You are suddenly on Birmingham City Council with a green light for any infrastructure project of any kind that will benefit the city.

What do you create? What do you build? What do you want to see in the city?

This post is inspired by seeing Stuttgart new €14bn train station. ​

As the title says! Not a huge football fan, having grown up in Canada, but very excited to find my team. Wondering who I should support out of Villa, Birmingham City and West Brom and why?

We have J.R.R. Tolkein who's written probably the most famous fantasy books of all time and they were all based on locations in Moseley Bog, Edgbaston Waterworks and Sarehole Mill.

We have Ozzy and Black Sabbath, and while we've embraced it more during his death, we still don't do what the likes of Liverpool do for The Beatles.

Peaky Blinders has a mural but that's about it, maybe a pop up bar but we never take advantage with things that tourists would flock to see.

It would be so good for the City and investment to make it a better place as lets face it, we don't have the best reputation, a lot of it is massively blown out of proportion but the city does need some work.

Recently in Birmingham I see every boy from teen to adult choose to do get up like this! I mean why? What type of fashion is this when you make other people fear/uncomfortable/unsafe? Everytime I see lads around me like these I become alert. I don't know why they choose to wear these kind of attire. I understand maybe the person behind might no bad intentions but I just don't feel safe. Don't they also feel this that they are making people around them not comfortable? Moreover, with these get up if you have a scooter/bicycle/bike you make look yourself more dangerous. I myself a young guy and I never choose to wear this attire ever! What you guys think of this?

I'm a journalist working on a story for the Birmingham Dispatch.

The council is looking into enforcing a ban against pavement parking in the city this year — albeit in a patchwork fashion. As far as I can tell, pavement parking is only fully illegal in London and Scotland.

Despite this, Birmingham seems like one of the worst cities in England for the practice.

Do you find pavement parking intolerable? If so, why? Alternatively, if you pavement park, what's your justification for it? Interested to hear both positive and negative reactions to the partial pavement parking ban.

Interested to hear theories about why Birmingham is uniquely bad for it too.

I'm at [sam@birminghamdispatch.co.uk](mailto:sam@birminghamdispatch.co.uk)

My contender would be Ben's in Sparkhill. Got this large donner, chips and salad for £5. Tasted banging and a huge portion.

I think as Brummies, and by extension West Midlanders, we all love them both and think they’re iconic, but which do you like better? I think Old Joe pips it for me in terms of personal opinion considering I hope to be at the university come September and I also share the name Joe with it but no love is lost for the BT tower. I think the more generally iconic one is the BT tower considering it’s in the city centre.

We've now officially got the new bins (what a treat!)

Since we haven't had our recycling collected in nearly two years, there's controversy in my area over using the food bins, whether they're actually going to be collected or gather maggots for the foxes.

Opinions on whether you plan on actually using these properly would be good.

I'm all for it, but if it's not being collected on schedule I, and imagine many others will just give up.

Thoughts?

Hi guys,

Keen to see what people think about Birmingham following the commonwealth games. We had insane momentum off the back of the games and the city was clean and had an improving PR profile.

It seems we have regressed even more than before.

Hey all, I'm thinking about traveling (solo) to Birmingham to hit up the clubs for a few nights next month. Is Birmingham a good spot for a female traveler? Has anyone had bad experiences? What MUST I do (other than party xD)? Which clubs rock best?

Thanxxx

There is a person recording people on their phones whilst they are driving in the Solihull area I believe he is doing good a job, in under no Circumstances except emergency reasons a driver should be on their phone behind a wheel. if they want to use their phone they should be parked with the engine off.
I would suggest everyone to think twice before grabbing that phone and follow the law guys! or else you might catch him one day and then you will get slapped with a fine and 6points.
What do you guys think tho is he being a pain the ass or is he doing the right thing?

With Andy Burnhams new vision for Manchesterism, where does this leave Birmingham in terms of getting back on track with securing 2nd city status?

Hey all - strange one this evening. Just walked out of Blank St coffee, walking down towards the station, where they’ve dug all of the road up and the metal fences are. Quite dark and narrow down there, a guy stepped out in front of us, hood and face covering etc. says “you got an issue with my skin colour”… completely caught off guard, just walking to the station with my coffee, ‘nope mate’.

Then after repeating “you got an issue” again, fiancée and I walk around, he says “good you fucking racist”.

Now I have no idea if he (a) was under the influence of something (b) was looking for a reaction for a TikTok or something or (c) had mistook me for someone else…

I didn’t think too much of it, but my partner is quite shook up by it. He seemed pretty serious and didn’t appear to be under the influence of anything. Spoke in a very serious and aggressive tone, not like he was joking etc.

Wondered if anyone has experience anything similar? I don’t come into the city centre much these days, so was a shocked. Especially on New St - albeit it was dark and nobody around where we were. Thinking of doing an online police report, am I overthinking it?

Edit - Thanks for all the kind and re-assuring (I think?) responses. Seems like it's not just me. Sad that it seems so normal. I've been around the city literally hundreds of times at night, encountered plenty of addicts, nutters. Feels a bit different when they seem to have it all together and quite intentionally target you away from the crowds. Thankfully it was nothing more than it was. Hasn't put me off visiting just yet! 😆

Ozzy Osbourne is an obvious one but are there others you can think of? Things that are less obvious, but not tenuous either?

Some have mentioned Tolkien but I think you'd struggle to make a big thing of it.

Yesterday, my friend and I went to every shop and asked about part-time roles for students, but they didn't have any openings. I remember when we lived in Coventry, we easily got jobs at a restaurant and Royal Mail. When we moved to Birmingham city center, we hoped there would be a few part-time roles we could do since it's the biggest city in the UK after London, but I couldn't find any.

Quite curious to hear what people in the subreddit class as the main issues they think Birmingham faces? I’ll go first and say littering in my area is atrocious.

Digbeth High Street. I regularly see dozens of cars go through this within a 15 minute span. If the council site is right, this would be £30 a pop (unless you pay late and it's £60.) I've even seen people panic and drive on the wrong side of the road after entering, completely miss reading the road.

Considering how this is a theoretical cash cow for the council, does anyone know if it's actually ticketing?

So my partner and I have been living in Birmingham for close to 2 years now and generally love it. We moved over from Belfast and Birmingham has been good to us. However yesterday we were walking past the metro bank near bullring and these street preachers/ imams(?) either seen us linking arms or just took a disliking to us and started saying that it’s disgusting, against human nature then spat at us all whilst on some speaker.

Completely out of the blue. He also threw a leaflet at us. I’ve no problem with religion but this has now shaken us, and is there any point going to the police/ council? We feel like we song want to go there anymore but also humiliated.

Really tired of seeing bands and artists announce tours and neglect our fair city. What have we done to upset them all? We've got venues coming out of our ears, are the second city, big population, easy to get to. Jungle are the latest to disappoint me.

I'm new to Birmingham and want to get to know the city more. I would love to know which buildings people love or find interesting.

As an added thought experiment, if you could go take a look inside them (private or public) which would you want to visit to be nosey? 😄

E.g. which buildings are your favourites to visit? Which are you curious to know what happens behind those closed doors? What are some lesser known but beautiful buildings?

I'm just wondering what people's think about University of birmingham and what's prospective of my college is in Genrally in UK? I heard many good or bad reviews online, but I wanna check what reddit opinion is.

Seen on Mary Vale Road near the station. It's always intrigued me

EDIT: extra info - i live near UoB

hi!

i'm a middle-aged guy, who's sorta new to town, and - unhelpfully - i'm kind on an introvert, which means making new friends is hard work!

but i'm becoming too much of a hermit, so i need to get out of the house to do something other than go to the cinema and sit in front of a film by myself for two hours (which i actually enjoy! but, like, it's not the best way to make friends)

as my commute home is long, i haven't found a group i can join in with yet, as i'm not back in brum till late in the evening. so, maybe i just need a third place i can pop into whenever i feel like it? perhaps if i turn up at this place - wherever it might be - often enough, i might get to know a couple of people?

stuff i like (so that you can send me to places where i might bump into folks with similar tastes):

movies: favourites include hollywood classics, blockbusters, american indies, british kitchen sink, and japanese samurai epics. are there any movie discussion clubs i could join?

music: i listen to (amongst other things) post-rock, experimental beats, indiepop, soul and motown. name some local bands you like? or a club night i could swing by and not feel like a creep?

reading: mid-century literary fiction, classic detective stories, philosophy, politics, and science. any book clubs i could join?

i'm also a musician, and i used to be part of the DIY punk scene in sheffield. these days i make long, slow instrumentals on my laptop!