11 minute read
THE GREAT BRISTOL HIGH STREET
In March this year, just before the world pressed ‘pause’, Colin Moody published his second book. Just like his début volume, Stokes Croft and Montpelier, it’s a celebration of ‘places that really matter’. It’s called The Great Bristol High Street, it’s set on the Gloucester Road, it’s just had its offi cial launch – and fi nally, we’re able to run this feature
Words and images by Colin Moody
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This street matters. It really matters. Especially now, in the time of Covid.
You will find a lot of portraits in it. Some of these shopkeepers and independent spirits have not survived as businesses. One of the last greasy spoon cafés that contributed three photos to the book is gone for good. But here in this book, I can keep them there, in portrait form, at that counter with the bell and the charity tin, forever.
This street is epic. Creating the book was a labour of love, and I cherished every minute as I zigzagged my way from Arches to common, from deli to destruction, from haircut to hummus.
I want to step you right in front of this street. Person by person, in that moment where customer and trader meet. This is where the beating heart is. Where the contract is renewed every time you choose to shop local. It’s primal.
1Welcome to Safiya’s place: Fabulous Vintage. She is Somali and has been here for 20 years, but her shop is quite new. She tells me this as she hangs out all her bright clothes and sets out the Converses in layers of colour, two by to along the rail. About her time working the market place in Stokes Croft, and how she always wanted a shop on this street. She’s not alone there. For every trader in the book there are many more who are considering opening, stepping up, stepping out, and being on the street as a trader.
I asked her to step outside and show me her shop. Click. That’s the front cover. She owned that shot. From fingertip to fingertip she opened her arms and invites you to come in. Into her shop.
Open the book. Start your journey here.
OK: that’s not entirely true. This is the second shot I took. On my first visit, Safiya was so happy and smiling. Martin Parr asked me to take him through the shots, and when he saw the original he was disappointed. “Smiles are for social media” he said. And he’s right. Many shots were revisited and retaken because of this. A smile-free face has no mask. If you get it right, it punches through as an image and delivers so much more.
I always look for images that provide more questions than answers, and this is a very pleasing one for me.
We’ve been working with Out Of Hand, the outdoor poster peeps, to try to offer support to these traders, and you can now see Safiya and others stood several feet tall on the billboards by Cheltenham Road. These portraits are asking you now to keep supporting them. They need you. And we need them.
2Let’s cross over the road now and have a haircut at Vincenzo’s and Sons. I went in there a few times, and as soon as I stepped in I could tell this place was loved, at a deep level. The traditional bar stools and the warm wooden panelling with memories of younger years. Men have been coming in here since their first haircuts, and now bring their own kids in for the same.
This is about generations. See how the kid is squidging as far from the scissors as possible in that comfy chair? But he is in safe hands. That’s Franko, Vincenzo’s son; he was running around the barber’s chairs and doing his homework here when he was a nipper. This is about family, and about community. And when it’s done right it feels like it’s all one.
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Over 50 years ago, Vincenzo came over from Sicily to London. He didn’t like the weather here in winter. He was going to take his scissors back home again when a friend said, try Bristol. It’s milder. It worked. He has been here ever since and I’ve never seen a crew so loved. Meet them all in the book.
Andiamo, un’altra storia adesso...
3Dan the fish man. This man loves the whole world of fish. I know this, because after a few visits he told me that if I wanted to know more about the catch I needed to come with him on one of his trips.
A few days later, we were waking up very early in our Airbnb, and driving into Looe harbour; not only to see the catch come in, but the whole packing process, and to hear from the guys who handled the catch. On the way home Dan gave me fish from a box in the boot, and when we cooked it at home, oh boy. That was the best fish I’ve ever had.
There is another shot in the book showing busy Saturday mornings in his shop, when the buzz is palpable as people crane their necks to see the fish. It’s one of my favourite shots ever, like a painting of life. The fish are laid out in rows, but when you see the shot you realise that we are like a school of fish hunters, sliding in to the front to get the best catch.
4Let’s head north to Horfield Prison. Hang on, I hear you say; you can’t put the prison in. They are not trading.
But they are.
And in such a Bristol way, too. It’s home to the schemes set up by Life Cycle UK, where prisoners learn a trade and work on bikes
that can be sold to our growing bike loving community in the just-off-the-side workshop.
Here is a shot of Alina, Michael and Patricia outside the prison where they work, holding another bike ready for final checks and sale. Click.
Such a strong-looking building, yet something as small as this light-framed bike is doing so much to allow the greater definition of community to work, to engage here. There are other businesses on the street that connect here at the prison, too.
5Next back down the road. Is all the zigzagging making you dizzy? Stop here, then. Look. This is Warren the Community Support officer on his first beat on the street, next to his Duplo doppelgänger outside Totally Toys. There are a fab load of moments from this amazing shop and its owner in the book.
6Snazzback are playing at the Galli. It’s underneath a sea of bright colours and geometric shapes from which the jazz appears to emanate, and for a moment it feels like the jazz is part of the space we are in, and at the same time the space we are in is part of the jazz. Pow! That’s the power of good jazz. Nice! So I took a photo that reflects that.
Myke the drummer was special. He told me what it was like playing a residency here, supported by the Galli, like the great jazz bands of old. And the jazz is good; real good.
Owner James Koch says the Galli runs as a whole community space for everyone. It’s one of the most welcoming nighttime spaces I’ve ever seen, heard or immersed myself in.
I’m using a flash-and-move technique here. Thanks again to Mr Parr for sharing his ideas with me, as I’m a big fan of this technique now. It adds to a sense of two worlds in one. There may be more.
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7Fred Brodnax and Martina here. Blacksmiths.
Let’s say that again.
Blacksmiths.
Making gates, tools, bloody anything you need. How many high streets have got a blacksmith these days? It’s just off a junction, but you can hear it when they are welding. See the sparks flying. And with Bishopston Hardware on the corner, the two businesses help each other out. Tools made and sold, or repaired, to-and-fro, caring of each other’s future. That’s unique for miles and miles.
Sounds of industry.
Clang clang clang!
What a bonus for the metal-needers whose driveway gate just rusted away, when no amount of internet searching is gonna find them a 125cm by 3m by 2.5cm gate times two, with hinges in just the right place. And that’s what I keep finding on this street. Businesses and people that fit the space, built around need, not just want. Making it work. Not only keeping the cogs of community turning but making new ones when they begin to loosen and fall off.
8Who do you think starts work first on the street? Pre-dawn. While the hipster sleeps. Bakers? Butchers? Paper boys and girls? Maybe. But some days it’s Phil the window cleaner.
On summer days I saw him up while foxes darted to and fro from bins to alleyway. There he was, cleaning the street windows; there’s a lot of them at the north end. Ladder, bucket, cap on, working hard.
He wants the pubs he used to love to be more part of the scene again. They have lost a few there. “Can’t all be coffee shops, can it? It’s not what we all want,” he says as wipes on and wipes off.
I’ve used this shot because I feel that people who value a traditional pub more highly than a flat white Insta opportunity need to be catered for more. I’ve left it so you can’t see him clearly through his workspace, as a lot of things are in flux around here. But I do know that when you get up, long after he started his day, you will see an extra sparkle on all those windows. Row after row after row, just like the terraced houses off the spine of the street, feeding the thoroughfare with life.
9Enso Alex Millest performs Shaolin Kung Fu. And we are nearly there on this miniromp through just 10 of the 100-plus images, interviews and essays in my new book. Before we close off the trip, look out on my social media channels listed at the end for events over the next few months, where I’ll be taking the book back to where it was created and learning more, engaging more. Be part of that. Because not everything lasts.
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10 Digger world. But you may remember it as Peacocks. Or before that, Woolworths.
Well, a few months after this photo was taken, not a brick or tile you see here was left. The whole building and its business, gone forever, I am told, to become flats.
And there are a few cautionary tales here. Can the Gloucester Road survive as it is? Will it adapt as it always has, to cut a new course and throw up some extraordinary, spirited indie businesses? Yes. I do hope so. And one or two flats where shops or swimming baths were can’t stop us from wanting, supporting and loving what the managing director of a wellknown supermarket chain in the late 1990s claimed was dead. The high street.
Glorious Gloucester Road. n
Colin is available as a ‘mini-mobile PR/marketing/ social media unit’, to shoot striking street-style photographs at live events: parties, launches, promos and performances, for impactful immediate social media. Fees start at £100 for a two-hour package. email: mrcolinmoody@gmail.com Twitter: @moodycolin; Instagram @moodycolin319
THE GREAT BRISTOL HIGH STREET Out now.
Covidresistant.
I don’t want to talk about Covid much here. It’s closed the doors of many a small business. Recent research shows that with city centre rents being so high, to work here is a 1%ers dream. But this road is just that bit out of the middle, where people actually live. Freed from their usual commute, all those furloughed workers have hopefully noticed and supported their local traders. The Galli turned its kitchens into a community kitchen and made meals for key workers. Still does. Because it was always a community space. And that’s what we need to do, too. Work together on this one.
Your high street needs you. Go see it as it was BC, Before Covid, in my new book. And look at those faces. Look at that determination.
And a call out to those involved in the nightlife of our city. Gigs, parties, happenings, from all walks of life. That’s an industry that’s still on pause. At great potential cost to the spirit of the city.
That is going to be the subject of my next book, so if that floats your boat, tell me where i need to go to be part of the story.
Because we don’t work alone. We work with you to make these projects a reality. It’s the Bristol way.
