Urbs vs Suburbs
“I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I did know that I wanted it to be in zone two.”
Urbs vs Suburbs
I love this line from Pippa Bailey in The New Stateman:
“I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I did know that I wanted it to be in zone two.”
I grew up in suburbia but got my first Red Bus Rover at age 10 and, with my 8-year-old neighbour, toured all the famous places in London. Trafalgar square. Buckingham Palace. Hamleys!
It was 12¾ miles by train to Charing Cross station and I must’ve made that journey a thousand times in my teenage years. St James Park. The Natural History Museum. Oxford Street. Ice skating at Queensway.
I finally got to live in Zone Two after I left the Navy.
Whitechapel had the BEST pubs for music. The George on Commercial Street had an amateur hour on Fridays where any one of those pensioners could’ve been a star in their day. Maybe they were?
I swore I’d never live in suburbia again. Plymouth Hoe was our next stop but we soon traded our view of Plymouth Sound for the bright lights of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan.
Two years of that and we headed for San Francisco but we missed it by sixty miles.
We ended up among the dreary strip malls of Almaden Valley for the next 23 years. It was a four-mile drive to the nearest pub. Thank God they put a bar inside Whole Foods.
My vow was dormant but not forgotten and now here we are in the thick of it again. Home at last.
There must be 100 pubs and restaurants within a mile or two of my home in Bristol. Three of my favourites are just minutes away. The Grain Barge, The Broken Dock and The Three Tuns are as much home as my actual home.
We get asked all the time why anyone would trade California for Bristol but this is the view from my home and I awake every Sunday to cathedral bells.
Contrary to their reputation, cities are much friendlier than the suburbs and I strike up a conversation with a stranger every single time I go to the pub. That happened maybe four times in twenty years in Silicon Valley. It helps to have a cute dog.
When we came home to England we chose Bristol at random like a Womble choosing his name on Uncle Bulgaria’s map of the world.
It was home all along but we never knew it until now.
I don’t remember Mr. Daniel’s convenience store, but above the street would have been a great place to watch all the nightlife from! As a teenager from the age of fifteen I worked as a waitress, first in a Mexican restaurant which was owned by the Greek mafia who ran the Barbican (allegedly), and then in The Lobster Pot. They both knew that I’d lied about my age but it was cash in hand (£10 to work the evening shift!) and the tips were dreadful, but I spent about two years at the latter restaurant. We used to sit down after closing at about midnight and have pasta and vodka with the kitchen staff. They were a fun lot and I learned some good phrases from the mostly Italian staff! They also had a piano and a lovely old pianist called Bobby who, as a small boy, had played in the silent movie theatres before the talkies. Different times!
I love cities too! And I too find them friendlier than their reputation would indicate. I have lived in various locations around Bristol, all within a mile of the centre, but never in your fabulous spot on the water. I also lived in Plymouth for a while - not down by the Hoe although I spent many a Saturday night in the pubs on the Barbican. My favourite place was in zone one in London by Marylebone Station before it all went upmarket. We rented a flat looking over the train tracks and had a local pub in the next alleyway. It was someone’s front room, the ladies toilets were upstairs in their house and they did lock-ins at the weekend. I’m now in zone three, but it feels like the sticks. I’ll make it back to zone one one day. I’m glad you’ve found a place to be happy in Bristol - cities rock!