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Milton Keynes has a 1400 seat theatre/concert hall[1] (Blonski-Heard, 1999), whose high booking rate allows it to lay claim to the title "Britain's most popular theatre". (The theatre has a unusual feature: the ceiling can be lowered closing off the third tier (gallery) to create a more intimate space for smaller scale productions.)
Apart from the building itself (exterior surface by Michael Craig-Martin), the city art gallery[2] (next to the main theatre) does not have a permanent collection. This allows it to host edgy shows to critical acclaim.
In Wavendon, on the south-east edge of the city, The Stables provides a venue for jazz (especially), blues, folk, rock, classical, pop and world music and is closely associated with jazz artists Cleo Laine and John Dankworth. The venue also hosts an annual summer camp for musical kids.
Near Loughton and Furzton, the open air National Bowl is a 65,000 "seat" venue for large scale rock (and classical) concerts. The main article lists many of the famous bands to have played there, and lists DVD recordings of their performances.
Another music venue, very popular with teenagers, is The Pitz in the Woughton Centre, Leadenhall. It usually features a mixture of punk, alternative rock, and heavy metal.
There are two museums, the Bletchley Park museum of wartime cryptography and the Milton Keynes Museum (including the "Stacey Hill Collection" of rural life that existed before the foundation of the new city).
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Central Milton Keynes is an important regional retail centre. The centre:MK also houses Middleton Hall which plays host to exhibitions, fairs and displays throughout the year. When first built, it was in the Guiness Book of records for being the longest recorded shopping mall in Europe.
Milton Keynes is home to the National Badminton Centre and the National Hockey Stadium, (which is also the temporary home ground to Milton Keynes Dons F.C., pending completion of a permanent 30,000 seater stadium near Bletchley).
The city is an important venue for street skateboarding. There is now a dedicated "urban" skate park[3] next to the bus station, but the wide spaces, slopes and edges of the main railway station plaza remain very popular.
The Pineham SP884410).
There is a high security Prison, HMP Woodhill, on the western boundary of the city.
There is an YHA youth hostel in Bradwell village at OS ref SP831395 on the Sustrans long distance trail.
The Theatre District consists of many bar, pubs, restaurants and clubs.
Nearby, the Xscape dome includes Britain's first indoor snow slope, a multiplex cinema and sports-related retail outlets.
Near the station, the ice rink is used by Milton Keynes Lightning for professional ice hockey as well as leisure skating.
More than one million visitors come to Willen Lakeside Park each year to play, picnic, take part in watersports, jog, attend events or simply sit and watch the world go by. You can take a walk of approximately 1.75 miles around the South Lake
Milton Keynes Borough Council offers an advanced recycling service, with an important regional recycling factory in Old Wolverton.
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Miscellanea
The city's road system, with its abundance of roundabouts and scarcity of traffic lights, is famously difficult to navigate for those unfamiliar with the city, while self-evident to locals. The resultant frustration for visiting motorists is almost certainly the origin of Milton Keynes' often surprisingly bitter reputation with out-of-towners. The city is notable for its number of roundabouts. Their number is far higher than is typical in British towns: for example, within the city limits, the A421 route passes through 13 roundabouts in a 10.7 km stretch, and the A509 route passes through 12 roundabouts in a 6.4 km stretch. A book called Milton Keynes Roundabouts led to further editions for other towns.
The courtyard area of the city train station which displays a Steam Engine (a replica London and North Western Railways' "Bloomer") is widely regarded as one of the best places to skateboard in Europe. Due to the arrangement of the pavements, skateboards can move freely and it has plenty of places to attempt "Grinds" and other skateboarding tricks. However in recent years, the Council has disliked the skateboarders' use of this area. They have since built a skate park called Station Square across the street under the Bus station. (See Milton Keynes#Amenities above).
Milton Keynes boasts a growing Parkour or Freerunning movement. Due to its urban landscape the Central Milton Keynes area is ideal for Parkour. A Parkour team has formed in Milton Keynes. Using the Go MK! ad campaign logo they have used this and formed under the name MK PK! using the edited logo.
Marshall Amplifiers and speakers, much loved by rock and heavy metal bands, is based in Bletchley. It produced the amplifier with a volume dial that went up to 11, for the spoof 'rockumentary' This is Spinal Tap.
In the film Love Actually one of the background people learning to speak English says the line "Milton Keynes has many roundabouts".
Milton Keynes provided locations for the films "Withnail and I" and "Superman IV".
Denbigh North Leisure (just north of Bletchley) was home to the Sanctuary Music Arena, a music venue that was pivitol in the development of the UK's dance music scene. It was demolished in 2004 to make way for Milton Keynes's first football stadium.
Writers and celebrities
Many artists have played at the National Bowl, Milton Keynes and some have released DVD or audio recordings. See that article for detailed list.
Milton Keynes is parodied as Milton Springsteen: It's Quite Nice, Really! in Alexei Sayle's book Train To Hell. Rather than concrete cows, Milton Springsteen features "android yokels."
Milton Keynes also appears in Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's book Good Omens, as an example of a town neither heaven nor hell take credit for, but both regard as a success: "it was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing."
The British Comedian Bill Bailey makes reference to Milton Keynes in his stand up show Part Troll, calling the city Satan's lay-by.
The humourist Miles Kington once had a book cover cartoon with the caption "Miles Kington? I thought that was one of these dreadful new towns" — not simply an observation that his name resembles a place name, but almost certainly also a reference to Milton Keynes.
The UK TV and radio personality Noel Edmonds is credited with tainting the image of Milton Keynes in the 1970s by repeatedly deriding it as a concrete jungle and the natural home of the famous Concrete Cows. The Development Corporation was quick to point out that Milton Keynes has over 20 million trees. The Concrete Cows are among the earliest examples of conceptual art.
The Travel Writer Bill Bryson also features Milton Keynes in his book Notes From A Small Island, in which he gets lost in the pedestrian subway system, the redways, having decided not to ask for directions.
Milton Keynes is the birthplace of United States. He lived in Crownhill and attended Holmwood First School and Two Mile Ash Middle School before moving to the US.
Contrary to (allegedly) popular misconception, Milton Keynes was not named after the poet John Milton nor the economists Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes (indeed "Keynes" in the latter is pronounced "kay", not "key"), but after a village of the same name that already existed on the site of the proposed New City. The village was renamed Middleton in 1991, to distinguish it from the larger city. The name Milton Keynes and its similarity to the names of the famous economists Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes has often led to various silly jokes. Once on the television show Yes, Prime Minister, when the PM Jim Hacker mentioned Milton Keynes, the person to whom he was speaking mentioned how Milton Keynes was an economist and the intellectual leader of the Freedmen.
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