Pimp your town meme

[burntcopper]

Er. As challenged by katemonkey. I'll, er, try....


:Deep breath:

Um. Okay. Well, Reading is for the most part, just a place where people live and work, but it is better than, say, Bracknell. (this is not difficult)

Sooo.... I shall start with what Reading is mostly known for. Fucking *amazing* music festivals. These take place once a year - Reading Festival (used to be the Blues festival, then the Rock festival, now mainly all stuff that isn't pop.) rounds off the end of the summer, a three day festival that is not mostly known for the atmosphere, the mud, or people trying to sneak in, like Glastonbury. Reading Festival mostly prides itself on being well-organised and having a damn good line up, with three stages - main stage, slightly more indie-focussed stage, and dance stage. Perusing yesteryear's beginning of the day bands tends to get you people like Coldplay. It's also the place with the fastest clean-up post festival you've ever seen. And unlike Glastonbury, it's got the advantage of being ten minutes walk from the centre of town. Womad is the world music festival, held on the same site, a month or so earlier. Lots of world music, catering to all tastes, and one of the most family-friendly ones out there. A tad more chilled than Reading.

After that, we have Reading's basic three streets. Friar street has a very high concentration of pubs on it and around it, of all types, from Revolution vodka bars to Yates' to the Hobgoblin, a CAMRA pub. Broad Street (part of the Oxford Road) has many many shops, and lots of trendy wine bars at one end. As does the Oracle Centre, a rather nice entertainment/shopping centre built around one of the rivers. Shopping centre of many shops inside, restaurants, pubs, ten-screen cinema and a couple of nightspots lining the river on both sides, with exhibitions and things to do on the riverside during the year.

We have the Abbey Ruins, which Henry VIII knocked down when he decided to get rid of as many priests as possible to get their cash. Rather pretty example of a saxon abbey (well, it's walls, primarily made of flint) which is linked to the park, which they're redoing. (said park has a large statue of a lion with its legs on backwards that commemorates the last time Britain went near Afghanistan). The Abbey Ruins not only have the lyrics of 'Sumer is a-cumen in', the oldest written down piece of music in English on the wall, but they also have a rather nice open-air Shakespeare production put on every summer. You'll find a lot of streets named after the Abbey, or something to do with monks and the like, since Reading used to be one of the major stops on the Pilgrim trail.

Moving on... Other historical things - the Reading Museum at one end of Friar Street (round the back of M&S) has a copy of the Bayeaux Tapestry and some otehr exhibtions, as well as impressive talks. At the side of the Museum is the 3Bs, a fairly good pub for music. Reading's good for pubs with live music - Bar Oz next to the station, the Purple Turtle and the Fez are drinking establishments with lots of music on Gunn street, to name the regulars, though they tend to be punk and metal focussed. Most of the others also do live music on occasion. Up London street, there's also a few World Trade places - one cafe and the Rising Sun arts centre.

For those of the non-drinking persuasion, Reading, is, sadly, mostly a theme-restaurant town. But you can get good meals at these - Santa Fe does mexican and a *lot* of fabulous cocktails, Old Orleans is slightly akin to the TGI Friday style but good for fun, a rather good Tapas bar and ASk and Pizza Express on the butts, and we've got Bel and the Dragon near the prison, as well as London Street Brasserie, for proper not-quite-one-star but damn close food. East along the Kennet river are amazing Thai restaurants and impressive fish pie places.

If you want to get your nose assaulted and find strange little shops, you go down Smelly Alley, a fish and veg market in the centre of town that runs between Broad and Friar. across the road from that in Friar street, there's also a little 'weird shops r us' mall in one building, that incorporates toy dealers, incense shops, a leather-worker who makes stuff on commission, a pipe and tobacco merchants, a punk/goth shop, vinyl dealers... good place to go for interesting things. Talking of markets, there's also a small generic one on the Butts, across from the church. (Butts meaning archery butts - I keep meaning to get a campaign up to reinstate archery practice along there on Saturday nights, to catch all the drunks stumbling along there to get money to go to Gunn street or catch a taxi after the pubs shut)

Nice walks are available along the river. Go east from the centre of town along the Kennet, and you encounter Oscar Wilde walk (yes, we have no shame whatsoever) and more pubs. Go west out of Reading along the Thames and it opens up to rather pretty rolling countryside.

There's two comic shops, and a Games Workshop, as well as a place that specialises in non-computer games. If a tall, gangly bloke wearing an Elvis t-shirt comes up to you outside M&S on Broad Street and starts talking, smile and talk back. This is Elvis. He is nice, wouldn't hurt a fly, and most of my generation who've grown up in Reading have known him since we were kids.


And eeee! daegaer has written more A Walk in the Karakorum! Manly, manly repressed young soldiers exploring the east! With class issues! And in earlier chapters, dinosaurs!

Comments

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

Not forgetting Sweeney's, the pie shop! They do absolutely gorgeous pies and they're right next door to a barber.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I forgot Sweeney's. My brother has set up an altar to that place.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I worked there for two years - I know what goes in those pies! But don't panic, it's all very good stuff:)

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

What are the charity shops like?

(You are actually making Reading sound worth visiting, though the times I've been through it the one-way system/ring-road-ness seemed particularly grim.)

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Charity shops - there's about four of them left in the centre of town, and they're.. well... charity shop-ish. The Oxfam is a book and trade products (tea, etc) specialist. There's a lot more down the Oxford road.

You kind of get used to the one-way system if you've grown up there. Bloody frustrating at times, admittedly.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

There's a place that does really *amazing* cocktails that I discovered recently - the Sahara bar, on the corner of Gun St. I had something called a 'custado' and nearly died from creamy alchoholic ecstacy. Also - espresso martini! They're wonderful.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

That the one that went through about five name changes in two years?

[aderyn.livejournal.com]

I was walking down to Reading station the other day and noticed that they've changed "Bar Oz" into "Colorz Bar." I don't know if they've refurbed too, but I'm a bit reluctant to go in and find out, in case they've got rid of all the wacky Aussie crap, and have just become another generic bar.

Also, Elvis! Squeee!