Bristol City Centre: Once a joyous paradise, now infested by miscreants

Sat at home on a Friday night (cue the screams of “Loser!!”) got me to thinking about the streets of my nearest city at this time. Once upon a time it used to be fun to head out to the night-spots of Bristol, nowadays any such activity usually culminates in dicing with certain death at the hands of the vagrants, inbreds and violent sociopaths that have rum amok in recent years.

The city itself is pleasant on the eye, Park St., Whiteladies Rd., Corn St. and Clifton Village are all trendy, fashionable areas with plenty of designer outlets and small Bistro-like eateries. The problem is not so much the place as it is the people that frequent it – most notably on either a Friday or Saturday night. I’d recommend any one visit Bristol, but at the aforementioned times, I wouldn’t advise you walk around unless you’re in the company of nothing short of a Platoon.

Corn St. in fashionable black ‘n’ white.

I like Bristol, I just can’t abide the behaviour of the people – maybe I’m getting old, but you can’t walk 100 yards on a Friday/Saturday night without crossing paths with some drunken, obnoxious jerk-off whose hell-bent on causing trouble in order to impress the group of scantily-clad trolls he and his “mates” have been escorting about town. You might think this kind of thing would arise in most big cities, but I’ve been to a fair few of the major ones and I can report none come close to Bristol. Perhaps Bristol has become the South West’s equivalent to Jerusalem when it comes to miscreants; they flock from the world over to rejoice in drug-taking, violence and mayhem. I pity the local Police force who have to attempt to bring order every week. And then we come to the really bad areas…

St. Pauls, Easton and Montpellier. They all sound fairly innocuous, but you can rest assured they are anything but. In the wee hours of the morning they become about as dangerous as you could imagine. Whether it be drug-dealers, prostitutes or muggers, these are the places they call home, and they “don’t take to strange folk in these here parts”. Toothless, haggard monsters amble the streets, coked out of their brains and willing inflict violence and terror upon anyone or anything for their next fix. If you enter any of these places with a Platoon, they you’d better hope their fully armed.

And it didn’t used to be like this.

5 years ago you could go out and have a really good time, sure there might be the odd isolated incident, but nothing you’d couldn’t avoid if you saw things brewing. I remember many good nights I’ve had in Bristol with Chris and others I’ve known over the years. Now the place has escalated into an assault course of horrors only the most vigilant would survive. Thankfully with Chris’ recent move back to Wales, our nights out are more than often in Cardiff - that’s a really nice place, even if it’s a little dull in comparison.