Long Live Dave, Long Live Strawberry Fields

I found out this morning from a drunken message from a friend and the news that local legend of Carlisle, Dave (David Michael McGovern) of Strawberry Fields had passed away.

This has quite touched me as for my very first project at University myself and my friend Alex Hill went to visit Dave to study him and his shop to make an e-book on the experience. We had a bloody great time going back there day after day digging through countless amounts leather boots and t-shirts to end up uncovering suits of armour and collections of broken sunglasses.

The project ended up being a great success as we loved it and so did the tutors. To add to it, they mentioned that many students had tried to interview him and take his photograph before and he has either straight up refused them or just ignored them in great Dave style. So the fact that we got the chance to spend that time with him, learn from him and understand him, makes me feel very privileged.

But to quickly side track—the best part of that project and the visit was on the third or fourth day; he sat me and Alex down to ask us to remove a large shard of metal from the bottom of his foot, as he had been walking around with bare-feet in his studio. Safe to say I left that task to Alex.

I'm not sure how the rest of Carlisle felt about Dave but I know for myself and Alex we thought that he was an inspiration of freedom and a half closed book of great knowledge of things you would never need to know; but not needing to know them didn't make them any less interesting.

I will personally miss seeing him very much and I hope whatever happens to his shop and all his stock is treated with the respect and care he would of wished as he told us "All the stock in here isn't always strictly for sale because it's all collected from my life".

Here are a few images that I quite liked from around his shop:

Rest in Peace Sir Dave!

I will post some more images when I find them all!