get his massive UV light out of his car. Saw quite a few! But yes, otherwise all rather run down. The extreme wealth discrepancy was an eye opener.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y agoI couldn't have guessed that Sheerness had a natural scorpion population and yet somehow it isn't surprising either.
- ransackdev 3y ago[flagged]
- LVB 3y agoWhy do you think the SLS term is an inside joke? I actually appreciate the succinct directness of it tbh.
- ransackdev 3y agoIt's unprofessional and degrading. I'm going to take a wild guess that the two replies to my comment are from people that don't know what it's like to have "shit life syndrome". Maybe I'm triggered because I've lived it and if I heard a doctor say that about me I'd knock them out
- simonw 3y agoEnglish doctors don't really make banquet money: https://www.bmj.com/careers/article/the-complete-guide-to-nhs-pay-for-doctors https://www.bmj.com/careers/article/the-complete-guide-to-nh... I don't see this as a "making fun of people" thing. It feels to me more like an open acknowledgement that there are a large number of negative health impacts associated with poverty, and it really sucks. Maybe there's a cultural thing here. English humor is pretty self-deprecating: the term "Shit Life Syndrome" is the kind of phrase that fits the English mindset pretty well.
- ransackdev 3y agoAh so since they don't make banquet fund raiser money, my point about it being in poor taste and shitty for them to say about their patients is moot. Thanks for providing sources on Dr salaries. They are basically suffering from shit life syndrome themselves!
- simonw 3y agoThe rest of my comment was meant to respond to your point.
- mellosouls 3y agoThis is the coastal town That they forgot to close down https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LeL9BUPtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LeL9BUPtA
- fjni 3y agoI genuinely enjoyed reading this. Thank you!
- placesalt 3y ago(beautiful writing, as others have said!) > the same depressing crumbling economy of coastal towns all over the UK I'm surprised to hear that coastal towns in the UK are doing poorly. In North America, it's generally the coastal areas that are more prosperous. Was it overbuilding during the era of British sea power? Or a great sucking-up of wealth by London? It makes me wonder if, long term, seaside areas would make good places to buy property. Surely, on the whole, they have more natural beauty than inland areas.
- dazc 3y agoThe advent of cheap flights made holidays within Europe affordable to most people. As a consequence, traditional UK holiday destinations became much less popular. Over time old-fashioned guest houses, B&Bs and cheap hotels transitioned into very low cost housing for people with 'problems'. The inevitable doom spiral began... Destinations on the South Coast were not affected in the same way though and have remained a popular choice with more affluent clientele.
- KineticLensman 3y ago> Destinations on the South Coast were not affected in the same way Bournemouth (middle of the South Coast) took a slightly different path and some of the accommodation was repurposed to house students from Europe studying English. IIRC the contiguous strip comprising Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch is one of the largest non-industrial conurbations in Europe. I moved to Bournemouth in 1988 for work reasons and it always seemed to me like a large studenty-town that happened to be near the Sea rather than a 'seaside town' (i.e. one that is structured around the beach and bucket-and-spade shops). It's also viewed as Brighton's straight cousin. Christchurch, on the other hand, is known locally as 'the last resort' because of the large proportion of retirees in the population. I also can't resist the old joke that Cleethorpes isn't twinned with any other town but is in a suicide pact with Grimsby.
- dazc 3y ago'Christchurch, on the other hand, is known locally as 'the last resort' because of the large proportion of retirees in the population.' I must be getting old since Barton on Sea is becoming more attractive as residential destination by the day...
- GordonS 3y agoYou've summed up Blackpool perfectly! It really is a microcosm of Britain - a neglected, dilapidated shit-hole :(
- xwowsersx 3y agoPlease tell me that writing is a substantial part of your daily work! Or at least that you're prolific outside of your professional commitments? This was written so well..a real delight to read.
- m-i-l 3y agoNice story, thanks for sharing. My parents used to take me for our "exotic foreign holiday" in Blackpool each year (I was from Scotland). I actually have many happy memories from the time. There was the Doctor Who Exhibition we went to once - nothing even remotely like that anywhere near my home town. Then there was the Blackpool Tower. My parents used to complain about how expensive it was to get in, and I think we only went there once, but on that one trip me and my dad went to see a laser light show set to music (so futuristic!) and also went to a stall that used a video camera hooked up to one of those new fangled computer things that could print out an ASCII art picture of your face (such mind bogglingly advanced technology!) Also the arcades. Again they cost money so it was rare we'd go in, but there was once I was given money to try a grabbing claw machine, and won a pack of sweets. My parents thought I was good at them, and so gave me money to try and win something for my sister, which was a huge boost to my confidence (finally something I was better than my sister at!) Unfortunately I didn't manage to win anything for my sister. It was only decades later that I found out that those machines aren't skill based - there's a dial inside where the operator can control the "payout rate", i.e. the percentage of times the claw goes limp vs stays rigid. (Another childhood illusion shattered.) Anyway, maybe that was before it got too grim, or maybe I didn't notice because I was so young, or maybe I just thought that was what England was like:-) One awful thing I remember though was just how filthy the beaches were. The coast was lined with sewerage outlets, so where-ever you swam there would be all sorts of things floating by. Once I picked up what I thought was a funny shaped balloon and started filling it with water and playing with it. I went to show my mum how I could make the balloon bigger by squeezing it, but she just looked horrified and bashed it out of my hand. I had no idea why, but didn't ask, and just kept quiet. I did however wonder what it could have been that was so bad, but the best my innocent young mind could think of was that perhaps it was some form of artificial breast for breast feeding, given it was skin coloured and had a teat at the end. It wasn't until many years later that I realised what it almost certainly was.
- justinlloyd 3y agoHaving worked on quite a few of those claw machines that made their way in to arcades around the UK and Europe back in the late 1980's and early 1990's, there were a variety of variables we, as software developers, could control, from the ramp up and down of the motors that controlled how fast the claw moved, to how much lag was introduced when responding to your joystick/button input, to how "grippy" the claw retraction was, to how strong the grip remained over time. These made for a more exciting game, which were then translated into a simple user interface consisting of a few dip switches or a trimmable pot that the owner/operator could tweak.
- stevoski 3y agoThat was one of the most enjoyable comments I've ever read on HN.
- dzamo_norton 3y ago> all smelled of old nicotine and damp Nicotine is odourless.
- padolsey 3y agoOh hm true - I guess I meant tobacco. Whoops!