Blackpool - has it always been like this or do I have rose-tinted specs?

[AbsolutelyZero]

When we were kids in the 80s we visited Blackpool several times for day trips and had one week long holiday there. We stayed in one of the Guesthouses, which was well kept, and I have really good memories of how amazing the town seemed (to a kid).

I also visited as an adult for a work-related event in 2002, stayed for a couple of days and from what I remember it all seemed the same - a bit faded but great fish and chips, nice people. Less impressive as an adult but that’s inevitable.

I visited again recently on a bit of a whim and I was speechless. There’s clearly been some money spent on the promenade and that looks good but go one street back and I’ve honestly never seen anything like it - every house looks like the apocalypse just happened, literally falling to bits, rubbish and mess everywhere. All the Guesthouses seem to have gone, taken over by what look like horrible, run down HMOs. The walk from the car park to the front was unnerving, to put it mildly. Saw a fairly blatant drug deal en route too. The worst deprivation I’ve seen in the UK.

I’m assuming it hasn’t always been like this and I’ve just been oblivious - the last two decades must have hit really hard.

Anyone had the same experience?

We went about 15 years ago after a lovely holiday in the Lake District. Confronted with a dirty nappy on getting out of the car and it went downhill from there. Soured the whole holiday for me, never again. OTOH we went to Whitley Bay for an evening a few years ago when stopping overnight and had the best curry I’d ever had!

Blackpool used to be one of the popular places for conferences (political/union/business etc). Went a couple of time but didn't see much other than the hotel and conference centre. We did take the girls to a holiday caravan park at Blackpool. They thoroughly enjoyed it, travelling on the trams going on the pier, playing on the beach. They had a busy tiring holiday but apart from the prom didn't really see much of Blackpool.

We've visited quite a few seaside towns. DH had a thing about visiting towns with piers and or proms so we've been to quite a few seaside towns. Again though it tends to be limited to the seafront.

We went in 2021. First time I had ever been, we should have stayed for 3 nights but on the first night we saw a group of women snorting lines off an OUTDOORS BEER GARDEN TABLE while their children perused the play area and a couple were having a Chinese on the floor of a bus stop. We went home the next day, it’s a dirty, miserable shithole and I don’t holiday in shitholes. I’m not a fan of ‘British Seaside’ towns anyway but Blackpool
took the award for worst one ever.

Brighton historically had the same problem. People would come when they had nowhere else to go because they had happy memories. Brighton still has the same social problems, but they are very much tempered by the overall prosperity of the city which gives advantages Blackpool just doesn't have.....

To be fair, all piers smell of wee underneath - even in naice areas - presumably because the structure of a pier is a natural place for large deposits of seaweed to gather; and seaweed smells of wee!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1810027-To-think-Blackpool-is-a-bit-shit?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Here's the 2013 review. I think at one point we were getting a Mumsnet trip to stay at a particularly amusingly reviewed guest house. Enjoy the classic banter

I visited c 2010 for the first time since I was a child. I was attending a work conference at the Pontins holiday park. That place was hideous. Looked like a camp from Beirut or somewhere. The chalets had filthy curtains flapping through even more filthy windows and the dining room sported plastic gingham tablecloths and Squeezy ketchup bottles on each table. The ‘entertainment’ hall (probably a nice ballroom / bingo hall in its time) had a filthy carpet with a stale fag smell despite the fact that you hadn’t been allowed to smoke indoors for several years at that point.
Luckily I wasn’t staying there. For that I had the pleasure of a Premier Inn which was pleasant enough, but the walk into town was not. Run down houses, drunk people, filthy litter everywhere.

So sad - I visited a few times as a child and loved the illuminations, trams, Pleasure Beach, amusements etc.

I agree with this. I lived in Torquay for years; pretty enough by the harbour etc. and the tourist-trap areas, but JFC it was dog rough.

I’m not going to lie, I did think can any of
this be saved, and consider whether it might just be worth levelling huge swathes of it and starting from scratch. Then I realised that wouldn’t address the underlying social and economic issues that led to it being in such a state in the first place.

It breaks my heart when I think how well kept the Guesthouses were and the pride their owners took in them.

I should add that I’m not some sensitive middle-class person with no life experience - I was brought up in a “rough” area of a working-class town. But Blackpool was next level.

The front isn't OK either. Gypsies flogging their poor horses up and down the prom. Hideous place, hideous people.

Well this thread is depressing seen as I live in blackpool! Yes the promenade and a few roads near are run down and deprived but there’s also a lot of nice places st Anne’s lytham Stanley park, it frustrates me because I walk the dog all year round and as soon as it’s school holidays or summer the beach is full of trash whereas other times of the year it’s lovely! I feel like a lot of people who are not from blackpool like to come and give blackpool a bad name! I’m not saying there aren’t parts that are “rough” but that’s just like any other areas like Liverpool Manchester etc all have there bad areas!

We went in 2018 and took DC and DP's parents as they loved the place.

I had never been before, although obviously you hear all about it growing up. Much like you OP I was shocked at how knackered the place looked, especially away from the seafront.

I live in Lytham too @Pyjamatimenow <waves>

Blackpool is awful. But there has been some good investment in the prom and the new civil service building and the new multiversity will be good when it comes. Abingdon Street Market is a great new addition

I drive down the prom to get to work and the levels of homelessness just seem to go up. I rarely go into Blackpool but shops seem to be closing and there is so much drink drugs and violence it’s horrible.

it needs a lot of investment to save it

We went for a week long holiday every year on the 80s! such happy memories ….. I’ve only visited the place once as an adult probably 2005 and I thought it was run down then

Im not a million miles away from Blackpool and an old colleague of mine lived slap bang in the glamour of it all, he couldn’t actually sell his house to get a move to Rhyl (genuinely that’s where he wanted to retire, Im not being sarcastic) and because his house just couldn’t sell he did a raffle for it. I think at the time his house was worth about 15k tops so he just wanted what he could get for it.

Now my children think Blackpool is the height of sophistication and the greatest of days out that holds a place of magic in their hearts, but I find the place quite unnerving. The undercurrent of social issues and poverty are just so extreme.

It’s a shit hole.

It’s pretty grim and has been for years.

I do appreciate there will be nicer parts too, and the bit towards the North Pier definitely looked and felt nicer and safer.

DH grew up going there every year in the 70s/80s.
MIL constantly used to go on about the fact we went abroad and we should just go there instead and how much better it was.
So we paid for her and FIL to go for the weekend about 15 years ago, she never ever mentioned it again. I’m guessing it was very bad.

My (then) boyfriend got accosted by a very insistent prostitute, just off the sea front. He and I were holding hands at the time! She behaved as if I did not exist, just kept on listing her services and trying to drag him with her.
This was September 1984.
We had been there before on day trips & did like the sea front for all its noise, rides etc… but this was a bit 😱

Blackpool's an utter shithole - and I live in Ramsgate so I'm hardly Hyacinth Bouquet.

It's shocking, really, that as an island nation we have such disregard for its coastal communities and have allowed them to disintegrate to the extent that places like Blackpool and - to a lesser but still significant extent - Margate/Ramsgate. They have such enormous potential and could be a huge driver of tourism, both national and international. It's incredibly shortsighted to allow them to decay and decline.

That was the tragedy really - so much potential, utterly wasted.

I used to go in the mid to late 70s with my friends, it was a bit grim then as well but we enjoyed ourselves in those bierkellers

Rose tinted glasses. I grew up on the outskirts of Blackpool and it was a shithole then. Too busy to do anything in summer, everything closed in winter. It was always filthy. Cheap nasty bedsits. And even back then a disproportionate number of sex shops.

I live in Blackpool and work in a department that looks at what needs improvement. As such! My job mainly surrounds families with young children.

Yes it's deprived, yes we hit top of the charts for all the bad stuff but there is so much going on to improve it for residents.

Landlord permits to bring housing to a good standard, hmos are not as prolific anymore, access to nhs dentists for all children under 6 years (soon increasing to 8 years), increased health visitor visits, speech and language support to help the NHS, regeneration is happening and new plans for more going in often.

It will always be a transient town, it will probably always have a drug problem but there is intense work going on to support the town and the next generation living here.