Scarborough, a quaint Victorian seaside resort on the Yorkshire Coast. It still has many of its Victorian features too, the Spa, the Valley Bridge, the obscure Rotunda museum where I used to spend hours as a kid and the Woodend Museum and Art Gallery too. It has a castle that dominates the headland like the long, stony backbone of a long dead civilization. Not to mention the crooked streets of the old town and the narrow alleyways and lovely beauty spots to explore. Don’t forget Park with its boating lake and Japanese gardens and the two beaches, the newly re-opened Open Air Theatre too. Scarborough is a wonderful place…NOT!
The town is the perfect example of what happens when a council decide to let it go to **** because they’d all rather spend their budget on ipads (no, really. True story) than save the decrepit theatre (Futurist) which is falling down. And too right, why should they? They already knocked down the stunning opera house and build a **** casino over the top of it. A casino that looks stylish but lots of glass windows, funny blue lights and a weird spiky tower can only do so much for a “classy” image before it all starts to look a bit ****.
The rest of Scarborough’s night-life (not that there’s much) extends to Boleyns; a wonderful place to die from either STI’s caught from of the patrons who frequent the place or from having your face smacked in because you walked past a ne’erdo-well who took offence to you for no apparent reason. There’s Vivaz a stinking, underground hovel. A cess pit of deprativy where cheap *allegedly* fake booze is sold from dirty, dusty bottles and pipes that haven’t *allegedly* been cleaned since at least the early 2000’s. The toilets are dank and dingy, scrawled with graffitti detailing the sexuality of many a faceless name who I, nor anybody else, really care about. There is never any need to go to the toilets though, may as well just piss on the dancefloor. I’ve seen it being done and it explains just why the ground is so sticky.
Other drinking places include Quids (I mean KIDS,) Inn, Blue lounge (WHich is actually alright), Baracuda (Sorry, BARBICAN) and Bar2B (It’s really not the bar to be though. It’s craic is ****) Then Pickwick the home of tramps and wannabe rockers with their greasy long hair like **** tails, overgrown beards and denim/leather combos leaving them looking like something from a cheesy, if not old and weird gay *****, which leads us on to Bacchus! Ah, the most famous drinking establishment of Scarborough. To gain access to this place one must brave the dark alley which the front door is set inside. Then, you must knock (I’m sure there’s a secret knock for regulars but I’m not quite sure) and wait for the little troll lady (yes, she really does look like a troll) to open the door and let you in. Once inside, you are doomed. Down the spiral staircase into a tight little room with African voodoo masks on the walls and a petite bar. It is here that you are likely to be *allegedly* poisoned by the dodgy booze or *allegedly* touched up by a creepy old paedophile. If you’re lucky, you can have both.
However, Scarborough isn’t just rough on a night out. It’s all the time. Take a trip down Friargate or Cross Street for example and prepare to be set upon by a pack of savage children, claiming that you must pay them for walking down their street. Telling them where to stick it will often result in threats of stabbing, beatings or even death. These lovely people should be in school (which is literally across the road) but are too stupid to attend and therefore spend their lives terrorising the areas, selling drugs and doing drugs. One of this notorious gang, must only be like eleven. And when school time comes, for those that actually do go – the majority being Polish and Asian, that stink in the air actually is the parent’s of one of the rare English children someone smoking weed as they walk the said child to school.
In response to this though, the Old Town ne’er-do-wells who occupy the market, the castle and the beach are nothing compared to those from Barrowcliffe or Eastfield (which is just out of town and past the border but the council insists it belongs to Scarborough anyway) These places resemble war-zones and even on a quick drive through can make one feel uneasy. Hoods, scarves and caps cover faces. Fingers drip with gold rings; fake Burberry and Fred Perry meet the eyes from very which way. Old buildings are barricaded up so they can’t be broken into and the long lines of identical houses vary in states of disrepair. The worse it is, I would guess, the more status the person has.
That being said, Barrowcliffe and Eastfield, crime centrals of Scarborough, do actually house some lovely people who are just unfortunate enough to live there. It’s sad really.
Scarborough beach. Now that sounds like a lovely escape from all the hideousness doesn’t it? Well, think again. Go down the beach and you’re likely to get bombarded with abuse from children who quite clearly skive school considering it’s ten in the morning…on a Wednesday. Aside from these dregs of society that really make one wish the Kid Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang really did exist, one can find the pregnant teen, the druggies, the obligatory alcoholic passed out on a bench, the fighting types. Yes, and their fights are loud and lairy and always seem to be about “YOU STOLE MY BOYFRIEND INNIT” or “YOU BAD MOUTHING MA LITTLE BRITNEY-CHANICE? SHE’S ONLY 2, YA SK*NK” Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside, and unfortunately it’s where they all congregate, enticed by the Siren-call of the **** dance music and ringing of fruit machines that permeates the air, drifting from the arcades. Not to mention the stench of greasy chips. There really is no better habitat.
The younglings used to enjoy Mr. Marvel’s abandoned theme park on North Bay which has now been ripped down as part of a project to make the area better. The Open Air Theatre regularly thrives with sold out audiences for the likes of JLS, N-Dubz, Marcus Collins and a plethora of other cr*p-tastic/X Factor rejected bands much to the excitement of the screaming teenage girls who have nothing better to do as they pass the time waiting to be able to have their next baby. Unfortunately, the Open Air Theatre, though it’s quite far out of the way in the deepest depths of the North side and tucked away behind the hills that border the beach, has one problem…it’s Open Air, so whenever one of these ******* perform there, the whole ******* town can hear it because it has acoustics like a bloody amphitheatre. Great.
The town centre isn’t much better than these aforementioned *********. In fact, the town centre isn’t even worth visiting. The Brunswick shopping centre has nothing of interest, even though it’s the most upmarket part of town. Greenwoods, Next, Debenhams, Topman/Topshop (I know Topman is **** but that’s as far as men’s fashion goes in Scarborough unless you want to wear all your clothes from Sports Direct)
What else do we have in town, I hear you beg as you plan your next holiday to not-so-sunny (in fact it always ******* rains and has more fog than Silent Hill) Scarborough. Well, we have a Greggs now too! Scarborough can officially join the ranks of the simplest of North East towns with that great achievement. It was great to watch the Scarborough ne’er-do-wells go mad upon my return there from University, to see their faces as they tried their first Greggs. Now, they must feed their Greggs AND drug addictions. What other food establishments exist in Scarborough? Well, there’s McDonalds which was once a gorgeous building with wrought iron frameworks, stained glass motifs and they ripped it all down to replace it with wooden frames and make it look like every other McDonald’s in the world.
There’s Pizza Hut over the road too, however, they don’t have a KFC or a Burger King. The latter shut down because they kept getting a sewage leak in the kitchens and it was no longer fit to serve food. Lovely.
So, there we have it. A holiday Guide to Scarbados by someone who lives there. Also, if you are a visitor, watch out for the people who get pissed off at you and walk up the middle of the road to get past. They’re true Scarborians – never let a tourist get in your way. Push them, shove them, snarl at them…or just walk on the road. We don’t mean harm (unless we’re wearing track-suits, a little cap and lots of fake gold), we just don’t like it taking hours to do five minute jobs. At least we’re not ****** here like in Whitby, Filey or Brid.
