Be Excellent To Each Other

We had a lovely 1930s art deco cinema in Doncaster!

It looked like this:

And this:

Then it looked like this:


But in true Doncaster fashion it now looks like this:




And will be replaced this:

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgur ... N%26um%3D1

I think!!

The lovely old Odeon in Middlesbrough was run out of business by a 14 screen UGC opening literally across the road.

It was then turned into a night club. Unfortunately, when they converted the nightclub, they compromised the structure of the building. Luckily, when they found that out, the nightclub had closed down. Then the building collapsed.

http://www.clevelandemergencyplanning.info/News4.htm

I Art deco. What a tragedy.

It's hard to find someone who hates art deco. Apart from property developers of course..

And Paul Simon.

Where's a flying building-generating knife wielding sleep-inducing Richard O'Brien when you want one? He'd fix things sharpish.

*tries to contain his anger*

I watch Homes under the hammer every day. Not for all this horse shit about 'steps on the property ladder !' and so on, but for the real genuine non greedy fucks who need somewhere to live and build their dream home. Doesn't happen too often, but worth the wait.

The other week someone brought this old house in Derby. It was built in the 30s, had a reaaaaally cool 'paper fan' shaped fireplace with deep blue tiles. Really super cool Art Deco stuff. Even after the bloke on there told them that it would probably be a good idea to leave it there the fuckers smashed it out and put in some stupid wall mounted thing.

BTW I'm probably late to the party here on account of living in the USA til last year, but Grand Designs is the best show on the TV ever. Who saw the ep with the dude who rebuilt the castle up in Lancs I think? It was a ruin. In the end it was jaw dropping. It had some historical order thing on it so was super hard to do, but the roof part was just flabbergasting.

It was Yorkshire apparently.. Here is a before and after pic. Now this dude is my hero.

Edit it's an after and before pic

I find that show quite compulsive somehow. It is nice when someone does something nice with a building.



Philistines. I was recently bidding on my dream home. It was a late victorian terrace but it had been left in a kind of 1900-1920 kind of state pretty much. Had only been occupied by someone old. Needed fairly significant renovation but I wanted to do it sympathetically in a bit of an art nouveau style. I offered £5,000 more than anyone else for it and still didn't get the damn thing. It was all being handled by a solicitor whilst the relatives of the deceased were in australia. It was a bargain at the price I was offering but with it having gone cheaper I reckon it went to a mate of the solicitor who will wreck it. It had some incredible furniture in there as well. I could have turned it into something incredible. Almost every day I see that house now and await the horror of it coming up for rent, gutted, modernised and whitewashed.

We have the Coronet Cinema down in Well Hall that's sadly been lying vacant for the last 10 years.
The council really don't know what to do with it, although there are apparently plans ahead for refurbishment and revival.

There used to be one in Woolwich too but that's now an Evangelical Church .

For some reason I get slightly fascinated by abandonded places like that - I'd love to have a look around inside there.

I agree, we should do much more to save these fabulous old Art Deco buildings.

I think Listed Status is the key. I was involved in a large scale refurbishment of BBC Broadcasting House' Radio Theatre, and that was very sympathetically restored. It's a fabulous place - just seeing what those long dead Engineers were able to do back then in the early '30s, with no computers or CAD, was very humbling. I felt like I was not worthy touching their masterpiece, walking in the footsteps of giants...

I remember in a previous life having looking how we could put IT into the The CCC (Old Bailey). I got to see the tunnels and where the Mayor parked his car. Also we converted a dissued wine cellar into a Server room.

A long whiles ago I went to a mate's house-warming party. Drank lots of wine. He put me and my mate Eddy in the box room which had been converted into a server room. He was a bit of an uber-nerd when it came to computers, with me and Eddy surrounded on all sides by giant cabinets of PC towers and servers emitting a low brain-tingling hum and the strong breezy whir of mighty fans.

"Bit loud isn't it, Eddy?"

"Yes. Yes it is."

"Shall I?"

"Do so."

Pulled the plugs out. Ahh, blissful happy silent sleep.

My mate wasn't too happy in the morning when he found that aside from the computers acting all weird his 'House of the Future' had no hot-water or TV because he'd used bizarre wiring and programs so that everything electrical was regulated by his mighty computers. Even his toaster failed to work.

How me and Eddy laughed.

And that is why wine and server rooms don't mix.

I was at a mates Party in Uxbridge, I used to stop at there house When I worked in London a bit.

I arrived late, and some one asked why... I said I just got out the Old Bailey and folks moved away from me..

Yeah, who the hell wants to end up talking to a Barrister at a party? Ewww.

I work in IT..

Looks shiny, my likey.

New one, obv.

I'm not a big fan of any Chelsea players, to be fair.

Rather like the Cardiff 2k1 (2k2?) meet in which we were all sleep on Gaywood's living room floor, and one of the guests was irritated by the hum of the TV and rather than switch it to standby just switched it OFF. Great, until the following day when we woke up early and decided we wanted to play Dreamcast, only Gaywood had coded his TV up with a PIN and we couldn't figure out what it was (we couldn't fathom why it wasn't 1337)

There pretty good footballers but there shit at drawing.