Brighton is an amazing town. Brighton is fucking awful. I just haven't made up my mind. One one hand, it's full of vegetarian restaurants and trendy bars but on the other handy it's full of vegetarian restaurants and trendy bars. I'm a vegetarian and you'd think I'd be over the moon about going to Brighton with it's wealth of great eateries but the eateries are definitely getting more and more pretentious and impossible to eat in every time I go there. Food For Friends is excellent. Do you know what I had there? A sunday roast. A lovely, vegetarian sunday roast. Nothing wanky or annoying about it and pretty much what a lot of vegetarians crave and most places refuse to do. But Brighton seems to be in a battle with itself to see if it can out-wank the last pretentious brasserie or, God help us, authentic Gumbo cafe. Terre a Terre used to be a favourite of mine in the very early 90's because, quite simply, it was a vegetarian restaurant. I could walk in, look at the menu and have anything I wanted. Then it changed a bit. Started catering for Vegans. That's OK. I can still have pretty much anything on the menu. Then it changed again. Started making gluten-free meals which means putting together foods that don't mix just so they can fill up the plate. Things like Tandoori Spaghetti with an artichoke conduit. That was still OK. I'm sure there's still a few things on the menu for me. Then they changed again and started catering for people who are food-intolerant but like bright colours and stupid names. Dishes started appearing like Plasticine Porcinni Mushrooms on a Dream with a Rocket Salad Drawing and a Rocket. The staff there are equally piss. They say "Are you ready to order?" and when I thoughtlessly said "Yes" they immediately walked away, got on expedia.com, booked a back-packing holiday in Phuket and fucked off. Eventually someone resembling Velma from Scooby-Doo zombied past to give us their wheat-free wine list which ranged from revolting bottles of Chateau Nightmare made in Greece at £14.95 to beautiful Pinot Grigio's at £45. And fuck all in between. Terre a Terre used to be so good when it wasn't trying to embarrass the entire human race but just slightly impress a few chunky-jumpered Smiths fans. Still, the food was just OK-ish, nowhere near it's former glory, and when it was eaten we were off into the night to big up Brighton's CRAZEEEEEEEEEE bar n' club scene!
I dunno. Maybe the sunday after New Year's isn't the big night out it used to be but Brighton seemed dead to me.
We managed a few bog-standard pubs and one really great looking bar called Heist. It's a tall beautiful looking building thats been painted completely black, inside and out. It looks great. There were people in there too. Everyone from teenage indie kids to 40-somethings desperately clinging on to that one DJ-ing gig they did 6 years ago. I was closer to the latter. It was a trifle hard to have a conversation there but that was OK. It's not like I don't like loud music, I just don't like other people's loud music but the chances of DJ Eyez-Kold playing all of Marillion's Fugazi were pretty slim. Especially after he's just played Foxtrot by Genesis.
I've had many great times in Brighton over the years and this past weekend was fun, stupid and grating all at the same time. It was also freezing. Just walking around The Lanes was like swimming in broken glass sometimes. Not that this bothered Brighton's locals who like wandering around in their trendy clothes and turning blue. Don't their piercings freeze? We had some good food (at Food For Friends), nice booze, walked on the pier, got hypothermia, shopped and laughed. That's nice. We even met a bunch of gay men (who'd a thunk it in Brighton) who had the worst taste in the world. They recommended, to my American friends, that if they did ANYTHING in Brighton then they had to go to a very bland looking pizza place and also check out Pitcher & Piano. I'd have given them so much kudos if they were just winding up tourists but they weren't. They meant it. Hey, at least they haven't gone all prentious. Yet.
I'm in a quandry. Morrissey's new album has been leaked on the internet. Do I download it? Anyone else I couldn't give a shit about and I'd download them in a second but not Morrissey. It'll probably make him cry all over his latest Mexican "assistant". It's not like I won't buy it when it comes out. I will. No matter how shit it is I will buy it. Maybe I'll just download one song...
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