“Ah dear Brighton piers, queers and racketeers”. So said Noel Coward. Lynne Truss went further, saying “With casual sex, bodies in trunks and two piers, it’s no wonder Brighton is home to the likes of Fat Boy Slim, Julie Burchill and Steve Coogan.” In Keith Waterhouse’s opinion “Brighton looks as though it is a town helping the police with their enquiries”. But what’s it really like in Brighton?
You can’t do better than ask a local. So that’s what we did, and this is what they wrote for us. If their expert take on the UK’s most right-on city inspires you, we have some exciting Brighton day tours to help you get an extra flavour of what this warm-hearted, cultured party town is really like.
A local’s view of Brighton
We’re proud of our city’s reputation. This is still Coward’s town of piers, queers and racketeers. Brighton has long been the seaside jewel in the LGBTQIA+ scene’s crown, stuffed full of excellent jewellery shops, along with more than its fair share of vintage outlets and antique emporia. A compelling, edgy, rebellious energy still underpins the party vibe. And it’s still as dodgy as fuck in the most delightful way, if you’ll pardon my French. Having lived here since my late teens, this place has never lost its glow.
If you’re happy, we’re happy
You can wear anything you like in our small, vibrant city and nobody will bat an eyelid. Whatever floats your boat is OK with us. We celebrate difference. We had the UK’s first Green Party council. We welcome travellers and refugees warmly. Be as eccentric as you like. As long as you’re kind and tolerant, you’re cool.
Off-piste shopping and socialising
Our streets are full of colour and there’s excellent independent shopping. Go off-piste into the small, narrow North Laine and Hanover streets for proper local pubs packed with personality and locals to match, or pick an excellent city centre gastro-pub with all the trimmings. After dark, choose from far more clubs than you’d expect for a city this size. Party on 24/7 if you like. You’ll be in good company, staggering happily along the Old Steine at five in the morning.
We do culture in Brighton, too
This might be a party town but there’s also loads for culture fans to enjoy. Take Brighton Pavilion. It is the purest eye candy, a tart’s boudoir on speed, an indulgent confection, a fantasy palace where there’s no design rhyme or reason, just fabulous excess after excess. The overall effect is spectacular inside and out. The Pavilion Gardens is a nice place to chill out afterwards, people-watching on sunny days.
Brighton museum, next to the Pavilion, is a good one. Not too large, not too small, just the right size, with the most beautiful old decorative tiling from floor to ceiling. There’s a really good fashion collection, lovely ceramics and some excellent ethic exhibits. There’ll be something entertaining on at the nearby Corn Exchange or Theatre Royal, and the annual Brighton Festival and fringe runs throughout May every year, transforming the city into a colourful circus of culture, art, performance, music and rampant inclusivity.
Explore and buy art at Open House events
We hold a popular Open House event over three weeks, twice a year, where locals hold art exhibitions and throw open their doors to the public. Sculpture, painting, jewellery, crochet, patchwork, it’s heaven when you need to buy a special gift or fancy treating yourself to something special. You soon get used to walking into strangers’ homes, the hospitality is heart-warming.
Winter warmers
Visit in winter for the Burning of the Clocks Festival, typically Brighton in its aim to provide an uplifting antidote to the excesses of a commercial Christmas season. Tens of thousands of revellers arrive to enjoy Same Sky’s annual event, where beautiful paper and willow lanterns are paraded through the city from New Road near the Pavilion to a beach bonfire near Kemptown, where they’re thrown into the flames. As a celebration of the new and past year, we locals see it as an opportunity for reflection and thought.
Take a brisk and briny walk along the Undercliff Path from the Marina to Rotttingdean, a lovely hot weather walk in summer but taken to another level when the skies are dramatically grey and the wind’s howling. Equally exhilarating on a crisp clear chilly day, there’s good pub grub and a couple of nice cafes in pretty Rottingdean, before the path carries on eastwards to Saltdean. Get a bus back to Brighton on the seafront if you don’t want to walk back – there’s one every five minutes or so.
Brighton’s beaches
Talking about beaches… we have a lovely beach that stretches alongside the town going east and west. The beaches at Hove are popular with locals who like their seaside fun quieter and less full-on. Party animals head for the crowded, noisy, music-filled beaches in between the piers. The pebbles make sunbathing a bit lumpy, made of sharp flints from the cliffs slowly washed smooth by the sea, but at least you won’t get sand in your knickers.
Hove Lawns, alongside the beach, is a good place for kids to play, safe and grassy. Going east, Kemptown is home to Brighton Naturist Beach, officially called The Cliff Bathing Beach. It’s discreetly hidden behind a great curved pile of flint pebbles, next to the Volks railway, the world’s oldest working electric railway, which runs from Brighton Marina to the eastern end of Madeira Drive.
The Palace Pier, in the city centre, was re-named Brighton Pier for a while. Locals hated the change. Now given its old name back, the pier offers fast food, gaming machines by the hundred, deckchairs, karaoke in the pub and a really good fish and chippie. The West Pier was once Grade 1 listed, a magnificent structure gently falling apart with neglect. Following a series of scandals and catastrophes, while it’s nothing but a skeleton it still makes a dramatic sight out to sea.
Get high in Brighton
It’s a beautiful piece of machinery, space age and smooth like a big metal doughnut. Some find the Brighton i360 terrifying. If you can stand dizzying heights the views are awesome in the true sense of the word. From 138 metres up you can see the city in fine detail and further off the rolling Downs, miles and miles along the coast in both directions as well as inland. There’s a sky bar inside the i360 and an open air roller skating rink at ground level overlooking the old West pier.
Proud of Brighton Pride
You can’t mention Brighton without talking about Brighton Pride, held around 7th August every year and one of the oldest and biggest Pride festivals in the UK. When we first went to Pride it was relatively local affair, a small parade up the London Road leading to a party that fitted easily into a corner of Preston Park. Now it’s a massive parade and a whopping ticketed party, with an international reputation as historic, inspired and unparalleled. There’s the famously outrageous Kemptown street party afterwards as well, a city-wide celebration of difference.
Hiking the city for intimate familiarity
Discover the city on an urban hike if you like. This place is perfect for walking and as every walker knows, travelling by foot is a really good way to get an intimate flavour of a new place. A seafront walk in Brighton and Hove is a real treat, with numerous gracious Regency era squares overlooking the sea along with the Art Deco masterpiece Embassy Court, designed like a sleek ocean liner. The famous Grand Hotel is as magnificent as you’d expect, close to the equally impressive red brick Metropole Hotel. If you appreciate Brutalist architecture the Brighton Centre will make your pulse race.
Exploring out of town
All this lies like a gaudy ribbon along one of the most interesting seafronts on the south coast, with Brighton Pavilion set at its heart like an extraordinary jewel. Shoreham-By-Sea, to the west, has some good antique shops and a locally-revered curry house. To the east there are ferries to France leaving from Newhaven.
Parallel to the sea you’ve got the South Downs, on top of which the South Downs Way marches with spectacular sea and weald views all the way east to Eastbourne, and west to its starting point at Winchester in Hampshire.
Travel seven miles out of town and there’s scenic Lewes to explore, a pretty market town absolutely stuffed with brilliant antique shops. The bus or train are the best ways to get to Lewes, and the services are frequent and efficient.
Discover our brilliant city
Whether you’re coming here on Brighton day tours or making an independent visit, we hope you enjoy finding out what makes our vibrant, cheerful city tick. We’ll give you a warm Brighton welcome whatever shape, size or flavour you happen to be!
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