Purple Glove, Townhill

Oceana Complex

This has got to be one of Swansea's most iconic buildings. People have fond memories of it in each of its various guises - The Top Rank, Odeon, or Ritzy's with Tesco stretching out along the bottom floor or Oceana, occupying the entire building. I remember it endearingly for being Odeon and Tesco, though also Ritzy's throughout my early student years. It feels sad that it is about to be demolished! Work on the rear and the interior of the building has already started and it won't be too long now before the building disappears from Swansea forever. Here it is though, as it stands on Saturday 27 February 2016:

The place is barricaded up ready for demolition but I managed to find a few spots on its facade where I could sneak a couple of interior shots of the building.

I remember queuing up all these stairs to see Close Encounters of the third kind and numerous other blockbuster films, as a child in the 1970s. My memories of using them when the place was Ritzy' s however are a bit blurred lol.

Seems strange seeing the old Kingsway Tesco I frequented in this state:

Waiting for oblivion - old advertising signs for the Icehouse Bar in the Oceana complex:

Villa Tahiti, located at the far left extremity of the building awaiting demolition:

As they seem to be taking this building down from the back to the front, when they finally get to work on the front of Oceana I imagine the thing will come down very fast indeed. I will try and keep my eye on the building over the next few weeks and hopefully will get the chance of further pictures before it is lost to us forever.

Man on the Run

Just a short minute's walk from the lane where I photographed yesterday's graffiti pics, I stumbled upon seeing this piece. Simple, yes. But it made me smile.

Graffiti, Off Burman Street

View from Townhill

The view over Swansea Bay from Pant-Y-Celyn Road

Shopper's Walk

l love Swansea's arcades and wish there were a lot more of them in the city. I can't really see that happening any time soon though as lots of these small units currently stand empty - like way too many of the shops in Swansea as a whole. Unfortunately, the city shopping centre has been in this state for the last couple of years. And when talking about shopping in Swansea, I hear more and more people saying they no longer bother coming here.

I have to admit that I rarely shop here myself these days. I find that, of the shops that do remain open in the city centre, too many of them are familiar national chain stores you see in every other shopping centre across the the country. I hope that the council, as they develop the city centre ready for a hopeful boom in the economy (fingers crossed), possess the foresight to build lots more arcades, where smaller business can move in and try and make a go of adding interest and variety to a city desperate for rejuvenation. At the moment, just a couple of shop draw me in to spend a little time shopping here - one of them being featured in the pic below - the very friendly Comix Shop. Long may it thrive.

On Guard at Swansea Museum

Swansea Museum is currently guarded by the giant figure of a World War I soldier. His presence marks the museum's current exhibition about the Great War, which focuses on the impact the hostilities had on the people of Swansea - both those who went to fight and also those people left behind to keep the country running.

The soldier strikes an imposing figure and serves as an effective advertisement on the exhibition on show within the museum. I still haven't found the opportunity of taking a look at exactly what features in the display, but hope to do so in the very near future...

From the Station to the Sea

Well, efforts to rejuvenate Swansea High Street are really starting to progress at speed. Along one section of the street, tall boards hide from public view the latest building work being carried out in the city. Luckily, I managed to squeeze my iphone into a gap in the barricade to snap this pic of the construction works taking place there:

This area of High Street has been vacant for quite a while and was most recently used by the "From the Station to the Sea' art project, run by the Volcano Theatre and Coastal Housing and financed by the Arts Council of Wales. The project saw a temporary mini beach being constructed here as well as an inflatable play zone and woodland. Relics of this past use can be seen in the foreground of the above pic.

2 Somerset Place

Number 2 Somerset place, in its new bright blue coat, is a stunning building, to my mind one of the most attractive in the city. Despite the heavily overcast weather when I saw it today, the place really stood out and cried for me to take a photograph of it. And in one those 'decisive moments' Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote of, just when I began sizing up my iphone 4S to take a shot of it, around the corner came a guy wearing red on a bike. Luckily, the camera app was already running and ready to go and I managed to capture the cyclist in his perfect spot for the pic before he wheeled on by.

The place has recently been bought and its its previous incarnations used to house Charlie's Cafe Bar. The building dates back to at least 1843 and is Grade II listed building,

The "Creative Cluster" Building, High Street

I have watched this building being constructed over the past year with growing delight. It was not until today, however, that I got the chance of taking a closer look it. Titled the "Creative Cluster", the building, which is located on High Street, possesses five floors and 30,000 square feet of space. Its owner hopes to attract small creative startup companies as well as larger art/design businesses to take up residence in what has been designed to be the first building in Wales dedicated solely to creative industries. It is already one of the city's most distinctive pieces of architecture.

Multi-storey car-park walkway to Wellington Street

This walkway illustrates nicely one of Swansea Council's better policies of decorating some of the dingier areas of the City Centre with public works of art. These particular paintings, depicting scenes of the city from yesterday, turn what could otherwise be quite a daunting route connecting the Quadrant Shopping Centre, the multistory car park and Tesco Marina into something a little more amenable.

Kingsway

Another spectacular scene greeted me as I stepped off my work's bus and onto the Kingsway tonight. Swansea City Council have some fairly major plans in store for this street over the forthcoming months. I am hoping the golden veneer loaned to this street by this evening's sunset is an omen for some great things to come for the Kingsway.

Oxford Street

Winter, at long last, seems to be withdrawing its gloom from Swansea's streets. For the first time in 2016, after a full day at work, I caught the sun setting over the city instead of the usual gloom of dusk. And how it transformed the place! I half expected to see Dick Whittington and his cat to walk out of the glare at the end of this street paved with gold.

Dylan Thomas Leaf Sculpture, Castle Square

Sitting atop a cascading stepped waterfall and overlooking both Castle Square and the fountain which forms its centerpiece, Amber Hiscott and David Pearl’s half leaf / half boat sculpture is one of Swansea City’s most attractive public works of art. The piece takes as its inspiration the line ‘We Sail a boat upon the path, paddle with leaves down an ecstatic line of light’ from Dylan Thomas’ poem ‘Rain Cuts the Place we Tread’. The glass sculpture, unveiled on 27 November 1996, stands glistening and proud even after nearly 20 years of display - a remarkable feat considering its location at the entrance to the city's infamous Wind Street (a controversial area that is often castigated and which has been described by one of the city's own MP's as 'an area of drunkeness and debauchery').

Amidst a long, gloomy and very wet winter, the Leaf Boat, with its gold-tinted glass panels aglow from the rays of long-missed sunshine, was a real tonic to my eyes today. Swansea is often much maligned for its love of concrete, its poverty and disrepair. But this jewel of a scene reminded me there and then that Dylan Thomas' description of Swansea, as being both ugly and at the same time lovely, stands as true today as it did in his day.