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You're a big building but you're in bad shape...
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The Get Carter car park is soon to be no more. It’s been a
long time coming, but this week the concrete-eating machines began feasting on
the decrepit monstrosity: the iconic Brutalist monument hunched on the prow of
the hill overlooking the Tyne. About the only thing going for it was its
starring role in Get Carter and its spectacular views of the area.
The film is about a gangster, Jack Carter, out to avenge his
brother’s death. Shot in Newcastle and Gateshead in 1970, it offers a bleak
portrayal of the crumbling post-industrial wasteland of the North East of
England with its coal slag, derelict tenements and nicotine stained pubs.
In the film, Jack Carter (Michael Caine) throws Cliff Brumby
(Bryan Mosley) from the top of the now infamous car park.
I have walked past it everyday on my way to work for the
last 10 years, and I’m going to miss it. It was scruffy and ugly, but it had
character.
I first visited Newcastle way back in 1988 when auditioning
for a place on the jazz and commercial music graduate diploma course (as it was
then) at Newcastle College. I stayed overnight in a dingy B & B in the city
centre, all dirty browns and rusty reds and flock wallpaper. I had a 3 bed room
all to myself, no en suite, just a sink in the corner. The gas heater died on
me, so I sat on the floor feeding my last few coins into the meter, listening
to the Dark Side of the Moon on my walkman.
I moved here a year later and holed up in the west end of
the city. There were riots just up the road, and the quayside looked more or
less as it does in Get Carter. Vast empty warehouses, mouldering buildings
being reclaimed by nature. Having grown up in the relatively affluent south, I
had never seen so many shuttered shops, boarded up homes and hard men walking
naked down the middle of the street, weapons cocked.
(Ok, that last one only
happened in the film – possibly.)
Over the years I’ve watched Tyneside transform around me,
from neglected industry to vibrant creativity and scientific innovation. So
maybe it’s time for the old ugly thing to be torn down. It feeds into the
perception of the ‘grim north’ which is at least 40 years out of date. Besides,
you can still indulge your Get Carter fantasies by running along the High Level
Bridge pretending to be a gangster, weapon cocked..
First posted here: https://jesdavidson.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/get-carter-gets-demolished/
