On Saturday my old boss asked me how I would remember Sunderland. You see, he’s Sunderland through and through, and has been since he was born some 50 years ago - he’s not always lived in the city, but he knows every street, every shop, every route, every big family and every major happening in this city.
I wasn’t exactly sure how to sum that up really.
Sunderland has been a bit of a strange experience - wonderful at times - but everytime I start to scrutonize the city and the people in it its a pretty sad conclusion.
My first year in Sunderland was a bit of a tinted view. I was a student for the first time - I spent money like no one’s business. It’s hard not to have the time of your life in that situation. It was the first time I’d lived away from my parents, I had so many new friends, and it seemed we would only leave our student village if we needed food or drink (which was fairly often). But even so, we would only really ever socialise with other students. We could spend whole days in Wetherspoons doing nothing but drinking. We would go out on a Saturday at 12 to watch the football at 12.45 and not return until Sunday. That kind of binge was commonplace, and we weren’t pondering the city in any kind of analytical way back then.
Most of my treks consisted of crossing the water for uni. We first years hardly encountered the real Sunderland - infact whenever people referred to areas of the city, suburbs or towns outside of Sunderland I had no real clue what they were talking about, and what’s sadder is I hadn’t even taken a second to consider it. So Sunderland in my first year was ignorance, but ignorance really was bless at 18 having the time of my life with new friends.
The second year was a little different. We remained in the student village but retired to a more mature flat - or maybe we matured as a flat - and the move to a seperate part of the complex simply drew us away from the partying first years. Seeing Sunderland for what it was was still scarce and far between. I remember reading a bit more about the city, and starting to spend more time in the city centre for various reasons. This was when I started to see the blemishes in the city. I started to question why there were so many grown men, so many families and well, just so many people full stop, milling around the city centre shopping centre in the mid-week. Surely these people all had places to be? And shortly I would learn that Sunderland is guilty of being one of Britain’s highest unemployed cities, and also claims a title for being one of Britain’s most racist cities.
I started to work in a bar during the summer that bridged my second and third years of uni, and this is when I started to work with and serve the proper folk of Sunderland. I had been confined to the student bubble in my previous years - I hadn’t had to speak with the guys on the dole, I hadn’t had to speak to the builders, to the people who would deliver goods, the people at the bank, the customers and their families - I hadn’t been able to make observations and, ultimately, create reservations. Of course, looking down from my ivory tower I was ultimately only seeing a certain clientele because Brogans had a reputation as serving rough families and guys on the dole during the day, and serving the middle-aged crisis victims on a night time. But it was certainly an interesting window, even if it is a restricted one.
Every night walking back from work I would see something that would disappoint me. Didn’t matter where, there was always something in the city centre. I didn’t tell my boss when he asked his question that the night before someone had tried to bottle me on the way home, just for walking past them with my head down to get home. I would love to say that was an isolated incident but far too often I would walk home - alone - and encounter trouble with drunks who thought a guy on his own was fair game. That would never happen in York. I’ve not seen it happen in Newcastle either. Returning to Sunderland, once I watched two old guys, and I mean OLD guys, heckle a black guy as he bounced a basketball on his way home. But what can you say? Two guys 40+ years my senior who were very blatantly racist, and no one even thought to put them right. In Sunderland they don’t “have” black people, something I was often told.
Sunderland is a city that thrived on a number of different industries throughout history - but as of late it has struggled more and more to become a self sufficient city. No longer can the people of Sunderland all work in and around Sunderland. So good were Sunderland as a city of “making things” that is where the term Mackem, a coloquial phrase for someone from Sunderland or the surrounding area, comes from. The city’s port and harbour was thriving before the introduction of railway systems and later motorvehicle/aeroplanes made transporting goods so much easier. In the past few decades the city has lived off of the Nissan garage, which is situated just outside of the city and employs a huge number of mostly men from the city. A huge, huge amount of workers - but in this global recession all the shifts and all the overtime has been withdrawn and now the hoards of factory workers in the town has become less and less. Coupled with increased globalisation Nissan have been able to ship in cheaper labour - I think a large number of the technicians in the plant are Indian - there has also been an influx of Polish and eastern european minorities in the city in general (as with the rest of the country), and the University benefits from great links with Nigeria, Greece and China to name just a few. So within the past 5-10 years the city has started to move towards being multi-cultural, but you ask a handful of people in the city about the Polish communities, the Greek or the Chinese and I think in each case you will get a half-amusing, half-agonising answer. There aren’t many who can see it for what it is, infact a large number will tell you that the influx of african, european and asian ‘workers’ (baring in mind so many are university students) is harming the cities family’s “in the recession” (they love to throw that in there). When in actuality these guys have huge grants and don’t ever touch jobs here - there is simply resentment having foreign faces in a very traditional British town.
So where is the city going? It’s hard to say. Every shop opens and closes within the year. Every bar, with the exception of a handful, does exactly the same. Those that open are often running so far in debt they don’t know whether to stay open and fight off the debts or quit and call it a day. Infact the only business that can boast any kind of good takings is the 12+ Greggs fast food stores across the city. You’d have a hard time convincing me that anywhere else in the whole town makes a good turnover like they do. And the depressing fact is that if no one is making any money, then they can’t spend it anywhere, and thus no other business can take off because its got no customers. Its a horrible dog-chasing-its-tail situation, and I’ve noticed it for too long. But like I say there are always people milling around the city during the day times - how I don’t know - because nobody ever seems to be buying anything. The only place you’ll ever find queues is Primark or Greggs, and that says it all. Likewise the roads are always blocked - always full. Where the hell is everybody driving? It’s amazing what a whole city can do on the dole with benefits to play with too.
Trying not to be too cynical I can’t see this changing any time soon. I think its fair to say that the majority of people I met in Sunderland didn’t receive a good education - that’s not to be cruel and say they are stupid, because I don’t think any of them are stupid - but I can count the amount of Sunderland-bred uni students I met on one hand. That includes ones studying through at Newcastle, Northumbria, Durham or anywhere other than the city’s own institution. I don’t think I ever crossed a Sunderland-bred brain box.
Does that explain the chavs? Does that explain the unemployment? Does that explain the lack of good, self-sufficient businesses? I don’t know, and I could speculate all day, but I think its glaringly obvious that a city build on good education is one that will prosper. Just because Sunderland has a university it doesn’t make it an educated town - infact its quite the opposite. Like I say the make up of that University is mostly foreigners and people from outside the north east. Anybody from the north east that goes to Sunderland, most of the time, is doing so as a second or third choice to the Newcastle universities.
What is obvious is that hen a whole generation of people stuggle to ascertain a decent education, the next generation won’t be A* pupils. It’s not in their make up and their parents can’t drum an education into them if they didn’t get one themselves. For the most part the money isn’t there to pursue a proper education. Its a working class city and those that work hard often put food on the table before they can go through their kids spellings every night, you know?
Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but really trying to analyse the city for what it is leaves quite a cynical, bitter taste in my mouth. Like I say I met so many great people in Sunderland - through working in the bar I met tonnes of people who I know and love - and this is not a shot at any of them because I’m sure given an hour to think about it they’d all say exactly the same thing as me. And what I’m getting at is that without those people, and without the students I met, my time in Sunderland would have been hell. This realisations helps me appreciate them more. They’ve been fantastic and without them I would have left Sunderland a long, long time ago.
On my university open day the tour guide took us on a bus ride through the city. I remember it vividly because these were my favourite areas of Sunderland, but they weren’t representative of Sunderland as a whole, of course. There was the football team, the winter gardens, the beach, the university itself and the student halls that I would live in for 2 years. She didn’t show us Hendon, or Pennywell, the rowdy scenes when the locals come out on the weekend (seems bizarre that the city seemed so civilised on the student nights)… in hindsight she should have just showed us the metro to Newcastle, because in actuality, everything that you’re looking for as an 18 year old student considering Sunderland is situated 10 miles down the road in neighbouring, bitter rivals Newcastle.
But then again, while I remember the trouble I seen on nights at work, or the idiots that would come out when drunk - I remember the nights out I had with my uni flat mates, I remember all that shit and I can’t help but feel I had such a laugh those first two years in our student bubble. When I came out of that and worked, not just in the bar, but in my final year for my degree it weren’t so much fun (but of course it couldn’t be it WAS work) and that continued the year after when I worked at the bar full time. All in all, when I was trying to have a good time in my first few years - I did.
So if this is the last blog I ever make about Sunderland, which I imagine it will be, I will share with you my answer to anybody who says they’ve never been to Sunderland before is simple - don’t bother.
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