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West Street

Photo by Bill Maskell

Catering for the meatheads

By Ian, student living in Brighton for 4 years

The worst place in Brighton�is probably West Street. West Street just caters for the meatheads; rowdy guys in Topman clothes and rowdy girls in Topgirl clothes. The selection of pubs like Yates, the Whetherspoons, the Shark Bar, are just the most horrific places imaginable.

However, this is a good thing in a way, because in Brighton they try and section off all the meatheads onto West Street. It's perfect because they have everything that caters for them: the kebab shops, the fish 'n' chip shops, and it runs down onto all the clubs on the seafront. It's just best avoided on weekends, generally; well, it's best avoided anyway...

Interviewed for the website on 03-02-2003

This page was added on 22/03/2006.

Comments:

Sorry Ian, I do not think you qualify to make any comment on West Street. It has always been Brighton's place to let off steam, and I have done so on many occasions when it was famous for Harrisons Bar and Chatfields - and they were real boozing emporiums, not like the rubbish that is there now!

By Chris (06/12/2003)

What a judgemental thing to say. Maybe West Street isn't the best place to be but it's the only place that we can go for a night out. Sure you do get a few meatheads but doesn't everywhere. I work at one of the bars here and I've never experienced any trouble.

By Ruth (30/01/2004)

I agree with Ian's comments to the letter. (In fact, I was wondering for a moment whether I had written them myself! But no, it must be another Ian as I haven't been a student since the 1970s.) For me, West Street (along with parts of nearby Kings Road) is a no-go area. On warm summer Saturday nights it is just downright scary - bladdered, strutting chavs with bottles of WKD. Yes, I'm being judgemental, but that special bin for glass bottles isn't there without a reason. I'm so relieved the 'meatheads' never turn up in the pubs in my area (Southover Street). Long live West Street!

By Ian (11/04/2004)

Can't believe you are slagging off West Street, the most busy street in Brighton. It's London by the sea - what more could you want?

By Salma (11/05/2004)

I avoid West Street like the plague. I had to walk up it recently after leaving the cinema and felt the life blood being sucked out of me. Nobody who walks up and down it on a Saturday seems to be able to handle their alcohol and I've never managed to walk it without someone making a rude comment about me, vomiting on the pavement or starting a fight. The cabbies I know hate it and apparently it's impossible to get a policeman on a Saturday night because they're all on West Street breaking up fights.

By Karen (31/08/2004)

I have lived here all my life and have been drinking down West Street for years. I must have witnessed only a handful of fights during this time. Yes, West Street is the main drinking place to go, but as said by someone else you get it everywhere. How many of you go on holiday and end up down the main 'strip' for a few beers?

By Shane (19/03/2005)

When I was in my teens I went clubbing at West Street at the Top Rank. It was all I knew at the time. I was always into a varied type of music but not 80s dance. I am so glad my late cousin showed me 'The Underground' night club - Sister Rays'. Everyone to their own. In hindsight most youth nowadays doesn't have disipline, boundaries or structure in their lives and they drink and expose themselves to so much more these days - it's a shame really. Personally, I think West Street has lost it's character - this all started with the buildings and with this comes the people. I'll get off my box now! If you don't know where West Street is, follow the loosely-cladded, ever-so young and old ladies, swearing idiots and pavement sick. South of the Clock Tower.

By Andrew Buck (26/03/2005)

Long live West Street..it has always served a purpose for me. My early teens were spent frittering away all my pocket money down the arcades, my late teens spent going there on a Friday or Saturday night and not remembering getting home, and now in my early thirties this street gives us all a break on Friday and Saturday nights from the ever growing chav population of Brighton. I it weren't there you'd soon miss it!

By Nick Child (16/04/2005)

Ah, but don't overlook the curate Wagner's first church, tucked in next to Wetherspoons. It's supposed to have some fantastic stained-glass windows, a copy of an original design of Pugin. Not seen them myself though.

By Laura Greaves (20/08/2005)

In the 1950s West Street and the 'Front' was the destination for hordes of visitors travelling down from London to Brighton Staion en route to a day out by the sea. Who rembers the Ice Rink? This was the place to go on weekend mornings to learn to skate and to pretend you were as fast on the ice as the hockey players who dazzeled the public during the evening battles.

By Martin (04/11/2005)

Does anyone remember the Court School of Dancing located next to the Astoria cinema. It was one of a chain of ballroom dancing schools. I started going there when I was around 14 years old in the late 50s. Wednesday and Saturday nights were the best. I managed to achieve gold medal standard in the quickstep, waltz, foxtrot and tango. Boy did I think I was hot! Graduated later to the Top Rank Suite at the bottom of West Street. Yes, I have to admit to being a week-end Mod, complete with ex-US army parka and a Lambretta. Syd Dean and his band used to play the first half of the session and no-one danced to him. We used the time to suss out the talent. If I remember correctly, all the blokes used to parade clockwise around the perimeter and the girls anti-clockwise. After an intermission, the DJ came on, I think her name was Marie. She used to play some great stuff - Tamla Motown, Stax etc. When we were kicked out around midnight (if we hadn't pulled) then it was off to O'Hagens hot dog shop on the seafront. I think these days it would be either a kebab or a curry. Oh happy days!

By Peter Wood (05/01/2006)

How West Street seems to have gone down. As a pupil in the mid 50s of the original St Pauls School, at the rear of the church, I spent a lot of time in that area. Saturday mornings were spent at the ice rink (the hot blackcurrant drinks were legendary) or the Saturday morning pictures at the Regent. In my teens there was a basement coffee club called the Sombrero at the top of West St - Saturday afternoons were spent down there. It was like a nightclub: loud music, dim lights and smooching young couples! There were lot of Italian, French and Spanish exchange students who hung around but we were never scared to walk the streets day or night. I remeber the Model Aerodrome on the corner of Duke St and West. My father was, and still is, a model enthusiast and we spent many Saturday mornings in the shop chatting to others and checking out new items. We met Dick Emery in there several times. Yes, Peter Wood, I remember the Court; it was where I met my husband in the late 60s. It was always known as the marriage bureau! A great way to meet people. Yes, happy days!

By Patricia Silsby (03/03/2006)

I fully agree with the writers who slag off West Street. I was born and raised in Brighton and still live here but I never go near West St after dark - even in the winter.

By Malcolm (04/05/2006)

Oh dear! Really what's happening here is�people just slagging off any place where us young'uns go to have fun! Yes, we can get a little rowdy sometimes, but who didn't when they were young? Insted of slagging off all of these places where young people go, you should be happy it keeps us more or less in one place, instead of roaming the streets! For whoever is�glad that the 'meatheads' dont turn up in Southover Street, it is�terrible for drunks, youths and chavs with bottles of WKD! So really, you lot are just taking any chance to slag off the heart and soul of Brighton!

By Jasmine (11/12/2006)

I've written before, about St Luke's SeniorBoys School (how senior we were, having to leave school at 14, educated or not!). After working at Southdowns in Portslade for a couple of years, then at Crawley Aircraft, then as a Flight Engineer in the RAF, I returned to Brighton, living at home at 7 Firle Road, near the Racecourse. I went to work at what was then National House halfway down West Street, in 1946, and spent a lot of time after work in places like Sherry's where you could meet some nice young ladies and spend trhe evening dancing and drinking. West Street had a "bad" reputation then, but was in nothing like the state it is in now, according to your reporters.
I now live in New Jersey, but on a recent trip I was favourably impressed by the daytime activity up and down West Street, especially the pedestrian precincts.

By Robert E (Bob) Green (05/02/2007)

I just discovered this web site which has nudged some fond memories about the Court School of Dancing.
My friends and I started going there in the 1960s and then we went to a place called Alan Deans School of Dancing, which was the opposite side of the road to Courts. Can anyone remember Alan Deans? They played all the latest hit records and in intermission time they would teach ballroom dancing for 30 minutes, and that is where we really learnt to dance waltz and the quickstep etc.
This place soon became very popular, and we made many friends there, Roy McClennen, Ray Crisp, and especially Carol Milton. We had many good times there, Christmas time and New Years eve dances where fab. I think most of us graduated to the Regent ballroom which became the place to be with the big bands playing there, but also the pop groups too. Sad thing is now, lost touch�with all these friends over the years, and still can't find them on friends reunited!

By Stephen Browne (06/04/2007)

Ian may well be right. If West Street is the destination for meat-heads, then things have not changed in several decades when I was a student also. West Street was, as I recall, always a�very rough and rowdy place and avoided by many. It was the place that morons made for in order to provoke a fight. I am sad to hear that it appears to have retained its trouble spot image over time. In fact, I knew people who openly boasted of going down there for a fight on weekends and saw it as a sort of invisible medal that was pinned on their chest.

By Edward Castle-Herbert (11/05/2007)

I remember the Underground Club (now part of The Standard). Especially when it went back from being the Cavern, and Lowlife was the best night there at the end.

By Alex (05/09/2007)

No such thing as Topgirl. It's TopShop.

By Ella (02/07/2008)

I remember the Alan Dean School of Dancing. Joan and I got our bronze medals in ballroon dancing there in the late fifties. Great place. Some people are referring to the Court school of dancing next to the Astoria on London road. The name does ring a bell, but I remember our group playing for their graduation parties for a short while and I thought of it as the Arthur Murray School of dancing. Did it change names or are both names the same place?

By Anthony (24/08/2008)