Leeds gets coffee - there are some superb coffee shops, where you can get a Square Mile pourover whilst browsing Caffeine and toying with an aeropress. Really lovely.
Leeds has beer, but doesn't get it - for some reason, craft beers are some kind of alternative (ie gothy, unwashed) experience. Brew Dog had a great range of unique bottled things, but is somehow aimed at punks (really? Is 1977 back in already?). Mr Foley's Cask Ale House has a similarly interesting selection, but the clientèle was decidedly beardy (is trampy back in already?). The barman in the Brewey Tap was slightly embarrassed by their own micro-brewed pilsner, and was keen that I have an Amstell. Leeds, salute your unique brews! And perhaps market them to a larger, more hygienic demographic.
The Picture House, incidentally, is really horrible. You can tell that from the outside, and there's no need to go inside again [note to self].
The Picture House, incidentally, is really horrible. You can tell that from the outside, and there's no need to go inside again [note to self].
The friendly / chippy nexus - Northern chums love to extol the uniformly warm-spirited wonders of the Northern soul, while observing that the average Southerner personally gouges the eyes from three kittens a day. Somehow the Northeners' self-proclaimed friendliness is powered by a loathing of the South, and particularly any la-di-dah Southern flâneur poncing about their cities with a Pevsner and an SLR.
Keen to talk to a stranger, a Yorkshireman seems also keen to proselytise his view of the world. I (aforementioned ponce, all espadrilles, manbag and words like flâneur) was advised in stern terms at no fewer than three separate establishments that I should not contemplate having milk in my filter coffee. Listen chaps, thanks for the recap of what you learned in barista school, but if I wish to adulterate my beverage (perhaps chilling a Beaujolais, or popping a Gewürztraminer next to the radiator for ten minutes before serving), I really should be allowed to. Perhaps I know what I'm doing, or at very least I know what I like.
Keen to talk to a stranger, a Yorkshireman seems also keen to proselytise his view of the world. I (aforementioned ponce, all espadrilles, manbag and words like flâneur) was advised in stern terms at no fewer than three separate establishments that I should not contemplate having milk in my filter coffee. Listen chaps, thanks for the recap of what you learned in barista school, but if I wish to adulterate my beverage (perhaps chilling a Beaujolais, or popping a Gewürztraminer next to the radiator for ten minutes before serving), I really should be allowed to. Perhaps I know what I'm doing, or at very least I know what I like.
Got there in the end.
The shopping - In terms of presentation, the insanely handsome Arcades, the gleeful pomp of Corn Exchange (what a roof!), knock almost anywhere else into a cocked hat. Well done. There is sadly no John Lewis, but there is the mother of all Marks and Sparks in the covered market, which makes up for it.
Lots and lots of this, plz.
Take note of how to do a roof properly, Leeds train station.
There's no-one in the Merrion Centre, and no reason to go there, but it's a fun romp in minty green and chromed metal.
It's probably illegal to say that The Light is a bit dull, but it's essentially just the Aspiration Village from Hammersmith's Westfield. Yawn. Trinity Leeds is likewise a copy-and-paste chunk of the same Westfield, although curiously open the the elements (thereby ignoring the wisdom of the Victorians who built the Arcades to keep out the Yorkshire sleet). The unloved 80s Core is basically empty, although it does have some hoardings with fun CGI mock-ups including such copyright-safe stores as Hardy Ramsden's, Caffe Zero and Benny and Frankie's.
The accent - the women all have the prophylactic vowels of Janice Battersby*. A horrible erection-defeating noise </misogyny>. (*Yes, technically her accent is NW England, not NE, but there is no-one famous from Leeds, so it's impossible to cite an appropriate cultural reference).
The Universities - Chamberlain, Bon and Powell's Brutliast campus is wonderful. Its concrete is at once a superbly preserved piece of space-age past and yet still sci-fi futuristic. The smooth clean finish seems more accessible than the Barbican's bush-hammered concrete. Accessible visually, at least; it's still possible to be three feet horizontally and fifty feet vertically from where you want to be, with no idea how to get from one place to the other.
Still, the flying walkways are executed with such panache that they really make the UEA's skyways look like work of an upstart bumpkin in comparison (sorry, Denys).
Viewed through the porthole of a passing Imperial cruiser.
The nearby Met Uni accommodation tower, pre-rusted and weathering beautifully, is a lovely exercise in Coreten steel too. Easily the best new tower in Leeds.
The train station of three halves - there's a rubbish late-60s airless box (compare with, say, the spacious, light-filled and contemporary station in Barking), a dirt-grey millennial thing with the roof of a B&Q warehouse, and yet also a magnificently-restored Art Deco hall on the side. It's pleasingly surreal to see a Moderne McDonald's (even if the font isn't quite Gill Sans).
Where's the grass? - Leeds appears to be home to about ten square feet of greenery, in Park Square. Millennium Square is shaded green on the (rather helpful) street-side information maps, but is actually a gentle paved slope forming an informal rake of seats facing the jumbo TV mounted on the wall of the Carriage Works theatre. Other than that, it's all buildings and tarmac.
Where's the rest? - there's a curious feeling that Leeds is only half there. The railway and river Aire cuts east-west, and the bypass describes a semi-circle to the north of that. But there's nothing much south of the river. Just some 'stunning-development' guff like Bridgewater Place (the 'Dalek' - a dire stab at being iconic; one imagines the name came first and the architect then came up with something to fit), and a (ho ho!) leaning-tower-of-Leeds effect made through fenestration. And you thought English Post-Modernism died in 1989.
Rubbish.
I am too annoyed with the joke to be able to like this.
Speaking of PoMo - Whilst I like PoMo as much as (realistically, more than) the next man, I really think that the worst possible place for playful architecture is somewhere from which you might get sent to prison. Shame on you, Leeds Magistrates' Court, which has been made out of wooden blocks and coloured in by a child.
What larks! Only a PoMo morgue would be less tasteful.
It inevitably feels so very much smaller than Birmingham, Manchester or London, each of which is bulging at the seams in comparison. But, of course, Leeds can be smaller without becoming overcrowded, because of all those Northeners in London banging on about how much better things are back in Yorkshire.
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