Great Britain > Sussex > Brighton
By Jessica Lloyd

With interesting things like a palace and a collapsing pier, Brighton is a lively and captivating city. In between drag shows and shopping, there is always time for some interesting sight seeing. The Regency Pavilion, collapsing pier, other pier, gay scene, drug scene and drag scene, are what Brighton is famous for. It is known to be an interesting and pleasurable place to visit, and live. It claims itself to be “most enchanting, exciting, extraordinary seaside city in Britain”. This is a pretty bold statement, but is actually true.

With 250,000 people living here, Brighton is big enough to be cool but small enough to have a real flavour about the place. It is known as the gay capital of Britain.

What’s to do in Brighton?
The Royal Pavilion is a lavish and romantic palace built by a prince in 1762, and is worth a look. The collapsing pier is called West Pier, and is a Victorian thing falling elegantly into the sea, for the third time. The Laines has great shopping with galleries, cafes, pubs, restaurants and bars. Because Brighton is known for its gayness, there is the ‘gay area’ which is Kemptown (a.k.a. Camptown). It is almost like another city inside a city. Gay Pride is on in February, and again in late July/early August. The Brighton Carnival is the last weekend of May, and is not quite Rio, but it does try.

The Brighton seafront is famous for being the location of Quadrophenia, the home of the Mod Squad. Brighton is a surfie area, and the seafarers come out yearly to do the Surfers Against Sewage annual paddle, at the West Pier. This is always good for a laugh, and gives everyone something to look at and point. The seaside here is one of the main attractions, and as with most seaside cities, water sports rule.

Jogging along the sea front is almost like a religion in summertime, there are hoards of people dodging each other in lycra and sneakers, with walkmans having been replaced by iPods and MP3 players hanging on belts and around necks.

The Palace Pier is a large and modern pier, with an amusement arcade, and plenty of lovely fresh donuts. This area is very popular with language students. The Brighton markets, on every weekend in summer, are a good trawling place to find anything from new sunnies to second hand books.

In summer, there is the beach cinema where the pebbles become seats. The film industry began here, and a trip to see the worlds earliest cinematographic equipment is interesting. You can also learn about the lives of the first film pioneers at the Hove museum. Hove is the posh part of town.

Street sports are very common, like skating, rollerblading, volleyball, basketball and soccer. There are lots of summer competitions, and you can take part or just sit back and watch. There are also trips you can take on a houseboat along the estuary, or you can walk the South Downs for a look.

Going out
Going out is always a blast in Brighton, due to the diversity of cultures and people all crammed into one space. There is even a bar that shows films during happy hour (Alicats). You can see live local music, or go to a jazz room. There are also plenty of gay bars, but mostly everyone goes everywhere and anything goes. There are all sorts of behaviours going on, and you won’t escape without hanging amidst drag queens, transvestites and Goths, so if you can’t tolerate this, Brighton on a weekend night is not for you!

With 400 cafes and restaurants, there is always something to choose from. There are 30 night clubs in Brighton, and at any given time half of these will be hosting hens nights. There is also reported to be 500 bands based here, which is a lot of live music to get through in a year of weekends.

Getting around
Buses, taxis or walking are about your only options, unless you are a skate boarder or roller blader. It is hard to get around in a car, and can be fairly slow and annoying. Taxis are reasonably priced.

Interesting (or not) Brighton facts
It would take someone 2,500 years counting at one stone per second to count up all the stones on the beach.
There are 13,000 bulbs on Palace Pier (now Brighton Pier), but when it opened in 1899, there were just 3,000.
8 million people visit Brighton every year.
Brighton has the eighth highest suicide rate in Britain.
During the war, Hitler ordered the Royal Pavilion not to be bombed, because he wanted to use it as his personal headquarters.
2.6% of the Brighton population gave their religion as Jedi in the 2001 census.
There are 69 public toilets in Brighton and all of them are different. There is even a map to help you find them all.

Overall
Brighton is definitely on the cool list. There is plenty to do, and the atmosphere is open and relaxed, with a lot of diversity in the people and culture. It’s not a ‘must see’, but if you are passing through or on holiday, there is certainly enough to keep you happily occupied for a while.

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