THE City of Georgetown today is like a festive ghost town of its invisible 20th century history. Invisible? Yes, but only to those without anything socially worth remembering or those who never ever think that this nation’s archives of newspapers  – Daily Chronicle, Argosy, Guiana Graphic, Evening Post – from the 1970s dating back to the 1930s contain the true, everyday history of modern Guyanese society.
After the 1960s, Guyanese history increasingly became the selected invention of self-serving political ambitions, diverse ethnic cultural revivals and a battleground of ideologies shoving and pushing to get some coveted seat or pulpit of power over the minds and, therefore, the servility of citizens.
But for those decades between the 1930s and 70s, the modern Guyanese of every ethnicity and racial mixture who made Georgetown and its environs home, including West Bank Demerara, comprised a self-made culture which was based on everyday living, its social pleasures and informal education, which was added as a pleasurable  ‘top up’ to the formal education of schools. It is this local modern cultural lifestyle, supported by specific social activities which, by being constantly reported and photographed in the press each week, and read by citizens of an older and new generation who did not choose newspapers to read based on political opinions, kept such a culture alive by self-reflection and added momentum to the general sense of a modern culture to participate in, above and beyond any specific ethnic cultural loyalties that almost everyone obviously normally inherited. It was this self-conscious cultural perspective, fed by the local press and radio and consumed by Georgetowners, or Demerarians, which captivated their pride in quotidian culture and rocketed Guyanese literacy to over 90 percent in those past decades. Their history of everyday culture was achieved because those in the press and radio (luckily there was no television then), which could excuse the airing of uneducated trash masquerading as democratic freedom could not get those jobs without prior proof of knowledge in their fields and a writing style to deliver it. Such posts simply were not filled without professionals bringing something to enhance their newspapers and radio programmes. So, when we look at the history of this everyday Guyanese culture, we see newspaper features without which such a shared exciting local culture could not have existed. Such features were ‘Woman’s World’; ‘Teenager of the Week’; ‘Cinema Roundup’ and reports and photos on house parties, indoor and outdoor fashion, nightclub dancing and socialising, literary reviews, and essays on film culture and specific ‘stars’ with local appeal.

Stimulants
If an entire year was spent receiving such stimulants to enjoying everyday culture, then Old Year’s Night saw its culmination in a combination, or medley, of such influences. For example, in the latter half of the 1960s, the Plaza Cinema, which made Camp Street on the northern half of Middle Street the centre of public attention and bubbling excitement, had the gala premiere of the French film ‘That man from Rio’ directed by the stylish French director Philippe de Broca and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac, on an Old Year’s night. Plaza, being one of the most cultured and sophisticated cinemas in Georgetown’s history, didn’t want to deny its staff or patrons the chance of beginning to party the rest of the night away before midnight arrived, so it opened the film alone instead of part of the usual double feature, at an 8.30 pm show, where various ‘coming attraction’ trailers were shown until after 9 pm, then ‘That man from Rio’ began, and it not being such a short film, ended a bit after 11pm. First of all, a lot of the young male and female film buffs who exited Plaza that night would by the first months of the new year have adopted Belmondo’s white sports jacket, blue tapered long-sleeved shirt, slim dark trousers and black leather loafers, or his white jeans and bright, striped, long-sleeved shirt, as they had done from other films with Robert Mitchum, Robert Taylor, Alain Delon or George Chakiris in ‘West Side Story’, or album covers with Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett in their drain-pipe trousers and bright shirts. Girls, on the other hand, saw the artistry in Francoise Dorleac’s horizontally striped dress above her knees, even if they were Guyanese girls of African ancestry. Their hairstyles –at a time when sharply structured hairstyles denoted intellectual personality choices – were taken from Diana Ross & The Supremes, Dee Dee Sharp or Carla Thomas. Guyanese girls of European and Oriental ancestry who were full members of Georgetown’s everyday modern culture sported that sleek broad belt, Gypsy or Western beatnik fashion taken from Ava Gardner, Liz Taylor, Nathalie Wood, Sophia Loren and Bridgette Bardot films, their boy cut hairstyles influenced by Shirley Maclaine in ‘The Apartment’ and Jean Seberg in
‘Breathless’.
That sort of scene stepped out of Plaza that Old Year’s Night, the girls clutching their small purses, already dressed and prepared for the rest of the night, all night, tonight, joining traffic jammed Camp Street and its pedestrian avenue outside Plaza with fashion-conscious crowds wafting trails of fragrances in the night breeze, moving down to the Belvedere Nightclub, a stone’s throw away on the south side of Camp Street over Middle Street. During the day, those various local beverage companies would have already unloaded their Lime Rickeys, Vimtoes, Ginger Ales and Club Sodas, their I-Cee and Juicee and Star soft mixtures and, of course, cases and cases of ‘BabyCham’, that golden champagne in small bottles, European style, girls loved to get a smooth giggly head on.             
Warm boxes of ‘Chicken-in-the rough’ with crisp French fries and spicy mayonnaise would arrive closer to party time. One of the city’s half dozen outstanding popular Jazz/Pop bands, like Telstars or Combo 7, etc. would play until dawn. But, as the crowds flowed through two wide gates up the arched entrances to Belvedere’s lobby, recent pop hits like Stevie Wonder’s ‘Uptight’, or Bobby Moore’s ‘Searching for my baby’, or ‘The in-crowd’ by Dobbie Gray, or Tom Jones singing ‘It’s not unusual’, or Booker T & the MGs ‘Groovin’, or Lou Rawls singing ‘Love is a hurtin thing’, etc, would already have some girls moving their bodies.
Was all this some sort of anti-nationalistic cultural expression of a colonial Guianese  mentality? Like hell! It was more like the public assertion of a cultural identity of everyday values and pleasures, outside and beyond the control of endless political stalemate. Happy New Year!