still

Liverpool Life "Yet I still carry with me fond, golden memories of fond, golden times and places which made me think Liverpool was the greatest city I could ever see: of a café behind Bold Street that used to serve the largest teapots filled with the nicest tea I'd ever tasted; a bakery by Liverpool Central station that, if you were lucky, would have the most gorgeous slices of caramel flapjack for 49p; a second hand bookshop on Lark Lane where I once found a heap of rare ITV and BBC handbooks hailing from the 1970s and 80s in pristine condition; and the wonderful 051 Cinema which had the nicest seats in the whole world but where, if you went on the wrong night (Fridays or Saturdays), your enjoyment of the film could be somewhat tempered by the thumping breakbeats emanating from the nightclub downstairs." -- Alistair Myles.

The 051 was about the only place in Liverpool were anyone could see anything art house related. The auditoriums were tiny and so were the screens. Sound was produced from a single woofer under each of the screens. But this was place I saw Empire Records and Heroes Return; Lelouche's Les Miserables when some random girl from across the Mersey sat with me because we were the only ones there; Brassed Off with my parents and wierdly Dean Sullivan was in the audience (Brookside's Jimmy Corkhill). When it closed, apart from the odd showing at the Odeon, no arthouse graced the city centre for years before FACT stepped in. Now I have The Cornerhouse in Manchester on the way to the station. I feel spoilt.