Hyde Park is a neighborhood unlike most others that you’d find in England: It’s a living organism whose parasites take in drugs, booze and regretful sex, and give back noise pollution, drunken fights and scummy landlords.

To say Hyde Park is where you’d want to settle down is like saying Somalia would be a great summer holiday destination for the lads.

You have long term problems like rent control and crime, and a council with little incentive to solve them due to the fact that the majority of its residents only live there for two years, before a different-but-same type of prick comes to try their hand at living on their own for the first time.

Considering all this, there are some fucking awful streets in Hyde Park – made no better by the people that live there. After spending enough time within this bubble, you notice a certain trend between which areas attract which people, and then wonder if the neighbourhood itself is some sort of karmic purgatory: a two-year punishment for bad behaviour in a previous life.

Hyde Park Road

Old Leeds folklore has it that the water on Hyde Park Road is spiked with a mysterious chemical which when drank causes the victim to become the smuggest cunt imaginable.

We get it: you live on Hyde Park Road. It’s close to uni? You have the best views over the rest of Hyde Park? I’d never have fucking guessed, what with you constantly going on about it all the time.

That all-girl house whose primary purpose – whose main indicator that they do, in fact, still exist – is that they just take pictures of each other and put them on facebook? Yeah? They live on Hyde Park Road.

Oh, you mean they’re guys? Well then they’ve got outward-facing posters to Beaverworks’ next big night on their living room windows. But remember: it’s not their fault, it’s something in the water.

Ash Grove

If the protective bubble of History of Art and your public school friends isn’t quite insulating enough, then find the five other people you know with signet rings and hit up a letting agent in November.

You’re — I mean Daddy’s — paying a premium to live here, but that Charles Morris reunion isn’t going to host itself and you’re a bit afraid of the rest of Hyde Park.

Welcome to Ash Grove. You’ll notice the doors are lilac and we’d like to keep it that way, thanks.

Manor Drive

Love shit houses in shit areas of shit areas, filled with shit people? Welcome to Manor Drive, where the floors are used as bins and the bins are used for bodily fluids — which you then get your mate to drink out of at predrinks.

Some say it’s a blessing that all the rugby/hockey/football/met dickheads are confined within this area, in that it could be carpet-bombed with nothing of value being lost. All we can say is that it makes for one shit-hole of a road.

Chestnut Avenue

A road whose name’s thrown around a lot in the hippest circles at The Social, it’s also unfortunately filled with the types of people that call The Brudenell The Social.

Often heralded as the party street of Hyde Park – which may be true – but only because of that certain universal law that dictates a certain number of house parties must be full of absolute cunts, and that quota’s not going to fill itself.

All this doesn’t seem to be a deterrent for the friendly neighbourhood burglars though, who just seem to love the houses here.

Regents Park Terrace

Big groups of posh kids who get their shit nicked.

Brudenell Road

Were the council to allow it, Red Bull would’ve bought out the whole of Brudenell Road to further their crusade of gentrifying the concept of a party: a banner would be hung from Sainsbury’s to the Picture House with the best number for ket, accompanied by Sebastian Vettel doing laps up and down the road in a Red Bull Mini, stopping only to hand out the occasional can or to tell you about the next academy event.

Sadly, the reality for anyone living on this spine of Hyde Park is being overshadowed by a supermarket and a kebab joint. That is to say, more people associate Brudenell with finding cheap crates and king skins at 7:30 than visiting you. Soulless.

Headingley

Yeah, you’re right, it’s not a street, but thinking that’s a valid justification is the same sort of logic that got you living there in the first place. You’ve gone the wrong way from uni. You’ve made it harder to get to university. Do you understand student life?

You now have to walk, in the cold, through nicer, cooler, more fashionable and popular areas of Hyde Park — just to get into university. I hope that £6.50 you’re saving in rent each week is worth the constant reminder of how no-one can be bothered to come and visit you.

I bet your kitchen’s clean though. Good for you pal.

Hessle/Pearson

The only thing worse than a 5-panel wearing ‘house party only’ DJ is a whole road of them. I mean seriously, these roads were named after record labels for fuck’s sake.

Cardigan Road

Existing in some sort-of twilight zone of street identity, Cardigan Road’s so lacking in anything distinctive that even two people living there would have a hard time pinpointing exactly where each others’ houses are. Near the stadium? The garage? …. Burley road?! Even calling it a road is a bit disingenuous as it’s practically Headingley.

Put this all together and congratulations! You’ve managed to score a full house in shit-house bingo: far away from uni, far away from anything resembling a social scene, and even further away from the definition of ‘habitable’.

You like to pretend it’s cool, but turning up to any party is dubious when you have to go via Skyrack.

Mayville/Norwood

Defeated in some very fundamental way: you just don’t understand how it all works, do you? Are good houses awarded for good behaviour? How did you end up here?

You constantly find yourself sat alone in your awfully-carpeted front room, staring blankly at the wall, asking yourself if your life can get any more anonymous.

No-one really even knows where these streets are. They just sound like rubbish towns in the arse end of nowhere in a shitty Middle American state with two below-average diners — and probably with the social life to match.

Victoria Road

In Leeds, we have rich kids dressing like they’re poor, the answer as to why vinyl players will be one of the most popular christmas presents this year, and people that look good on the outside yet are bleak on the inside — and Victoria road is the most Leeds road of all time.

The veritable bridesmaid to Hyde Park’s bride, it’s more of a motorway than a cul-de-sac or suburban road, with the only time people coming to visit being when they’re heading to/from the greasy pig, or a house where you can’t see your breath even though you’re inside.

Kensington Terrace

Judging by the kinds of people that live here, most of them picked it because the name reminds them of where they grew up.

Unfortunately it turns out that Kensington terrace couldn’t be further from its London namesake, what with the small houses, narrow alleys and lack of gold-plated Ferraris.

If you’re ever in a destructive mood and don’t feel like facing the repercussions from your own landlords, take yourself here on a Saturday night and let yourself go. It’s not like they can’t afford it