Stoke Tours
Welcome to stoke.place!
Even the most impossibly idyllic postcard is no match for the approximate, blue and yellow smear of a photograph, stolen hastily from out of the hire car window. It is quite unfeasible to describe a place—any place at all—without describing one's own, unique version thereof: a superimposed curation, a reprint that is focussed in seemingly arbitrary places, and curiously nondescript in others. Naturally, this has the effect of cutting down to size even the most sprawling metropolis—reducing it to a handful of standout sights, sounds, smells... A facsimile of the real place that is simultaneously so much less, and so much more—one where historical factitude (facticity?) is second to an overall impression; a feeling, let's say. It is my hope that, by taking you, the reader, with me on this tour, I provide an aperture into a Stoke-on-Trent uniquely my own.
On a practical note, Stoke Tours was conceived as a kind of whistle-stop, expeditious initiation for any newcomers to the wonderful world that is stoke.place. As the sprawling website continued to spill out from all sides at an unstoppable rate, it became increasingly difficult to know where to even begin when welcoming a new visitor. I'd like to take each person through it all individually, but people demand so much, don't they? That's my conclusion. They demand happiness, but they are self-centred, imperfect and impatient. I would like to be honest, and tell them this—most of them. Spending hour after hour, trying to pull someone into a universe that they have no interest in, and which of course has no interest in them... There's no point. You can't do it. I've stopped doing it. These days, I just provide automated tours.
The quintessential Stoke Tours experience. For new visitors to stoke.place, the Classic tour is a whistlestop journey through some of Stoke's oldest and most beloved institutions.
For the artistically inclined, this tour is centred around Stoke's myriad musicians, photographers, dramatists, dancers, and everything in between. An audiovisual thorn-tangle: a feast for the senses.
A selection of my personal favourite sights (or rather, sites)—not suitable for newcomers to stoke.place. Troves into which I retreat now and again, when the sense of my uncertain personhood becomes too much, and I feel like a puppet: a fraud.