Apart from the odd dog-walker, Bath’s much-loved Walcot Street
Much loved? It’s a pit of iniquity.
True, it does have a proper hat shop – one specialist enough to know the difference between a trilby and a fedora – but other than that the area is ancient hippies and their offspring.
Bah, humbug!
Is Cadillacs nightclub still a thing down that way?
I always liked that the hippy thing existed down that way. You know a town (sorry, city) has something going for it when it can support a subculture or two.
OT: turns out one of the BLM founders appears to be a cheap grifter suddenly full of newfound wealth. What a surprise!
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse-khan-cullors-real-estate-buying-binge/amp/
Don’t know if Cadillacs is still there. The Bell was where I saw Tears for Fears once, Hat and Feather was the drugs emporium.
As to the hippy thing. The real cause was a plan for a tunnel under Bath. Stick the A4 (ie, London Road which becomes Bristol Road on other side of town) in a tunnel starting at junction of Walcot St to emerge at Norfolk Crescent. Was all ready to roll, compulsory purchase of properties to be demolished etc. Then it didn’t go ahead. Lots of hippies squat, over time – this is the council we’re talking about – gain squatters rights and the properties.
That’s the cause of the distinctiveness of the area.
Iniquity hangs out in dens, it’s depravity that lurks in pits.
Had no idea about that history Tim, cheers
Though if you approach Bath from Trowbridge, almost anything looks good. Or from Westbury, TBH.
One more little bit. That weird tower outside the Hilton at the bottom of Walcot St. I have this on firm authority from a bloke who was on the planning committee at the time. They thought that was actually a ventilation shaft going downwards into the car park, not a tower coming up.
Entertaining to see that people had their property ‘purchased’ at the point of a gun. The project didn’t go ahead.
So of course they didn’t get their property back. Someone just squatted on it and now it belongs to them.
Another proof of the obvious. If you break the law you’ll be rewarded. After all, you’ve proven that, unlike the sheeple, you’re willing to fight.
One of La Thatch’s early pieces of legislation was to sort out some of the, umm, peculiarities of the compulsory purchase system of the time.
To the immense approval of my grandfather, for no particularly apparent reason.
Our local council screwed my father with a compulsory purchase. For the only time in his life he intruded into politics. He formed a temporary cartel that screwed the council right back.
I say “the only time” – that’s true if you don’t count killing Germans which I suppose was politics.
Short history of the Bath Tunnel.