About Brum

Donato Esposito’s the man with the plan – the guy behind Bostin and the supporter of everything good about the Midlands. The word ‘bostin’ is in itself a wholly positive gesture; “that’s bostin mate!” is roughly equivalent to “that’s really good / brilliant / really nice / smashing” and it’s been around for absolutely ages.

He recently commissioned a special England flag Bostin shirt in time for St. George’s Day, and I was lucky enough to catch a sneaky preview of it before they went on sale (and was pretty impressed). Donato’s also got a mean marketer’s mindset too, because he always seems to get some really good press out of his ventures – most recently, Bostin was featured in the Bromsgrove Advertiser (his brother’s pictured in the article modelling the England flag design) and he’s had tons of coverage and plugs from everyone ranging from regional press to Adrian Chiles (the BBC ‘One Show’ presenter and thoroughbred Brummie), who can oft be seen sporting one of Donato’s designs.

They are really quite cool T-shirts and really make a (wonderfully positive, for once!) statement when you wear them out and about. Go buy one from the Bostin shop, and start some conversations when you’re out in public.

(and yes, I buy my Bostin shirts just like everybody else, in case you were wondering whether this was a sponsored plug.

This time, prepare to welcome BloggingBrum to the world, a product of the creative mind of one Mark Steadman… What’s it about? “It’s a blog for Birmingham. That’s it.”

Succint. I like it. (Bonus points for having a picture of the Floozie in the Jacuzzi as part of the design!)

I’m always in favour of new outlets for the wealth of news and info that flows out of the second city – that’s why you’ll see me contributing to it in due course. In the meantime, blogroll it, bookmark the feed, and enjoy.

And as a little PS, here’s an odd thought which may strike a chord with all you WordPress users out there – why does WP have an ‘Uncategorized’ category by default? Surely it’s a little tautologous; if you didn’t want to classify a post, you would just refrain from ticking any of the boxes. Programmers’ logic overriding common sense once again…