Coventry
I spent four years living in this miserable shithole. I could list everything that makes it purgatory's waiting room, but I think an anecdote will suffice for an introduction:

A friend of mine in "Cov" was a bigg-ish wheel in the stop-the-war movement (this was about 2002, and things were kicking off in Afghanistan) and organised, with a large number of like-minded people, a protest march through the centre of Coventry at 8pm on a Friday night, so as to cause as much disruption to complacent bourgeois capitalists living the high life whilst innocent islamic fundamentalists were being hurt, or something. Anyway, 200-odd lefties turned up, 8pm, city centre, and proceeded to march, spreading their message to...

...nobody.

As they should have known, Coventry town centre is a ghost town after 6pm. This city of 200,000 people has no nightlife whatsoever. Everyone, following a day spent in the call centres that constitute the only employment opportunities in town, slink home, watch the X Factor and try to think up reasons not to kill themselves. My friend and her lefty mates gave up after an hour and went home too.

Other reasons to hate Coventry include:

* No bands play there. The only decent concert venue, a club called the Coliseum, is located in Hillfields, a part of town that makes Kabul look des-res. Tour managers have boycotted the town ever since the Chili Peppers were shot at with an air rifle and A's tour bus had its tires slashed.

* It is (last time I checked) the second most violent town in the country after Nottingham. Hillfields and Stoke put places like Dalston to shame for their sheer psychotic violence and menace. I once read one of the regular accounts of the latest shooting in the Coventry Evening Telegraph (contents: violent crime and moaning about the shitty local football team), in which one Hillfields householder was quoted as saying "He rang my bell and asked me to call an ambulance because he'd been shot. I told him to get out of my house because he was bleeding on my carpet." Nice town.

* It's ugly, horrifyingly ugly. The Luftwaffe destroyed 95% of the old medieval town, and town planners replaced it with an undignified collection of concrete eyesores and, worst of all, the ring road, which is not only the second-ugliest structure in town (after the leisure centre next to the bus station)but also by far the most dangerous road I have ever driven on.

* The local accent, a particularly whiny, bored-sounding variation on Brummie that makes you want to poke the speaker in the eye with a screwdriver.

Coventry: Hey, at least it's not Walsall.
(Axeman Jim, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:22, 28 replies)

And to think I defended Coventry on page 1
Walsall may be crap, but compared to Coventry it's Buckingham-fucking-Palace, mate.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:25, closed)

No venues?
What? Okay, don't make me laugh.

Firstly that Chilli Peppers story is news to me and I was at that gig. The A story is bollocks and has been admitted as much. They just didn't want to play.

There's Taylor Johns House which is tiny but lovely. I saw Imelda May there in February. The Kasbah (formerly the Colosseum) has had acts such as The Cribs, The Young Knives, Calvin Harris, Gary Numan, Super Furry Animals. And we've got the Ricoh which is where people go to watch our team get a drubbing yeah but this year alone we've had The Specials play there as well as Oasis and Take That. We're getting good acts to Coventry again and I'm glad.

Yes I'm Coventry born and bred and so I am going to defend my hometown, but I can slag it off too. The accent is just generic midlands (mine's a bit of a mess due to Irish parents and having moved away to uni).

I wish I could argue about the crime but only just this week a bloke was punched in a bar in Earlsdon (a 'respectable' part of town where I live). Smashed his head off the bar and now the police are looking at a murder case.

It's not as pretty as it could be, but we know all that. It's well known that we got built up again in the worst eras for design (1950s and 1960s). We got bombed and they built us all up wrong.

I love my home town. I was waiting for it to get bashed to fuck this week and you haven't disappointed me. Thank you.
( Blue Star was working part time at the 5 and Dime, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:35, closed)

Venues
Coventry has had plenty of place to go to see live music :

The Sir Colin Campbell, Dog & Trumpet, Jailhouse/Greyhound and the not-quite-legendary-but-still-very-well-known-and-not-just-locally General Wolfe pubs have all had blinding gigs on in the recent past (though I can't say if any of them are doing live music right now, times change quickly in the licensed trade) and what about the Godiva festival?

There's always live music on somewhere if you actually look for it, and then support it by turning up rather than belly-aching on the net.

Coventry isn't exactly beautiful but then it is no worse than many other towns/cities in the country. In many ways it was a pioneering place - it was a shithouse way before the rest of Britain thanks to post-war planners, but now it's an also-ran.
It isn't even the home of mindless thuggery that it used to be either, other places have caught up there too. If anything Cov is way better than in the past, thanks to the Skydome sucking the life out of the "real" pubs and places like Fatty Arbuckle's closing (and being knocked down). You are more likely to die of boredom there now than from a good kicking.

Anyway, how can anyone criticise a city that used to have a 40' fibreglass Zulu outside the zoo? (I WANTED that Zulu in my front garden, and have tried to track it down but I've concluded it isn't lying folorn in a scrap yard any more, waiting to be resurrected. Shame.)

Still, you can always go a few miles out of Cov to Bedworth for a trip back in time. Make sure you wear your Argos bling as camoflage.
(Rsoles, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 16:47, closed)

Jailhouse is gone now.
It's been knocked for Severn Trent offices.

And how the heck could I forget the Godiva Festival. It's in the running for one of the festivals of the year.
( Blue Star was working part time at the 5 and Dime, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 16:59, closed)

I thought the reason bands didn't play anymore
was because of there being too much fightin' on de dancefloor.

Sorry.
( Noo_Noo Is now 'BeerElf Jnr', I guess :), Fri 30 Oct 2009, 13:06, closed)

I'm definitely going to have to object
to any mention of the Dog and Trumpet that makes it sound like a respectable venue. 2 of the 3 times I played there the cunts acting as bouncers assaulted at least one of the band members (and the music wasn't that bad...), but more than anything just being near the place makes me want to give up on life. Shit. Hole...
(James?, Sun 1 Nov 2009, 22:20, closed)

Venues
Dog and Trumpet: Have you ever left Coventry:? Been to any other town, on Earth? The D&T is an absolute hole, full of girls who have managed to accumulate an impressive range of STDs despite barely being old enough to grow pubic hair. Only tribute bands play there, possibly because of the GREAT BIG FUCK OFF PILLAR RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE.

General Wolfe: A pub with a stage. Absolute poohole. Any town in Britain has 3 or 4 places like this, but with far less chance of being stabbed.

Jailhouse: Potentially a good venue, but ruined by being run by the biggest gang of absolute shitbins I have ever had the misfortune to (attempt to) work with. No wonder it's gone under, the management there couldn't run a lukewarm bath.
(Axeman Jim, Mon 2 Nov 2009, 1:48, closed)

I didn't say
the venues themselves were great, but some of the best gigs I've ever been to/worked on/played have been in the shittiest venues. Certainly more than when I've been reamed for every last spare penny at the NEC or similar.

The Jailhouse should have been knocked down for one reason - Fake Court Black Box loaded with fuck-knows-what drivers. The world's shittiest excuse for PA (apart from Peavey, of course, and there were probably bits of that shite knocking about there too).

And FWIW, I'm not from Coventry, I'm from somewhere FAR FAR worse, somewhere that makes Cov look like paradise.......!
(Rsoles, Mon 2 Nov 2009, 13:09, closed)

I was (and still am) STD free in my D&T days
although I will freely admit it's a terrible place to go now I'm over the age of 18.

The Jailhouse reverted back to The Greyhound before Severn Trent acquired it for their new offices. Admittedly though when it was The Jailhouse, it had some decent bands. As you say, just a shame about the cunts who ran the place.
( Blue Star was working part time at the 5 and Dime, Wed 4 Nov 2009, 16:20, closed)

Maybe the reason everyone was expecting Coventry to get a bashing
is that it's really, really shit.
(Axeman Jim, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:49, closed)

I love it.
Others don't. Free country. Free to express your opinions and that, just don't lie about stuff.
( Blue Star was working part time at the 5 and Dime, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:52, closed)

All I've said
is what I was told by the locals, and the venues you mention didn't exist when I was there - we had the joys of Highfield Road, and, of course, Jumping Jacks.
(Axeman Jim, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 16:01, closed)

Fucking hell, man
if you frequented there, I see why you hate the place so much!

Edit: Also, I'm a local, the Chilli Peppers thing DIDN'T happen and A were just lying cunts.
( Blue Star was working part time at the 5 and Dime, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 16:02, closed)

Well
I'll take your word for that, but the fact was I still had to go to the NEC or the Civic and Wulfrun in Wolverhampton to see anything worth seeing.
(Axeman Jim, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 16:06, closed)

The A story was found to be bollocks.
They were just too fucking lazy to play and gave it as an excuse.

And thats the first I've heard of the RHCP story.
(Camembert, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 16:15, closed)

ahhh coventry
i lived there for 25 years

We have a leisure center that's supposed to represent the body of elephant
the only time i ever made it do this was when i walked out of the eclipse venue one night.

We have a ringroad that im informed is a nightmare to travel on but links up all the important place like argos , the railway station , halfords , the hospital and hillfields the central area to score drugs @

The town centre that was once a 70's concrete pukepile has now risen from the ashes as a spaceage junior architects wetdream. It actually makes the bullring look good.

The only nightclubs we did /do have they shut down for the most part
the eclipse was deemed too much fun , the pink parrot for those that can remember it was as its name suggests a pile of pink fluff. Fatty arbuckles on the stoney stanton road i cant even begin to describe for fear of climbing on a window ledge.

The football team - don't get me started i wont stop. I still haven't recovered from the elation of 1987 and the complete mental destruction which followed after the blues relegation.

But for all the bad things Coventry has the people seem to ride through it like it doesn't matter like proper troopers. I have to say although i have now abandoned my home town for Bristol I do sometimes find myself wanting to smoke a cigarette again whilst ambling down the burges watching the local transport buses kick up diesel smoke in my face and having the shine on my shoes scuffed by under-age mothers telling me to "fuck off out the way" as they try to escape the exit of sainsbury's.
(Cov Boy, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 16:58, closed)

If
you were the sort of person who frequented the Eclipse, you may recall the pub nearby called the Jubilee.
That was the first place I ever saw where large coloured gentlemen would stand outside with large bars of what looked like Cadbury's Dairy Milk, but which was of course, hashish (though I'm sure some poor twat got chocolate rather than hash somewhere along the line. It wasn't the sort of place where you could return it to Customer Service for a refund). In broad daylight. With shooters in their waistbands.

Quite an education for wide-eyed 17yr olds like us travelling into Cov to score.

Knocked down for accomodation for cunting students now. RIP
(Rsoles, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 19:42, closed)

rsoles
i do remember the jubilee.

I checked out the area where the eclipse building used to sit on my last visit but it seems the student accommodation has long gone too unless im missing something ? and I think from my quick drive by that the area is now nothing more than a car park ? I could be wrong but i have just took a squizz on google streetmaps and it seems to re-affirmed what i saw last time i passed their in the car... just tarmac :(

For all the bad things the people of Coventry have and do endure on a daily basis i have to say nothing seems to crush their spirits. I have also met the best kind of conversationalists whilst in and around Coventry whilst i lived there. There is something about being downtrodden that unites people maybe ?
(Cov Boy, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 11:20, closed)

Spon Street is a good night out
slightly odd that there is a kebab shop there though- Spon Street original buildings date back to the crusades when we were trying to kick the shit out of the Turks... I guess a kebab is the Kinghts Templar version of a holiday souvenir.

While I admit that the local crime news is quite lurid on occasion, I never saw any trouble except when a busload of Mancs descended onto the Shakespeare and started a scuff, which the bouncers duly dealt with. When I get tired of the Warwickshire countryside, I may well return to Cov to live. It's 5/8ths brill.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 29 Oct 2009, 19:45, closed)

Agreed.
Tumeric Gold on Spon Street is an oddly located but fantastic curry house.
( Evil Bastardo, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 10:49, closed)

+1 for Turmeric gold
It's a bit pricey though. Makes for a great occasional treat curry :D
( Noo_Noo Is now 'BeerElf Jnr', I guess :), Fri 30 Oct 2009, 13:23, closed)

Never been there but
I would recommend the Dhakar Dynasty curry house opposite Stoke Park school.
(Fluffster, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:26, closed)

Cov
I'm from Birmingham but thank the lord above for Coventry, makes everyone in Birmingham feel like a king. No matter how bad it all gets "at least we don't live in Coventry"
(amsterdam_neild, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 13:16, closed)

I really think that Coventry is on the up though.
Lots of new buildings popping up. Crime not as bad as the 70s and 80s. I think that Nuneaton and Rugby are worse than Cov.
(Fluffster, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:25, closed)

Rugby isn't crap
Bugger off! I live in Rugby, and we're nowhere near as bad as Cov! I don't think Cov is that bad, mind you, I am from Hull originally and I went to uni in Bradford, so that probably explains it! Can't comment about Nuneaton thought, but Hinckley *is* a dive.

Edit: Forgot to mention, moved to *near* Scunthorpe when I was younger. Also helps explain things!
(Raystorm, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 21:46, closed)

two words: Walsgrave Triangle
I have had the dubious honour of being a long-term resident of Walsgrave Hospital's Neurology Department - before it was knocked down

and being upstairs of a branch of Victoria Wines at a wine tasting, whilst the downstairs was burning following a flaming bin being thrown through the window. Ace!
( h3donist tryin' to play me out as if my name is Sega.., Sat 31 Oct 2009, 21:14, closed)

I agree with the rest of it
But the ring road is fucking great. Not only does it work really well in getting around town, but you get to watch the look of sheer terror on the faces of non-locals who try to use it and realise they have about 20ft of space between joining and leaving sliproads.
(moogal has eggs, Sun 1 Nov 2009, 23:32, closed)

There's a reason why
refusing to talk to someone is "sending them to Coventry."
(TheWonderfulWombat It came to me in a dream., Thu 5 Nov 2009, 2:08, closed)