Originally Posted by xsnaggle
3 cinemas in Queen street - - depending on how old you are
odeon, gaumont capitol
Park Hall cinema around the corner. First one to have 3D, with the glasses.
I think the film was How the West Was Won
| + Visit Cardiff FC for Latest News, Transfer Gossip, Fixtures and Match Results |
3 cinemas in Queen street - - depending on how old you are
odeon, gaumont capitol
Park Hall cinema around the corner. First one to have 3D, with the glasses.
I think the film was How the West Was Won
The Louis - it was really very good. Remember being taken with my mother to the restaurant downstairs in Morgans/Howells. It had imitation portholes all around with painted fish. I was fascinated.
Spillers was slightly cheaper I found, cheap and cheerful.
Buffalo went all modern with their earphones so you could listen before you bought. I suppose they had to get their money back somehow.
Have a listen in Buffalo, buy in Spillers.
Judging by my album collection I bought mostly in Buffalo as quite a lot of them still have the price stickers. Most are £4.99 from the early 80s which shows that music was a lot more expensive relatively in those days.
I recall when LP's were 12 shillings and 6 pence (62 1/2 p in todays money) Singles were 6 shillings and 8p (about 33p!). This was back in the 60's
The Capitol for films but also the visits of all the top world acts to the venue. The Lexington, American style restaurant near the Cap, great burgers, the paper seller on the steps of the Capitol, buses pulled up right outside, cracking business for him. Rows of chocolate & amber football buses lined up on Wood St prior to every home game. Kwiksnaks, the skinheads hang out opposite Boots on Wood St, The Kensington (also known as The Happening) on St Mary St, where Kiwis is now, a West Indian hang out with reggae and Tamla blasting out. The chains on the bollards running along the castle lawn, just couldn’t resist swinging every one as a kid when walking past. Guildford Crescent, three swimming pools, Mixed, Boys & Girls. Dumfries Place, every old large terraced house seemed to be a solicitors office the whole length of the bus stops. The Centreplan 70 building near Wyndham Arcade on St Mary St with mock ups and plans of how great Cardiff was going to look by 1970!!!! The Prince Albert pub on Working St with a tree growing right through the middle of it. The huge map by Kingsway toilets, knobs on the side to roll it up and pinpoint various parts of the city. Blackfriars ruins on Greyfriars Rd, I think it was Blackfriars, the remnants of an ancient house. So much more I s’pose.
Kids beer
my first time encountering a newspaper seller on queen Street or the Hayes, shouting "Western Mail and Echo" but it sounding more like "met mun barneghew" and absolutely pissing myself laughing about it with my brothers
Trolley buses running down Queen Street
Gwynn’s in the Market
Sasparilla Bar
Spiller’s Record Shop
Qui Qui's on a Saturday night until it closed at 1am then Monty's next door until 2 unless you were having a meal (I never did) and they let you stay on.
I remember trips to Cardiff with my grandmother when I was a little boy. Just the bus or train journey alone from Mountain Ash was as exciting as getting on a plane to the USA would be to a kid today! It was a rare treat though but the things that really stand out were:
The market, the smell of coffee coming from the Kardomah cafe (we never drank "proper" coffee at home, only tea or Camp "coffee"), David Morgan's, the trolley buses (especially when the driver had to replace the pole when it sometimes came off the wire at a road junction), the toilets in the Hayes (I had never seen public toilets that were below ground!). There are probably lots of other things that will come to me later today!
Grassroots cafe - Charles St.
Cockles from the market and deli food from Wally’s are the most evocative for me as a youngster in the 90s/00s. Spent a lot of time in Cafe Europa as a teenager. Old Spillers and Kelly’s, along with all the chain record shops. Gamlins and Cranes. The Plan, Crumbs and Fresh. The ice rink. Jacob’s market.
Appreciate some of these things are still there but as an exile my visits are pretty infrequent now.
I have a memory of this fella playing what sounded like funeral dirges to me on a keyboard of some kind and mic’d up vox outside of the Capitol. I was fascinated and frightened of him as a nipper.
Same place. Barfly was named this after rose and crown.
Yes it was - but beaties wasn't in castle arcade
Top Rank
Welsh Rarebits!
what was the name of that punk fashion shop in the late 70's early 80's the bottom end of st mary street ?
paradise ocean or something like that .
Paradise Garage.
cheers latcher yes its come back to me now . was a bit scary walking in there as a whippasnapper
some nice photos from the WOL featuring alternative music nights in Cardiff just after the punk scene . was a regular in Neros for alternative music nights .great times
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifest...clubs-13502795
as for the footie remembering getting off the bus as a kid in town when Sunderland came down think it was there promotion season 1979 and they were thousands upon thousands of them and walked to ninian park and I didn't say a word ! in them days everyone wore a scarf and tudor road was a sea of red and white . wasn't too many cardiff fans about !
As a kid? You must have had very liberal parents!
Getting the bus into town and walking to NP.
A day out for 10d.
Swimming at GC and EP.
Cinemas various
Looking through the windows at Budd Morgans and realising your pocket money wouldn't stretch to just about anything.
Queen Street with traffic and so many people on the pavement they spilled out onto the road.
Waiting for a bus out of town and waiting and waiting.
Bales fishing tackle shop. Most of the maggots made it home. Some were left "elsewhere" on the 25 bus.
Shopping on Christmas Eve when just about everyone was pissed. Or at least seemed to be.
Watching new buildings being built through gaps in the hoardings.
Hurrying passed the Prince of Wales cinema at chucking out time. "Best avoid those kind of men", wondering what an X film was.
Has anyone mentioned 'Sound Advice', the record shop that was staffed with groovy little hippy chicks wearing cheesecloth and smelling of patchouli oil?
I see that someone asked where the stuffed bear was and that was in the tobacconists on the ground floor of the building that housed (and still houses the Prince of Wales). The bear has been moved to one of the shops in the arcades.
Talking of the Prince of Wales, it was a family cinema when I was a kid and the last film I remember seeing there of that ilk was Disney's 'Song of the South', which now seems to have been banned to to racial stereotyping of the Deep South - hence the absence of 'Zippety Doo Dah' in recent years.
The cinema has two changes of character thereafter and I'm not sure in what order. It screened Indian films (and my brother and I sneaked in and watched one of them) and a soft-porn house (and on one occasion extolling in their huge billboard Chesty Morgan's 72 inch boulders. Now it's a cheap slop-shop of the Wetherspoon's variety, of course.
As faras other memories go, I remember the smell of juicy fruit on the terraces of the Grange End, the Kardomah Café (or have I imagined that?) and the Wimpy Bar being the height of sophistication for us oiks.
Oh it was real alright. I can still smell the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans wafting up onto the pavement opposite the castle. As a little boy that was wildly exotic to me, having grown up with tea and post-war Camp "coffee" (yuk). Does anyone remember that stuff now I wonder?
Someone has mentioned the brewery smell. I'd forgotten that - the smell of hops was overpowering when the train came into the station. Wasn't there the name Hancocks in huge letters down the side of the chimney?
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote