The Boho Village Project

A number of years ago in the States a group of Libertarians dreamt up something called ‘The Free State Project’, and the purpose of this project was to increase their influence by concentrating their numbers in one state. They , like all 3rd parties in the US, have virtually no representatives at the national level, and very few at the state level, at least in terms of state senators, governors or even mayors of towns. They had basically come to the conclusion that this was never going to change no matter how much the general public grew to loath and fear the two major parties. So, they came up with a list of possible states, based mainly on how Libertarian minded these states were already, and also on their population size which needed to be fairly low in order for a influx of a few thousand or even thirty thousand (their desired goal I believe) to have an affect. They also considered such things as livability, quality of life, and recreational possibilities, but I’m guessing these were secondary concerns to the need to channel their influence into the biggest possible payoff. They ended up choosing New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die State. Did it work? Well, in the last election Obama took New Hampshire by a comfortable margin.

Despite what seems a failure on the part of the Libertarians, the idea is an appealing one to me. Not to create a libertarian state, but for any underrepresented minority to decide they want to stake out a little land for themselves and pull their collective power together and do more than the individual parts could spread out within the world at large. Maybe the idea of sequestering oneself within a group of like-minded individuals sounds like something only right-wing groups or religious zealots would ever attempt, but it’s really more or less what we all do. In cities we flock to those areas where we feel most at home, the ones where there is the densest concentration of folk most like us, or if we grow up in the country and don’t feel like we fit in, we migrate to the cities as soon as we reach adulthood. All I’d like to suggest is that maybe the bohemians and artists of Britain should do the reverse. Maybe it’s time some of us leave our little enclave within the city and gather our strength at a predetermined point out in the country. Find a small village that already has a sizable population of artists, writers, nonconformists, never-do-wells, etc., and seek to gain a clear majority. And it’s not so much that I don’t like being surrounded on all sides by people who don’t all appreciate my deviation from the norm, but it’s more that I don’t want to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of any type of human being. I’d rather live in the country, near mountains, along unspoilt swaths of sea, nestled within a bit of wilderness, surrounded by a rich panorama of rural life and ecodwellings. I want all the art galleries, indie cinemas, wholefood cafes, second hand bookshops, and music venues, but without all the chain pubs, semi-detached homes, Super Tescos, youth gangs and ring roads.

To some extent this has already happened. In Wales you have a dozen or so small market towns that have seen an influx of bohos, mainly ageing Gaia hippies, or else have tried to rebrand themselves as something other than just a pit stop for the English on their way to and from their caravan parks along the sea or in the mountains. Into the first category fall places like Llandovery, Llanandras, and Llanidloes which have become small havens for artists, craftsfolk, urban refugees, and those seeking an alternative lifestyle. Into the later category, there’s a whole slew of places who have tried to focus their efforts on one nitch market, places like Machynlleth, the so-called green capital of Wales and home to Center for Alternative Technology, which is personally one of my favorite Welsh villages. Then there’s Hay on Wye, a thriving center for used books, and Blaenafon, a UNESCO heritage site that’s getting in on the used book store action. There’s Llandeilo, an upscale rural retreat (more Bobo than Boho), Llanwrtyd Wells, the capital of Wacky Events, and Abergavenny, the self-styled gastrovillage of southeastern Wales. And there’s other places with no such focus, but which would probably make the short-list of villages to overtake, places like Llandudno, an old Victorian resort town that could really do with an influx of weirdoes, or Dolgellau, a handsome old town where the Quakers sought freedom from persecution in the 17th century, so it at least has some history of this sort of thing.

I like all these towns, but don’t know if I’d ultimately pick any of them as a place to settle permanently. I think I have to admit that there are some urban amenities I’ve come to expect as part of my daily life, things like Cinemas and authentic Italian restaurants, things which nearly all of these towns lack. Fortunately Wales has a good deal of mid-size towns that hold promise, almost all of which are home to one of the Welsh Universities. There’s towns like Swansea in the south, Aberystwyth along the western coast, and Bangor in the north. Aberystwrth is particularly appealing due to its isolation and history of anti-establishment attitudes and greenish political scene. On the down side it’s a bastion of anti-British Nationalism, and I’m all for local government and I understand that being subjugated to the English Crown sucks, but in general I find nationalism a big turn off. I could probably put up with it so long as they don’t have an ingrained dislike of Americans.

So, there’s my list of potential places to start the Boho Village Project. I don’t know if anyone could actually get such a project off the ground. It sounds too silly. It sounds even sillier than the Free State Project which seems to have gone tits up. And maybe things like this don’t work because there are so many other forces at play in our lives, such as the need to find employment, and in England, at least, most everyone gets sucked into the vortex of London or one of the other big southern cities in their attempt to find a proper career. Sure, bohemians are supposed to tolerate poverty and scarcity better than most, and they’re supposed to be able to live off the land and get along with out super markets and things like the national power grid, but I suppose the number of people who are really willing to give up all the luxuries that their urban-based service industry job provides is fewer than you’d imagine.

What me live off corp?

{For those who never had access to Mad comics (which may be the whole of this island) the title to this blog will probably make no sense, and even for those who did it still may make little sense, but I won't worry with that now.}

I recently saw a good documentary on the BBC about a British guy and his girlfriend who attempted to drive the length and breath of America without using a single corporate owned business, only mom and pop type stores, and I think the implication was that it's really hard to be an American and not support large corporations at every turn. I wont try to argue with that, although I will add that it ain't any easier over here, and for me it's actually been phenomenally harder to live 'offcorp', so hard in fact that I really haven't been trying much over the past three years to live by mom and pops alone. I'm living offwheels (no car) so I'm limited to where I can walk, and so the hour long round trip walk to the local cooperative grocery store got old quick, and you could fit about twenty of Liverpool's only cooperative, the Windmill, into the Weaver Street Coop back in Carrboro, North Carolina where I easily lived a corporation free life, well, except for the one I worked for, Whole Foods, which ain't all that big as far as Corps go (probably smaller than Waitross), and the chief operating officer, John Mackey, is a tree-hugging libertarian vegan which for a CEO is about as boho as it gets, and so between it and Weaver Street (which had a beatific bakery and cafe inside) I never had to set foot in anywhere like Walmart or Tescos where I've been buying most of my groceries since it's about the only real grocery store within easy walking distance of where I live.

What I also miss having in walking distance is a nice locally grown coffee house. In Carrboro I not only had the cafe in Weaver Street but there were at least three other homegrown coffee houses that were within striking distance, and the total number of independent cafes in the greater Carrboro/Chapel-Hill area must've outnumbered the number of Starbucks by at least ten to one, whereas here in Liverpool there are three or four types of corporate coffee houses (the most prolific of which is Costa Coffee which I don't even think exists in America) that seem to control the movement of the majority of coffee in this city. They, as well as the momandpop cafes, also close by five, but that's another story.

Back where I used to live I didn't have to really put any effort or thought into not shopping at chain stores, there were just so many good alternatives, but here I find myself shopping at chains ninty percent of the time. And part of it has to do with the fact that I live in midurbia, a narrow strip of land that runs between the urban core of the city and the surrounding belt of proper suburbs which in England consist almost entirely of semi-detached three and four bedders. If I lived in the city center then I would have easy access to a lot more in the way of noncorporate businesses, but even in the heart of this city there are some things that I just can't seem to find. For instance, I was amazed when I moved here to find that Blockbuster Video still ran a virtual monopoly on video rentals and appeared to have no real competition, corporate or otherwise. In North Carolina in the late ninites a whole slew of new video rental joints opened up and there were always the momandpop ones, some better than others. In Carrboro the home grown video store, Visart, was probably the best one I've ever come across, and it contained just about every movie that you'd ever pay to see and even the ones that noone probably ever would, and just the Spanish film section of the store would have dwarfed the entire foreign section in most Blockbusters. I know this is the age of LoveFilms.com and payperview, and I know that if I really wanted to I could get all my movies for free through file sharing sites, but I miss my Visart even if most of its selection is in VHS.

I could probably go on and on about how easy I had it in the liberal bastion of Carrboro, but what the documentary and this blog have inspired me to do is to try to see how long I can go using only momandpop stores no matter where I am stationed, and so far I have to admit I haven't been able to stay away from Tesco and their value products for more than a few days at most. I guess I'll either just have to live with being a hypocrite for a while longer, or rationalize it by telling myself that even by shopping at Tescos I can still support local family farmers and organic agriculture and other small ethical or ecocentric companies that sale their products through retail giants and Co-ops alike .

Lark Lane beneath the blue midurban sky.

Lark lane for my money is the cozier and more intimate of Liverpool’s two famous lanes. {Outsiders like myself will probably be surprised to find nothing much on the famed Penny Lane other than a wine bar some nice terrace houses and a Laundromat.} Lark Lane isn’t Greenwich Village by any objective standard, but there is a definite village feel to the place. Lark Lane has for the most part a subtle almost too hard to detect bohemian undercurrent. You’re about one hundred and twenty two times as likely to see someone with a shaved head enclosed in a shell suit as you are a full blooded Rastafarian, and mostly what you run up against are respectable suburban folk who come in for a night out somewhere that’s easier to get to or find parking than the city center. On a purely aesthetic level, I think it’d be hard to find a finer looking lane in the whole of the northwest. It’s the sort of lane that you wish some great frost giant would pluck from its current location and set down in the Pennines or Black Mountains far away from the savage skallies that are known to roam these areas.

The lane’s central point, it’s axis mundi, is somewhere around the Tudor Revival cum Scandinavian Mountain Lodge that now houses Maranto's, a fairly mundane sort of eating establishment run entirely by folks from the continent. Spreading out to the east and west is a smorgasbord of late Victorian buildings, old fire stations, schools and other civic buildings that now host a whole slew of restaurants and would-be boutiques that live harmoniously together. All the buildings and blocks of the lane are surprisingly different, all seemed to have been wrought individually and they represent just about every sort of architectural style of the last one hundred years or so and range from late Victorian pubs to late 60s council flats to brand spanking new kitsch. The lane also hosts at least one example of just about every major ethnic restaurant popular in England: Thai, Chinese, Jamaican, Mexican, Greek, Turkish, Spanish, and Italian. However with a few exceptions they are unexceptional and some I’d avoid at all costs, but I’ll come back to that later.
I’d start the day on the lane by visiting the good people at the Greendays Café. It’s one of a handful of vegetarian (or mostly vegetarian) restaurants in the whole of Liverpool, and it does a pretty good job of it. The menu ain’t exactly got a lot on it to choose from, but that's often a good thing and they do serve up what must be one of the best veggie breakfasts known to humanity. It’s the only place I know that serves up something that approximates hashbrown (an American delicacy), and the tomatoes, sausages and other bits are free from the light coating of charcoal that is ubiquitous on most inferior fry ups. I could go on and on about the veggie breakfast and how lush and wholesome a thing it is, but I’ll crack on to the service which is a fair bit friendlier than most, and the wait staff still have a good bit of that scouse equalitarianism that helps remind you that your not in Los Angeles or even Manchester.
On the first floor of this building is the Lark Lane Gallery which isn’t a gallery, but the local nick-nack shop where you can find the usual assortment of feminist greeting cards, pop icon t-shirts, incense, disguise kits, wonder woman coffee mugs and other essentials for modern life.
Of the ethnic restaurants, I’ve had good luck with only a handful and no luck or bad luck with the rest. I truly want to like the Que Pasa Cantina, but after initially being impressed with the Taco Salad and quesadilla they serve up, I have since had three visits that have left me inclined never to step foot in the place again except to get a pint of San Miguel which seems to be all the lunch crowd does anyway. The main problem seems to be their ability to get food from the kitchen to your table, and then there’s the guacamole which can sometimes taste like ground hickory nuts coated in mayo. I’ll admit that I’m in such desperate need for a burrito fix I’ll probably go back for a fifth visit, but I’ll make sure I have hours to kill and friends who don’t mind watching me eat while they helplessly look around for any sign that what they ordered will appear from out the kitchen.

If you’re hungry and you happen to pass a Greek restaurant on Lark Lane then I suggest you don’t slow down, but keep right on walking down to Keith’s Wine bar where they do a right proper Mediterranean platter. I’ve only been in the Greek restaurant once, but after ordering pita bread to go with my hummus I was brought an oversized baf which I was assured by the waitress was pita bread. I’ve never been to Greece, and maybe I’ve never really even eaten at an authentic Greek restaurant, but I’m not willing to believe that the people living in the Greek isles eat hamburger buns with their grilled haloumi all on the word of one scouse waitress.
If you’re seeking a pub with nice murals and dark interior and you’re willing to pay London prices for your beer then try Negresco. Attached to it is the newly renamed restaurant side of the business, Fargo, which I assume is supposed to be a north American style restaurant, but instead of doing some research on what the peoples of that continent eat on a regular basis they’ve decided to just to serve standard English faire with a few exotic food items thrown in haphazardly. It would help somewhat if the exotic additions were of North American origin, but most do not appear to hail from anywhere within the western hemisphere. The American breakfast consisted basically of a British fry up served on top of a pancake along with some sort of sliced Italian meat. If they called it world fusion food then I’d be more willing to believe it. I also didn’t have much luck with their sister restaurant down town, which boasts an equally dark and brooding interior along with a sacrificial alter.

Down the way a bit is the Moon and Pea which is fully stocked most days during the week, but if you can get a seat then it’s as good a place as any to have lunch or dinner. It’s run by an all female crew, and I can’t complain about anything I’ve had their except for the big mushy chips, but even there they offer an alternative for us crispy French fry loving folk, so all is well and good in this tiny little café. If you’re looking for a place with a bit louder music and larger front windows then head diagonally across the street to Keith’s Wine Bar which has the best priced food on Lark and probably all of south central Liverpool. The pub across the street does the typical two meals for 5 quid, but Keith’s has better variety and what comes out of the kitchen tastes surprisingly fresh and pleasing. The front rooms present you with a good vantage point to watch life on the lane, but the place can get overrun and turn into a cacophony of music, conversation, and waiters calling out your order, which makes it hard to hear the person across from you. If you wonder by when it’s less busy then take that rare opportunity to grab a curb side seat and load up on a veritable cornucopia of cheap nachos, ploughman’s, sandwiches, soup and bread, Mediterranean platters and vino del casa. If wine ain’t your thing, then the Albert Pub across the way has you covered. They got the usual suspects along with two or three varieties of real ale that often includes the local Cain’s ale, Liverpool in a pint that is.

Bold Street and the SOLO (South of Liverpool One) District

Liverpool has, for all the time that I have known it, been within the throes of gentrification (and descallification) after spending decades in the throes of slowing crumbling into ruin and disrepute, but within all this death and commercialization there are a few pockets of bohemiphilia. There is a splattering of places in the city center concentrated along Bold Street, a dash of it in the student enclaves of Smithdown in the shadow of the great Super Asda, and lastly there is Lark Lane, an outpost of quirk in the calm of midurbia. While the bar has not been set very high and the lack of full body track wear can make one appear quixotic in these parts, there is a certain basement level of bohemitude within the netherregions of this kosmos of tanning salons, offies, kebab shops, pound stores and two for one fish and chip specials. The city center now boosts every major commercial chain known to civilized man, and has recently had the largest shopping mall in all of Europa graciously bequeathed to it (some may say crammed down its throat) by the autocratic powers that be. This new development completely obliterated the alternative shopping paradise known as Quiggins. . Most of the Quigginites managed to jump ship and have recamped further to the south and nearer to the heart of what is one of Liverpool’s most independent shopping regions, Bold Street. Now it’s true the northern end is being slowly consumed by corporate coffee stores, but stroll a few blocks up from Café Costabucks, and you’ll leave most of that behind you. At its extreme southern tip you’ll find its heart of hearts, the left wing propaganda shop and book store, News From Nowhere where you can breath freely and enjoy a good bit of anarcho-socialist reading before making your way across the street to the local free trade/indigenous goods store, the Liverpool World Shop. One street over is the Foundation for the Art and Creative Technology, the FACT, a multi sensory mind trip of a theatre which runs blockbusters along side more artsyfartsy cinema and exhibits artistic work in the areas of film, video and anything else that incorporates sophisticated media equipment. You can also get loaded up on caffeine, pastries, booze or pop corn depending on what floor you’re on. One street east of Bold you’ll stumble across the building that has become home to the evicted Quiggins folks. Its pseudo gaudy décor owes itself to the Barcelona Spanish restaurant that used to occupy the ground floor of this space. Most of what Quiggins was is still here, and if you’re looking for goth wear, tarot cards or just an antique pipe to smoke then it’s all on display here. Beyond Bold Street and within the old warehouse region there is a growing number of bottom up businesses and galleries gaining ground on the edge of gentrification central. There you’ll find the Mello Mello coffee house and all around funky hanging out lounge type area with equally funky type beautiful folk serving fair-trade coffee and other tasty beverages. There’s a living market every Sunday and the first time I showed up there were an assortment of local artists, photographers, clothes designers and ice cream makers. Next door and all around are concrete floor and exposed rebar style art spaces that are worth a few moments of your life. The place isn’t overflowing with warm bodies, but after trudging through the mindless mass of consumers on the high street or the new shopping complex it’s not so bad to have a whole gallery to yourself.

Bohemian Liverpool

In attempting to write an account of all the bohemian enclaves within Britain I never intended to begin with Liverpool. I wanted to focus on small towns and villages such as Stroud, Totnes, Glastonbury, or the myriad of boho villages in western and central Wales. I knew that I wanted to eventually include those oasises of boho culture that were encased in large towns and cities, but Liverpool is not the most obvious large monotonous urban area to begin with, there’s no area in Liverpool that even approximates the Soho of London, the Mission of San Fran, or the French Quarter of New Orleans in their heyday or even now. There’s no warehouse district, no gayasfolk zone or late night coffee house other than the Starbucks that is submerged within the Borders at the Speke Retail Park, but such a café on the Boho scale of things is somewhere to the left of zero. Liverpool is, however, the British city that I am most intimately acquainted with, and so that’s where this blog will begin.

Bohemian Britain, Notes from an Outsider

The purpose of this blog is to catalogue and enumerate all the fragments and traces of Bohemian culture within the kingdoms of Britain. Before I go on, I should probably take up a little space explaining what I’m talking about when I talk about Bohemians or Bohemian culture because I’m using the terms very loosely and in ways that were never originally intended. Of couse, I realize that the term was never originally intended as a designation for anything other than the people living in the Czech lands of central Europe so I don’t feel too guilty hijacking them term for my own uses. By Bohemian, I don’t just mean artists, writers, musicians and other vagabonds who are living a life of voluntary (or involuntary) simplicity. I will be using it to refer to a whole range of subcultures and lifestyles that are outside of the mainstream although many of them wont be that far afield from the center ground. I will be seeking out places and areas that are artsy and hip, but I’ll be looking into most anything alternative, fringe, home grown, locally owned, new age, green, vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic, organic, fairly traded, ethically sourced, shade grown, free range, and otherwise independent of the corporate hedgemony that has us besieged on all sides.