Summer in the City: my hidden Brighton

Local boy John Naish is your guide to the bits of Brighton that have escaped the invasion of yuppie Londoners

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Naughty old Brighton, the original home of dirty weekends and razor gangs, is fast becoming homogenised as London’s seafront suburb. But it still harbours many a strange surprise for those prepared to go snooping. Sure there’s the beach and the nightclub drag on West Street for simple summer hedonism, but the city that was famously described as “looking like it should be helping the police with their enquiries” keeps its hottest treasures a little way inland.

1 Festivals? We got ‘em. You just missed the massive Gay Pride, but our next big event is the Food and Drink Festival, which celebrates its fifth birthday and will run from September 1 - 30. More than 50,000 gastronomes visited last year, feasting on the best that that our calorific city’s 400-plus restaurants and bars have to offer.

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• Summer in the City: my hidden Brighton

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Into Autumn, there’s a unique festival that proves that this hippy old place is still very much in touch with its spiritual side. The Brighton Festival of World Sacred Music (17-21 October) brings performers from across the globe and from all traditions to perform the best in ancient and modern spiritual sounds. All the venues are sacred sites within the city limits, ranging from towering churches to an Indian countryside memorial. This year sees a giant Native American tipi being erected on New Street, right at the heart of town.

2 New Street has just been pedestrianised to form the centrepiece of the city’s new “artistic quarter”. Just behind New Street, the North Laine district, the old beating heart of the counterculture, is still thudding away. Starting at Gardner Street, this serpentine procession of alt-culture indy shops is the place to be seen if you’ve just had a new tattoo, piercing, set of dreads or huge prosthetic implant. Grab a coffee at one of the many streetside tables and get your free view of the human zoo. Shopping highlights include Snooper’s Paradise in Kensington Gardens, an aspergerish Alladin’s of kitsch and creepy, and Brighton Guitars on Sydney Street, a temple for shoe-gazing, amp-worshipping musos.

3 For fans of the bizarre – and why else are you wandering around backstreet Brighton? – the marvellously revamped Brighton Museum is completely outstripped by the sheer crankiness of the Booth Museum of Natural History, on Dyke Road (indeed). Booth’s was originally the private trophy collection of a wealthy Edwardian bird-stuffer. This year it has surpassed itself by featuring an eerily wacko new exhibition, Life in Death: The Victorian Art of Taxidermy, featuring bizarre tableaux of cats playing cards and woodland birds performing the funeral of Cock Robin. There’s also a stuffed elephant’s foot umbrella stand. I thought they only existed in the Beano.

4 For great, down’n’dirty music, head west into Hove, a fine walk along the Prom, to the Neptune Pub. Fridays and Sundays this tiny gem of a bar is the home of da blooze – as well as da drinkers. Even if there’s no band on, rockers will love this old pub’s collection of iconic rock pics and memorabilia. Beer’s good, too. At the other end of the seafront, on Marine Parade, Concorde 2 is the best venue for mid-sized up’n’coming or down’n’drowning bands. The bar is massive and the loos are, well, rudimentary.

5 Talking of drinking, Brighton has been hit by a wave of identi-pubs over the past decade, all stripped floors and predictable bohemian chic. But there remain some wonderful old originals that still know their real ale. Here’s an easy crawl for you: start at the Basketmaker’s Arms in Gloucester Road, then ask directions for the Great Eastern, then up the hill to the Lord Nelson Inn, and further up to the Battle of Trafalgar. Stagger ten metres back down the hill and you’re at Brighton railway station.

6 The pier. Of course. We’ve only got one pier now that the long-neglected remains of the West Pier mysteriously burned down. But Brighton Pier is not just for sunburn, candy floss and dodgems. Evening strolls are a fine way to acquaint yourself with the South coast’s ragged edge. Not least because Horatio’s Bar at the far end has a permanent karaoke facility. On windy days you can stand right at the far end, behind the funfair rides, and enjoy your own Titanic moment.

7 Rather more refined entertainment can be found at the city’s Theatre Royal, back in New Street. Many of the shows are pre-London runs, and anyway it’s worth visiting for the fine Victorian décor alone. The Collonade Bar below it has a feast of luvvie portrait shots from the Seventies and Eighties. How many can you name? For more alternative entertainment, the equally renowned Komedia has become too packed and precious for many people: the Joogleberry Playhouse on Manchester Street is a hipper, smaller, more local haunt. Food’s good, too.

8 Restaurants? Best fish-and-chip dinners are at the Regency on the seafront, opposite the West Pier’s rusting skeleton. Otherwise, you’re generally best advised to head away from the day-tripper seafront zone for good-quality eating. The Seven Dials area might not be the “new Soho” that drooling estate agents claim (and boy is there a property boom around here), but there’s some good dining to be had, including Murasaki for sushi fans, the Red Snapper for great Thai, and for award-winning celebby chef stuff there’s the eponymous Sevendials Restaurant.

9 If, on the other hand, you actually want to go minor celeb-watching, head for the Hotel du Vin. Other posh eateries include Blanche House and One Paston Place. For bistro food, my recent visit to the newly opened Ginger Pig in Hove Street proved a pleasantly well-priced surprise. Vegetarians get a pretty good deal in Brighton, with specialists such as the renowned Terre a Terre and Food For Friends leading the cruelty-free foodie’s league (and yes, I am a veggie). If you want interesting Indian, then there’s great fusion on offer at either of Indian Summer’s two branches.

10 To walk if off, there’s the Downs, Brighton’s other great secret. They’re the green lumpy things you can see inland from the beach. Take an open-topped bus ride to the Devil’s Dyke (great for nosing into people’s homes on the way up), get your walking shoes on, hit the South Downs Way and enjoy the astonishing views across all compass points. On clear summer days, you’ll see the coast from the Isle of Wight to Beachy Head. Constable called the view north, over the Weald, ‘the best in all the land’. If you plan to eat up on the Dyke, pack a picnic beforehand with bits and pieces from Bill’s local produce store on North Street, as the Dyke restaurant is really not up to much.

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