WOW247’s new Leeds pub crawl is infuriating

You know what really gets on my nerves? Words. Not all of them, of course, but when some words are painfully paired with words they don’t belong with, it annoys me.

The internet is the best place for this kind of annoyance, with people constantly writing silly things which are so madey-uppy sounding that you can’t quite believe them. A prime example is WOW247’s new, alternative pub crawl through the novel venues of Leeds’ “Northern Quarter”.

It’s being billed as the “Leeds Northern Quarter pub crawl experience”, of course – a title so uncomfortably mashed together that it almost broke my screen. Some words are like me and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley: we just don’t belong with one another. I’m okay with this, you see. I’ve dealt with this. The world is full of purposeful separations.

It’d be weird if I was taking Rosie out for drinks at East Village, wouldn’t it? This is how the world works. However some people, for reasons unknown, strive so very hard to fuck this system up as they start throwing all these nouns and adjectives together that just don’t match.

Firstly, Leeds is tiny. That’s not me slating or disrespecting it, but we have to be realistic here – it’s so adorably small you could walk from one side to the other in about ten minutes flat, lunch break included.Trying to “quarter” Leeds like Manchester, therefore, seems a little needless. Even the Victoria Quarter isn’t a quarter, more of a sort-of measly parade.

Let us quote the article to get to the bottom of this unholy new “pilgrimage”. It says: “with a number of outdoor drinking spaces [the Northern Quarter] has become something of a pilgrimage for bar crawl connoisseurs, but which bars in what order?”

Outdoor drinking spaces – they’re all part of a lie we’ve been fed for the last few years. Pubs have had tables outside of them since time immemorial. A pub garden isn’t some undeserved bonus we should be lucky to get. Sitting down, whether inside or outside, is not and never will be a luxury. Granted, it could be said that an outside terrace isn’t everyday.

But “bar crawl connoisseurs”? There’s no such thing: they do not exist and they never will, so these words do not belong together. A bar crawl is something accidental, done begrudgingly but secretly happily. We’ve all done them and really, they’re awful, but we do them anyway because, as always, the constant drinking has the power to make us endure almost anything.

Of course there is a certain level of disdain for those people who enjoy pub crawls in a public way. They’re people who are probably called the “wind-up merchant” in their office. But at least those guys, the seasoned pub crawlers, never pertain to be anything but a group of innocent lads in search of booze and banter.

When, then, did the pub crawl “connoisseur” become a thing? You can’t be an expert on something which deserves or requires literally no skill. It’s a mobile pub session, a moving pint, if you will – drinking in more than one pub does not constitute a “pilgrimage”.

It’s not like Leeds isn’t already fraught with pub crawls. The Otley Run is infamous around the country with everyone from rugby players to students. Yes, it’s as bad as the rest of them, but its long-established, and most importantly, sort-of makes perfect sense.

It’s about seven miles, all along one road. It’s simple, and thus appeals to all those whom pub crawls would normally appeal to. It doesn’t include all the toing and froing of WOW247’s; there are no badly placed stops and nonexistent landmarks. The Otley Run is simple, and its success lies solely in that. Why change the status quo? We have a pub crawl already. We don’t need another one.

Anyone who goes on a pub crawl does it for intoxication – not for the sort of places that are so painfully hip and in vogue that it hurts.The new, adjusted Northern Quarter is indeed painful to look at: every place, whilst nicely decorated with fifty shades of black and chipboard, is more-or-less the same. The people will never talk to you and you’ll never be able to afford the drinks, even though you’ll buy them anyway.

This “Northern Quarter” used to be the stomping ground of dingy snooker halls and dodgy strip clubs, and the thing with snooker halls and strip clubs is that you know what you’re getting. They wouldn’t charge you £5.85 for a pint of end-of-the-barrel lager; or worse, an £11 dodgy Cosmo. It’s not that they’re terrible – it’s just a whole lot of the same for a whole lot of money.

Not quite cocktail bars, not quite restaurants, not quite pubs. It’s all a minefield, really. Do I have a solution? No. Is it even a problem that needs to be solved? No, not really. But a  lame, frustrating, out-of-touch, boring, overpriced and needless pub crawl is not really the answer to anything.

The people were happy: the pub crawlers and the suave bar hoppers. They have their things, their hobbies and skills. They are two people, two exemplar words, if you will, that should never meet. They just don’t belong together. So let’s not try and make them meet – especially not through some “pilgrimage” nobody is even going to do.