BLACKPOOL

Evening Star, Issue 20634, 6 November 1930, Page 1

BLACKPOOL

BRITAIN'S CONEY ISLAND Alost holiday articles appearing in the newspapers just now are about places where swagger people go to, the expeusiveness of the hotels, the jewels worn by screen queens, and the price of caviare, the naughty ladies of fashion in pretty bathing thingamy jigs, and wonderful luck in the casinos. I’ve never been to Le Touquet, but 1 wonder if as much fun can be got there as at Blackpool—where I happen to be at the moment (writes Sir John Fraser, in the London ‘ Sunday Times ’). Blackpool! Nobody goes to. Blackpool—at least, nobody who is anybody! Blackpool! Isn’t that a town somewhere in the north where the cotton operatives go in their clogs and shawls and say: ‘‘By. gum; it’s champion, isn’t it?” “ Well, it is a holiday haunt for some two million folk a year, with Sir Walter de Frece as its AI.P., and his wife, Ves.ta Tilley that was, its idol.” There is some society or other with the. function to get foreigners, particularly Americans, to come and see England. Americans are always rather home-sick. So if I had anything to do with that British boosting propaganda I’d rush all Americans to Blackpool and demand: “ Doesn’t this knock your Atlantic City and Coney Island into what you call a frazzle?” They would yell “Sure!” It is the most America-like seaside town in Europe. It isn’t a place for a rest cure. But as most of its visitors work fifty or fifty-one weeks a year, they do not want rest; they want distraction, noise, whirling amusement. bands, dancing, hip-pip-razzle-dazzling, and they want it cheap. They get it. “ Sir,” said a Blackpudlian to me: “You’ll get more pleasure here for a shilling than any place on earth.” Maybe he was right. It does take one’s breath away. Behind it are some six million folk in Lancashire, and —never mind that question of unemployment—a mass of them—at present 1 think I was told 400,000 —surge in hundreds of trains and scores of charabancs on Blackpool. It is a sight when half a dozen trains disgorge at the same time. . But where .do Southerners get the idea Lancashire people go about in clogs and shawls? Tut! There is no accentuation of fashion, no bored aristocrats, no talk suggesting Oxford, no monocles—just a few hundred thousand folk well dressed, friendly, matey, with no restraint about laughing loudly when happy, the young fellows in natty lounge suits, and the lassies . bareheaded, bare-armed, but jaunty in costume and silk hose and .newly-bought shoes. LIGKns:G crEATTON.” America-like Blackpool has set itself out to “ lick creation,” and has spent millions of money. Its seafront promenade is over five miles long, in . some places built up in four wide wide as an ordinary roadway, with miles of free seating, and there is one stretch of a mile and a-half or so that is covered in—the biggest chunk ot concrete work there is in tho world, I suppose; and in one place, where tho low cliff is earth it has been faced with rugged rock—all concrete, though you wouldn’t know it. A great sandy beach, too, with the customary crowds; but twice a day the Atlantic rushes up and cleans the whole area. There is a park which cost £250,000, and many bowling greens, for the riper lads of Lancashire are great on bowls—and, by the way, there are ten bowling greens reserved for wonien. There are five eighteeen-holq golf links within the borough and fifty public tennis courts —all busy. Charges trifling. „ , , ~ For threepence I had an enjoyable hour and a-half the other morning, i was one of nearly 5,000 spectators at “The Bath” when some 600 bathers, who, I believe, had to pay sixpence, were having a great time. Blackpool must have a publicity man worth his weight in gold to judge from the alluring, coloured photographic literature” that is sent forth. This bath is as gorgeous as a Roman amphitheatre, “the finest open-air enclosed swimming pool in the world, ’ with a terraced amphitheatre for such as I to watch the gaudy-costumed bathers in o-loeful revelry, for there is no objection to mixed bathing at any time or anywhere in Blackpool, and (I quote)' “ the depth of water varies from 18in in the paddling section to 15tt near the high-diving stages. The big pool holds over one and a-half million gallons of filtered sea-water, constantly changed and purified. The bath attracted nearly three-quarters of a million patrons last year, and on busy days as many as 5,000 people entered the water. Though it cost £BO,OOO to make, it is already a profit-making enterprise.” That is the Blackpool spirit everything on tho big scale, everything with a vim and a bang, every place cheap, and every place crowded. There are three piers,, orchestras, concert parties, and dancing continuously; two theatres, a dozen cinemas, and then those three conceins-.-the Tower, the Palace, and the winter Gardens—of which I’ve never seen the like ui earth. When tho weather is bad for it docs rain now and then in Blackpool—though the authorities m the trumpet-toned circulars refer only to the sunshine—there is room and tare for a quarter of a million of people. IN THE BALLROOMS. Talk about your picturesque ballroom scenes in London ! You ought to be here on a Saturday night when one of these enormous stretches of ballroom floor is occupied by nearly a couple of thousand dancers—with another couple of thousand mothers and others upstairs seeing how their Sally and our Jim are getting on—with a great band crashing waltzes and blues and not too much jazz, and, when the ]jedits are lowered, harlequin colours twirling upon the sedately undulating throng. Yes, sedately. The girls are in their nice frocks—and some of them in those new long trailing skirts, too—but no lads are in evening clothes, though the robust AI.C. is whilst he stands in tho centre and sees that the route is always left-wards. But theie is no frollicking, hardly any mirth. Radiant though the scene is, demureness is the characteristic of tho dancers. How do these folk get partners? .Well, friends introduce friends; but if you happen to be alone and you see a nice little thing from Preston evidently also alone and you inquire whether she would care for a dance it is unlikely she will take offence at not having been

“properly introduced.” At half-past 10 the band stops, and everybody i» expected to go home. I don’t want to catalogue the sights of .Blackpool—and I daresay I missed a good many—but anyway, there is the Pleasure Beach, described in the photographic folder as “the Coney Island of Europe.” Yes, “and some,” J as the Gonev Islanders would remark.. Terrific switchbacks, water chutes, all the blatant, blaring fun of the fair,; hectic side shows, sellers of Blackpool rock, and tellers of fortunes, and games of* skill; with one chance in thirty yoir may win a vanity bag and be in the Tur ning for a mangle or a fur coat—it all depends on your luck. “It’s as near gambling as nowt,” as they say up here, and there are mobs hazarding their pennies all day long-i Those cotton operatives are as keera on taking a chance as folk are to go> in Blue trains to the Riviera—and gets a good deal more hilarity. Mem. a There is no exhilarating beverage to bai obtained in or near the Pleasure Beach ? parents can “park” their children for twopence an hour; there is a special miniature fair ground for the youngstersj and there are enough screeching hilarious kiddies to make the heart of the Malthusian sad.