1st
For the first time in almost exactly a year, I made the trip to Leeds on the train. I have tended to make this trip every year around my birthday since I left University. The city promises me a life away from a humdrum job and the boorish citizens of my local town, an alternative universe where I finished University a young go-getter and hopped straight into a high-paying creative job. The city fosters an environment of inclusion and creativity that I like being a part of, if only by way of observing it. So, we look around the little shops, go for fast-food sushi and drink in the invariably changeable weather in the city I am rather fond of.
Was rather fond of?
Am?
See, today I was given the stark reminder that things change. Especially when you don’t keep an eye on them. Cities, being things, important things, are very susceptible to change. However, they never really change whilst you are in them. Going to University and being a small cog of the city in the years 2002-2005 I can say, hand on heart, that the city didn’t change one bit. It was the exact same place that I walked into as a fresh-faced art student as I hobbled out a jaded 24 year old prone to panic-attacks who wished he’d done entirely something else for the past three years. This is, of course, not true. It’s just that the changes happen so slowly, so imperceptibly, that you never, ever notice. Like the wrinkles in a face, where did they come from?
A year on and I hadn’t expected to find anything different. I was quite wrong.
An early observation set the tone for the visit. The Big Issue seller, who had managed to obtain the somewhat lucrative patch on the main street between the train station and the city centre, was no longer there. He had been there almost every day, without fail, during my 3 year tenure at the University. Unfortunately, the seller wasn’t a young man, and a life of living on the streets is not conducive to a long-life. In all possibility, the man could have died. A younger man now works the same street.
Travelling onwards, the once-Virgin-Megastore-turned-Zavvi is now a huge glass-fronted clothing store.
HMV is now an electrical retailer that runs a sideline in music and film.
The huge building to the left of Marks & Spencer (I can’t remember what it was before) has simply been removed from the plaza like a rotted tooth. Now it lets in a draught! Obviously due to the nature of the recent economy Borders has gone too, its sign defiantly offering books, music, video, cafe despite the vicious gutting the interior has received. I liked the atmosphere in Borders. It felt more like a library than a bookshop; people sat in the chairs engrossed in paperbacks, flicking through the extensive magazine selection, lying on the floor among piles of art books. Everybody simply reading. It was wonderful (I will admit, their DVD selection was hilariously overpriced. I did, though, find a copy of Mogwai’s My Father, My King long after I had abandoned my lengthy search for it). I really missed that feeling today. Waterstones just isn’t the same. Waterstones feels a little like a Museum where you aren’t allowed to touch anything.
Moving towards the periphery of the city, it seems the rot runs deeper.
In 1985, a consortium named Speciality Shops plc won the right to re-develop the crumbling, 130 year old Corn Exchange, thereby saving it from possible demolition whilst also creating one of the most vibrant areas in the city. It had remained like that for 10 years, open to everyone, holding art exhibitions, record and book fairs, generally fostering a community environment and encouraging casual visitors.
Today, the Corn Exchange has been horribly neutered. Upon approach we queried the conspicuous lack of the tens of people dressed head to toe in black, who could always be found milling about the entrance hall. Shame. The Leeds Goths were gone. Found somewhere else to mope, no doubt. The whole entrance, though, seemed much quieter than before. Entering the Corn Exchange itself we found it to be almost devoid of people, silent, save for the sporadic tinkling of cups from the lower-floor restaurant. The shop faces circling the perimeter of the building were all blank. Where once the building was full of idiosyncratic little shops, now stood empty rooms. Their painted facades wearing the uniform of a cleansing ‘renovation’. Never had I felt more the imposing, cavernous nature of the (still beautiful) building. It had once been welcoming, exciting place. An evolution of the market place it once was. Now simply an elaborate housing for the lower-level expensive food emporium, the building feels false, sterile, simply another place for wealthy gastronomers to patronise. In exchange for making the Corn Exchange what it was, the previous traders have been unceremoniously booted in favour of a higher-class of clientele. It is a disgusting contrast to observe.
My nostalgia for the city took a great battering today. I am at a loss to explain why I should make the trip again next year when so much of the city I loved has disappeared.
Things that are still great about Leeds:
Jumbo Records!
The gorgeous mix of people!
Live music!
Yo sushi!
The video library of Leeds Metropolitan University (countless lost episodes of Kilroy!)!
Conflicted? Yes, more than a little conflicted.
To next year, then?
