Tuesday, September 28, 2004

And on the 7th day he rested....

Ahh Sundays, the day of rest, a time to contemplate the week in a relaxing atmosphere of documentary TV and roast dinners! Or so I used to think! It turns out Sunday is just like any other pissed up day of the week in Leicester! Having decided to go out to the local scream pub (The loaded Dog) I expected that me and my friends would be in for a few drinks and maybe a bit of a dance on an empty dance floor. I should have known better, the "dog" is £1 a pint on Sunday nights, is open to midnight and plays really loud music. This naturally meant anyone who is anyone wants to be there on a Sunday night, the queue was out the door round the corner and down a rather dingy side ally. It was a joke, as I stood in line and argued with my friends I rapidly became someone who didn't want to be anyone. It took 30 minutes of standing in an unmoving line to spur my friends into moving out of the cold and into Varsity, the pub next to the "dog", which had no queue. This turned out to be another bad judgment call by me as Varsity was, to put it bluntly, rammed! We managed to get to within 4 feet of the bar and were summarily blocked by a crowd of 6 blokes standing there with pints, chatting away merrily, seemingly oblivious to us and the 20 or so other people standing behind them. The music was ear splitting and the conversation/shouting matches of the other patrons only added to the drone. There was hardly room to turn around and this, we are led to believe, is how millions of people have a good time! What moron though playing really load music and cramming hundreds of people into a space made for 50 would equal a good time for all, it was hell! We stayed for 5 minutes and left thirsty but grateful for the fresh air and relative calm of London road.
We eventually ended up in the good old union bar (The Redfearn) which was relatively quiet, both in the sense of student population and music volume! More importantly it now has an internet jukebox, which allows you to queue up any song you can think of from Mudvain to S Club 8 (neither of which I would want to listen to, but they illustrate the range)! So we spent the rest of the night ordering drinks from a bar we could actually see, listening to music we wanted to hear, at a volume we could stand!
I think the main point of this rant is aimed at bar owners, I know you want to cram as many people as you can into your establishments, but just spare a though for those people will you! A bar is a place where people go before a club, they are not clubs. If I want to hear a load of crappy dance music at volumes that would make most heavy artillery operators cringe I will go to Creation, Life or some other such townie watering hole. I go to a bar to have a drink and a chat with my mates, am I some kind of under represented minority? I am pretty sure all the people I talk to about this agree with this point of view! Maybe we should stage some kind of protest? But most people aren't like that are they, they just sit there and take it. Lord knows after asking for the music to be turned down in varsity for the 20th time and getting the same blank look I am tempted to sit down and suffer! If it weren't for the price I would go somewhere else so I guess it's my fault!
Anyway it's Monday now and another week of drinking in noisy bars and nosier clubs is about to start, heres hoping things will change!

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