Before you read this I should point out that this is very much the batting around of forming thoughts.I took a few pictures of Margate on Thursday, click on the link for them http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/710/id4.htm I didn’t get as much time to take pictures and walk about as I would have liked, so this is a case of making a judgment on a short visit, but I do sense some improvement.
I am happy to accept corrections here from people who visit the centre of Margate often, but there did seem less empty shops, cleaner streets, and a much stronger police presence and generally more of a feeling of hope.
I have been looking at some of the pictures of Margate I have taken over the past three years, some of the links are below, and I still get the feeling that there is an improvement. It is obvious that I need to go over there and do a more thorough job, if only for historical record. Much more like the systematic ones I took of Northdown Road last year see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/NorthdownRoad/index.htm
This link takes you to some pictures I took of Margate in 2007
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts2/id53.htm
These links to pictures of Margate taken inAugust 2009
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts4/id3.htm
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts4/id4.htm
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts4/id5.htm
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts4/id6.htm
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts4/id7.htm
these in November 2009
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop/id26.htm
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop/id27.htm
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop/id28.htm
http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop/id29.htm
Wow what an amazing record! You are prolific!
ReplyDeleteI went to look round the old town on Tuesday morning but a lot of the shops don't open until Wednesday or Thursday. I wasn't the only person there as well. I bought some cupcakes and came home disappointed.
ReplyDeleteFiona all the time my problem is that I didn’t start sooner or do this more methodically, something made only too clear when trying to chart the progress or lack of it for this post.
ReplyDeleteA problem is if I do it very early in the morning then everything is closed and you don’t get a representative picture and if I do it when the towns are functioning then there are too many people in the way.
Tree Hugger, I think the problem here is that many of these businesses just don’t have enough stock to justify the staffing costs.
I tend to base my assumptions around how my bookshop works, by this I mean that I make a modest living with over 100 bookcases of good quality books, bought very selectively.
So when I see a shop where the whole stock doesn’t look as though the profit on it would pay a shop’s expenses if it all sold in a reasonable period of time then I am very sceptical about the viability of that shop.
Possibly part time opening and some grant funding could take some of these somewhere, but nowhere sustainable.
Thanks michael,a shame you did'nt go a little further along the harbour arm,to show the lovely bebeached cafe and the fab lighthouse bar
ReplyDeleteExcuse my english please, i live in Rome-Italy, i'm 66 years old, and my first time in Margate was on 1964, when i was a student coming to U.K to learn your language. I did like very much Margate and Cliftonville at that time, i had really a very good time, studying and working at Butlin's cafe. whay a splendid summer they were!Going to shows at Winter Garden, spending time at Lido,going to a coffeeshop "The Parrakeet" was the name at a corner in Northdown road.There were the times of Mods and Rockers, Dreamland was a fantastic place to spend your evening,there were clubs everywere,restaurants,coffee-shops,fish and chips, one after another.You didn't need to have much money to enjoy yourself and life was smiling to you everyday.Hotels in Margate and Cliftonville were always full during summertime,roads full of people and beautiful girls,since early in the morning you could see many people walking along the sea front for the early morning walk.Sometimes were very difficult to find even a deck chair in the beach cause was to much people sunbathing or listening to some band playing music.THose were the times.I was a young man falling in love everyday cause the towns of Margate and Cliftonville were full of beatiful girls, too many!I kept coming to Margate for three years, every summer cause i was studying in Italy, and i just couldn't wait to finish my year of school to take the train and come to Margate again,many years had passed but i've never forgot my summers in Margate.But now reading about the closing of shops and all the others difficulties, my hearth has squeezed into a very hard sadness.Part of me,of my life is disappearing.Please don't let that this happens.One of this days i will come to Margate again to show to my son were i was at his age, but i'm a little afraid to show him a ghost city.Let Margate live!
ReplyDelete14.33 I have done Bebeached twice recently see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/search?q=bebeached and will do again when I get time.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of cafés in Margate, what I am on the lookout for is one that provides a reasonable WiFi connection and a decent cup of coffee early in the morning, is ay this as when the schools break up I get time to get out and take photographs before the shop opens.
Something I can achieve in Ramsgate from 7 am see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/06/sunday-ramble.html as you see I can get full English breakfast and excellent coffee for about £5 in the Belgian Café, with a free internet connection so I can publish up the pictures and blog post while I am eating it.
15.45 I am afraid that Margate of the 1960s has gone for good, I worked in Margate in the early 1970s and the downhill slide was already well underway then, mostly due to the cheap package holiday abroad where the weather is guaranteed.
It think that when I visited the town about a year ago it was the worst I have ever seen it, there are signs, I think of some sort of recovery but unfortunately there is a very long way to go.
I was in Northdown Road this morning at about 9am. In the space of 100 metres I saw 3 old blokes completely hammered shouting insults outside the church and another bloke throwing his guts up inside the telephone box.
ReplyDeleteNice.
What we have done Mr Friday, by a mixture of badly thought out legislation relating to social housing and poor administration in housing associations and local authorities, is to relocate the worse of the problem people in our society in our trading and commercial centres.
ReplyDeleteDuring the last few years this has happened in the part of Ramsgate that I am trying to trade in, the effects are detrimental to our economy, retail tourism and destructive to our social environment.
I don’t know the solution to this problem but until it is solved I don’t think it matters how much money is thrown at “regeneration” I don’t think the problems with our towns can be solved.
Walk through a town or a part of a town where you hear a large amount of people punctuating their sentences with obscenities and the only inference that can be drawn is that this large amount of people have social and psychological problems, something has to be done, but I don’t know how.