Day 14: Exploring Bristol (again)

We had planned to travel into the countryside to see some castles/abbeys/estates/gardens, but after our trip to London, we'd had enough ancient history, so we decided to take another day in Bristol to check out the town some more.  

First stop was back to St. Nicholas Market, which was finally open and did not disappoint.  Loads and loads of stalls filled with crafts, clothes, wares, and other gifts.  We started out in a board game shop and then kept going!  It was a little too much for me, but S and H both had a field day.  

After that, we walked north, where we happened to pass the Palestine Museum and Cultural Center.  The facade features a huge window edifice that is bulging out slightly over the sidewalk.  If you look closely at the mortar sealing the small window diamonds, you'll see that they're filled with broken glass.  It's a powerful image, reminiscent of the instant after a bomb explodes, when the windows are pushing out from the blast but before the explosion shatters everything.  Very moving.

We kept walking towards the Christmas Steps, which are the oldest stairs in Bristol and are lined with shops (including a board game cafe, where we paused after lunch).  One of the shops along the steps had replaced signage for their shop with a notice about a former enslaved Black American who had lived there after his escape to the UK.

Lunch was a forgettable meal at a crap brewery with a hell of a view.  

After lunch, we headed down to M-Shed, a museum that tells the story of Bristol. I was particularly curious about the Windrush Generation, but the museum was closed today.  So, we wandered around, admired the beautiful riverside, and sought out another Banksy before we headed home.

Once we were home, I headed down to a music shop to buy an instrument while S & H took a siesta.  We got take-out for dinner, and while I was picking up the food, I got to sip a quiet scotch (my first in the UK this trip).

This city is full of graffiti & public art - big and small, coarse and refined, political and not, ugly and beautiful.  Here's a few shots from today (the last two are Banksy's):

I had a thought later in the day about Banksy's work that recontextualized things for me.  Prior to this trip, I had thought of Banksy as a standout political artist who chose to use an unconventional (and politically charged) medium for his work within the fine art world.  But in seeing the state of public art in Bristol (and graffiti specifically), I'm seeing Banksy more as a graffiti artist in a sea of graffiti artists who happens to have both a wry sociopolitical take and the imagination and craft to execute it well.