Sorry to disappoint all the football fans, or rhyming slang hounds, I really do mean the city I love Bristol. As only those who have left it can. Drives me bonkers that when I go back some people who live there just whine about it. It looks better than ever to me. Not just because it has Starbucks now, though if you try to order a triple shot no-whipped non-fat peppermint mocha you just get the blank look and "We just sell coffee I can't understand the controversy about the Fountains on the center, the pissing old men as Dad calls them.
How is that a step back from the vomit sodden scrubland that used to be there? I have spent way too many cold 2am's waiting on the center shivering for a taxi, watching boy racer drunks running over slower pedestrian drunks.
I am impressed too, that in an age where pubs close and get turned into something less useful, like a bank, Bristol is going the other way. There are more pubs than ever in Bristol and most of them seem to have been former banks. Going back is funny Directions are given to you in all four dimensions of the space time continuum. It's not enough to know the geography, you have to have the history too So in the spirit of that, most of this is going to be about places that don't exist any more, like my social life, they are long extinct.
I never had a local, the pubs in Stockwood are really nothing special. We either walked to country pubs like the the Hunters Rest Even today, with everyone living all over the suburbs of Bristol, The Center still makes a good place to meet. We can all get there and home again with public transport.
We just try to find quieter places like St Michaels Hill pubs where us old farts can sit down and lie about what we did down town when we were younger. That and argue about the fountains Not that I was ever a big clubber but this topic comes up when us old fogies get together, trying to out do each other remembering obscure clubs and pubs from the good old days that we never actually had. Seems like somewhere there should be a list.
