Despite two fires in the last thirty years, the West Pier maintains a ghostly presence on the waterfront of Brighton. It used to be a lavish playground for sea-siders, bright with ironwork and paint during the day, and strings of flashing marquee lights at night. A place for gambling, drinking, eating and dancing. Now it's a mouldering and rusty carcass, catching echoes of gaity drifting from the still-functioning Royal Pier - it's former rival - just up the beach.
When I first came to Brighton, Joel and Adriel said that they saw the two Peirs as a metaphor for the city - the Royal Pier was the city as it wished to be seen: beautiful and glittering and full of the promise of a good time, and the West Pier as the dark, gaunt, rotting reality.
Brighton city councel has set several reclamation projects in motion, but funding has always fallen through.
One day...when the peoples' hearts have changed...I hope there will be a new West Pier.
I think it's pretty cool.
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