I always get the feeling that Brighton is one of those places that if you tell someone you are going, there is a sense of excitement, as if it has a positive energy about it. I’d been by the seafront for 10 minutes and already I was witnessing the most remarkable scenes. I knew that Brighton is renowned for being wacky and different, but what was about to grace my eyes could not have happened anywhere else. A man sporting an aluminous green Borat thong appeared to be flagging me and my travel companion, Lee, down.“Have you seen what’s ahead of us? He seems to be calling us”, Lee hesitantly said.
“Carry on as normal, it can’t be us he wants”, I replied confidently.
In fact it was us he wanted. The pasty, less hairy version of Borat crossed the road, holding up traffic as he stumbled towards us like Bambi on ice. We looked at each other, not knowing whether to burst out laughing or run away. The man stopped in the middle of the road, putting his hand in the air apologising to the many cars honking their horns in frustration at the solitary character. After picking up his fake moustache from underneath the car that had narrowly avoided hitting him, the stranger in the thong posed on the bonnet whilst the driver and his passenger had nothing else to do but laugh and take pictures of the event. Only in Brighton.
“Boys”, he slurred. “Have you seen where the stag’s gone, he’s done one ‘asn’t he?”
Trying to look the man in the eyes whilst his dignity was on show, we told him to try the hotel with the numerous amounts of people dressed in fancy dress outside it further up the road. Brighton’s party scene was well underway on the sunny Saturday, morning.
To many people, Brighton presents the face of an attractive seaside resort, with its famous pier full of amusements, arcades and sugared doughnuts. Like most seaside towns in England, Brighton has its front with hotels, bars and of course a plentiful supply of fish and chips, but it isn’t like most. For a start, as of 1997 Brighton and Hove were merged and given a city status by Queen Elizabeth II and in true city fashion, there are many different areas to explore.
After spending a solid hour draining away money by feeding coppers into a machine, and throwing balls at tin cans in the hope of winning a giant cuddly toy, we decided to delve deeper into Brighton’s famous streets.
Leaving the candyfloss and roller coasters behind, the seafront was promptly exchanged for small quaint streets, some so narrow you could jump from one roof to another. The Lanes area is jam-packed with character and history, alive with entertaining acts and atmospheric restaurants and pubs. Being in this area I could understand why Brighton is labelled ‘London by the sea’ with a similar aura to Covent Garden.
Only a few roads and a short walk away was Brighton’s Royal Pavilion. Its striking Indian architecture makes it the city’s most unusual and most beautiful landmark. It was as if a palace had been airlifted out of India and randomly placed in the middle of Brighton. We then discovered the true bohemian charm of the city, finding another set of small, winding streets. Many little boutiques and trinket shops selling retro second hand items and antiques, from clogs to old records lined the constricted avenues. Body art, wacky hair styling and shisha pipes were in abundance and the smell of incense sticks was prominent in the air.
By now, I was appreciating the oddities and wonders of what Brighton has to offer. A Starbucks in the distance at the bottom of the road brought a sense of normality back to the place and presented something every average town and city can associate with. However, as I pondered whether to pick up a coffee cream frappuccino, or stay local and get a cup of grass juice, I was reminded where I was. My choice of drink no longer mattered; because only in Brighton would you find a skateboarding dog. I could hardly believe my eyes as a scraggily dressed man called out to his canine friend;
“Bodhi, come on boy, bring it back and let’s go again”.
There were several street performances that had caught my eye throughout the course of the day, but this one overshadowed the rest. A small crowd had gathered in awe as the four-legged Tony Hawks ‘kick-pushed’ his way through crowds. This little act typified the charm of Brighton and we now seemed a world away from when we had first arrived in the morning at the seaside.
Brighton is like an abstract painting, with an array of different colours splashed on the canvas in random places, colours that shouldn’t be next to each other and with no organisation, just completely random. The mixture of a typical seaside resort, modern urban buildings, quaint streets and alleys, cheap boutiques and expensive shops, is quite remarkable. The city is full of weird and wonderful people, and its unique blend of culture merged together is what gives Brighton its quirky edge and bohemian like charm.
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