lupestripe (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lupestripe) wrote2017-07-09 12:05 am
lupestripe) wrote2017-07-09 12:05 am
Where, The Hell, Has All The Mud Gone?
While I have been catching up with my US trip, there have been a number of happenings over the last fortnight which I have not yet detailed.
A week last Tuesday, 27 June, Wolfie and I headed out into Leeds for one of our regular evenings with Oracle after work. We met him at Atlas Brauhaus as I wanted to give Charlotte, the General Manager there, an update as to our venue situation. As I explained on the newly launched Leeds Furs site earlier in the month, Atlas is closing mid-month to become a trendy cocktail bar, meaning we have had to find a new venue. She has been working behind the scenes to facilitate this, and we have since agreed terms with Bar Soba. Her help has been invaluable and we are hoping that she will stay in touch. She is certainly a good friend to the Leeds Furs.
After giving her an update, we headed over to Mans Markets, a place just off Wellington Street which we had been meaning to try for a while. Tucked under the row of bars here, Mans Market specializes in food from Hong Kong, a cuisine that I had never had before. Going downstairs, the place opens out into a huge sitting area and we were soon shown the card based system where if you want to order a drink, food or pay your bill you placed the relevant card between two pegs above the table. We sampled their specially brewed pilsner while opting for a starter of Pork War Tip Dumplings, which were crispy and rammed full of meat. Wolfie got the Chicken ones and we traded, with me definitely prefering the Pork. For our main, all three of us went for the Mans Mountain Rice, a mountain of rice covered with chicken, vegetables and a creamy coconut sauce. The different flavours were all familiar - quite aromatic with notes of lemongrass mixed with the creaminess of the coconut - but the combination was quite unique, making for a gastronomic experience that I had never had before. The serving lady was also really helpful and we left feeling fully satisifed.
Wolfie's foot was in a bad way, so we decided to try and curtail the walking, heading instead to the collection of new bars underneath the office blocks that had just sprouted up. We had targed Veeno but as Wolfie was not drinking due to having driven in, we thought that may not be overly appropriate. We also spotted another bar, Good Life Bar, which had only just opened, again under one of the new shiny buildings. This was a New York style place with a good range of beer, and indeed seemed perfect as a furmeet venue due to its size and location. They don't open on Saturdays but would do for a private party, suggesting a possibility here. If our new venue doesn't work out, it would be definitely something to consider. The only problem is that aside from the open space immediately outside the entrance, there is little else around there, with only the canal being suitable for a fursuit walk. We traced the steps we would need to take as we walked back into the city and feared it may be too far. As we headed back, we thought about a number of bars in which to have our final drink of the evening but with Wolfie and Oracle being teetotal, it was somewhat difficult. In the end, we walked all the way to BrewDog, where we rounded off the evening.
Last weekend was quite quiet, with us dedicating time to doing jobs around the house, although we did go out on the Saturday (1 July) evening as Brett and Jo wanted to meet up. This was a good night to hit the town as it was also the 20th anniversary party for North Bar, one of the first ever craft beer bars in the UK, which opened in 1997. Back then they largely served Belgian beers but since have developed the craft scene in the city, even collaborating with the guys at Belgrave to set up their own award winning brewery, North Brewing Co. They even brewed an exceptionally juicy and fruity 20th birthday DIPA which could be bought at the bar on the evening. We arrived in Leeds just before 9pm, knowing that North Bar would be rammed and would unlikely to thin out before midnight. This proved to be the case so we started off at Tall Boys, a place where we buy beer but where we rarely drink. Brett knows the staff here personally and as we walked in, we saw him conversing with the guy behind the counter. They had three of their five beers on tap still available so we grabbed a pint of two of them then spent the next hour or so chatting between us all, largely about beer and the beer scene in Leeds.
We left shortly before 10pm and walked past North Bar, seeing it absolutely rammed. As a consequence, we decided to go to the North Brewing Company Brewery itself, which is near my work and open every Friday and Saturday evenings. I had read they were doing Food North on select nights in June and July, where they have a number of food trucks stationed in their car park, and wondered whether this night would be one of them. It turned out to be the case, with a vegan Mexican place and a Thai truck on standby, although by the time we got there, they had sold out of most food. We had already eaten so this wasn't really much of an issue for us, although Brett and Jo hadn't eaten since lunch. The bar was still quite busy though, and there were a number of tables outside too, which is where we sat, enjoying the fact it was still light at such a late hour. There were a number of dogs wandering around, including a small doggo friend who simply just didn't care, even urinating on the green turf of the special throw the beanbag into the hoop game they had. Suffice to say, we didn't play after this. This was Jo's first time at the bar and she was very impressed, telling us so as we headed back into town, which from here is about a ten minute walk away.
We called off at Shuffledog on the way back as we noticed they had a Cloudwater brew on tap from which they were donating fifty percent of the proceeds to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. As it was such a good cause, we decided to waive our usual Brewdog discount so we could give more to charity. The beer was very good, but there was little else of interest in this bar, with the range of beer having gone downhill since the turn of the year. As a consequence, we decided to try Belgrave but that was way too loud and way too busy to be enjoyable. We then moved on, trying to find a place we could go. As Brett and Jo ordered takeaway in one of the dire fast food places on Briggate, I noticed that Slate (which has now been renamed to something else but I forgot what the hell that is) and Social were pretty quiet. Spying the open gate into their beer garden down one of the side streets, we dodged the bouncers and headed in, only to be told that the Social was closing and thus we had to go to Slate. This was fine, but the range of beers was nowhere near as good as it used to be, and we ended up getting a few in can and bottle. Still the Thai Green Tea one from Ridgeside was good, and it was good to sit outside in a beer garden, with a string of white lights twinkling above us and the warmth of a summer's evening consuming us.
We had checked North Bar before going to the beer garden but it was still busy. By the time we left, it was touching midnight so we made the executive decision to go into North regardless, which is what we did do afterwards. It was still exceptionally busy but there was nowhere else we could really go, plus they had their Scandi beer fest on, meaning there was a range of interesting brews to try. And try them we did, starting with the anniversary IPA and then moving on to a range of others. We had a 12% chocolate stout that tasted exactly like a Double Decker while I was encouraged to buy one of their 20th birthday packs, with the profits being donated to St Gemma's, a hospice in Leeds for which I do some mascot work. Inside the pack was a can of Transmission beer, a badge, a bobble hat, a bottle opener and a history of the bar, which for £20 wasn't too shabby indeed. There was cake on the side of the bar but alas I couldn't get any, with it being obstructed by an Austrian to whom I thought it would be good to speak German in a loud voice. I was clearly getting quite drunk by this stage, although I still felt sober when I had entered, and when the tunes became Nineties classics such as Parklife by Blur and Common People by Pulp, I was pretty much in heaven. Added to this was the 'Brexit is shit' graffitied on a blackboard in the toilets and it was pretty much perfect.
The bar thinned out shortly after 1am, and I think we stayed for another forty minutes, enjoying the beer and of course the company. Jo fancied some dancing and was starting to feel the alcohol, so she and Brett headed over to Mojo, an indie club around the corner. We followed them ten minutes later but we couldn't find them amongst the thronging masses. As a consequence, we left, noticing that The Domino was still open. This is an underground speakeasy which has been open for about three months. Situated inside a fake hairdressers, you technically need to know it exists and which one of two doors takes you down there. At that time of night, the door was wide open, so it was pretty obvious but the gentleman at the door was still watching out for things. He held on to my can of Transmission as we headed inside, with us ordering two peanut butter stouts at exorbitant cost. This is more a whisky and cocktail place than a beer place, but I did enjoy the underground vibe, even if I couldn't quite finish my beer. We called it quits shortly afterwards, walked down to the gay area to pick up a taxi and got dropped off at home at around 2:30am by a guy who said he never picked really drunk people up. Assumedly this was a sign that we weren't that bad. Still, once back we did polish off a full tube of Pringles so perhaps we were.
When you get to your Thirties, no-one ever tells you that two day hangovers are a thing but Christ was I still suffering on the Monday morning. It was that or my incredibly poor sleep, as I had suffered insomnia the previous night to nearly 4am. Wolfie was down in Bristol on Monday through Wednesday, leaving me pottering around the house on my own. Jo was in London on work too, having just been promoted at work. She was away Tuesday through Thursday, leaving Brett on his own for the regular monthly quiz they do in little Brewdog. He had asked me whether I could join him on the Tuesday (4 July) evening and I agreed on Saturday night, but as Tuesday became closer I started to have my doubts. I want to avoid drinking on a weekday ideally, and the quiz starting at 8pm meant I had a lot of time to kill in town. In the end, work overran and I ended up in little Brewdog anyway, talking to the staff about beer. This was after I had called in at a new heavy metal bar called Howl, which is situated near the Old Red Bus Station. The beer here is okay - Brooklyn Scorcher Ale was the best they had - but it was great to have a bar in Leeds dedicated to heavy metal. There were only four of us in the bar, all single and sat at different tables, and the place was small enough to make this awkward, but I am delighted I got to try it. The Russian lady at work had recommended it to me.
After this, I had developed a taste for alcohol, which is how I ended up in Brewdog. Starting a conversation, I found I had ordered a third, and I texted Brett to change my mind about the quiz, having turned it down earlier in the day. He was cooking but said he would get a cab and meet me in the bar, giving me just enough time to walk around Leeds to find then have something to eat. It actually proved tricky but I ended up in The Griffin, having a burrito which was cheap and cheerful. Brett too was slightly early and ended up in Friends of Ham, which is where we met before we walked over to Brewdog together. We were bang on time, but technical issues with the microphone meant the quiz started quite late. Still, we were patient and as we waited, Brett pointed out the main competition, a Scotsman with an insane knowledge for beer. With 30 general knowledge and 10 beer knowledge questions, this would prove crucial but Brett has a habit of finishing first or second in this quiz so I knew we had a chance. In the end, we romped it, getting 33/40, eight points more than the Scotsman's team and twelve more than the third highest. Our knowledge complemented each other's perfectly, with me getting the sports questions and Brett securing the music ones for example. I did struggle to remember that 'How To Disappear Completely' was the Radiohead song that BrewDog had named a beer after, getting it just as we had handed our paper to be marked, but I changed it quickly to grab an extra point. Aside from that, I was surprised by just how comfortable our victory was, and of course the £10 beer vouchers each made it for a rather cheap night. I headed off about 10:15pm, and stayed up until 1:30am as I got absorbed in the Ian Hislop documentary about the first great immigration debate from 1880-1920, which meant I was a little fuzzy for work and felt a little guilty too. It was still a great evening though and I am glad I went out.
A week last Tuesday, 27 June, Wolfie and I headed out into Leeds for one of our regular evenings with Oracle after work. We met him at Atlas Brauhaus as I wanted to give Charlotte, the General Manager there, an update as to our venue situation. As I explained on the newly launched Leeds Furs site earlier in the month, Atlas is closing mid-month to become a trendy cocktail bar, meaning we have had to find a new venue. She has been working behind the scenes to facilitate this, and we have since agreed terms with Bar Soba. Her help has been invaluable and we are hoping that she will stay in touch. She is certainly a good friend to the Leeds Furs.
After giving her an update, we headed over to Mans Markets, a place just off Wellington Street which we had been meaning to try for a while. Tucked under the row of bars here, Mans Market specializes in food from Hong Kong, a cuisine that I had never had before. Going downstairs, the place opens out into a huge sitting area and we were soon shown the card based system where if you want to order a drink, food or pay your bill you placed the relevant card between two pegs above the table. We sampled their specially brewed pilsner while opting for a starter of Pork War Tip Dumplings, which were crispy and rammed full of meat. Wolfie got the Chicken ones and we traded, with me definitely prefering the Pork. For our main, all three of us went for the Mans Mountain Rice, a mountain of rice covered with chicken, vegetables and a creamy coconut sauce. The different flavours were all familiar - quite aromatic with notes of lemongrass mixed with the creaminess of the coconut - but the combination was quite unique, making for a gastronomic experience that I had never had before. The serving lady was also really helpful and we left feeling fully satisifed.
Wolfie's foot was in a bad way, so we decided to try and curtail the walking, heading instead to the collection of new bars underneath the office blocks that had just sprouted up. We had targed Veeno but as Wolfie was not drinking due to having driven in, we thought that may not be overly appropriate. We also spotted another bar, Good Life Bar, which had only just opened, again under one of the new shiny buildings. This was a New York style place with a good range of beer, and indeed seemed perfect as a furmeet venue due to its size and location. They don't open on Saturdays but would do for a private party, suggesting a possibility here. If our new venue doesn't work out, it would be definitely something to consider. The only problem is that aside from the open space immediately outside the entrance, there is little else around there, with only the canal being suitable for a fursuit walk. We traced the steps we would need to take as we walked back into the city and feared it may be too far. As we headed back, we thought about a number of bars in which to have our final drink of the evening but with Wolfie and Oracle being teetotal, it was somewhat difficult. In the end, we walked all the way to BrewDog, where we rounded off the evening.
Last weekend was quite quiet, with us dedicating time to doing jobs around the house, although we did go out on the Saturday (1 July) evening as Brett and Jo wanted to meet up. This was a good night to hit the town as it was also the 20th anniversary party for North Bar, one of the first ever craft beer bars in the UK, which opened in 1997. Back then they largely served Belgian beers but since have developed the craft scene in the city, even collaborating with the guys at Belgrave to set up their own award winning brewery, North Brewing Co. They even brewed an exceptionally juicy and fruity 20th birthday DIPA which could be bought at the bar on the evening. We arrived in Leeds just before 9pm, knowing that North Bar would be rammed and would unlikely to thin out before midnight. This proved to be the case so we started off at Tall Boys, a place where we buy beer but where we rarely drink. Brett knows the staff here personally and as we walked in, we saw him conversing with the guy behind the counter. They had three of their five beers on tap still available so we grabbed a pint of two of them then spent the next hour or so chatting between us all, largely about beer and the beer scene in Leeds.
We left shortly before 10pm and walked past North Bar, seeing it absolutely rammed. As a consequence, we decided to go to the North Brewing Company Brewery itself, which is near my work and open every Friday and Saturday evenings. I had read they were doing Food North on select nights in June and July, where they have a number of food trucks stationed in their car park, and wondered whether this night would be one of them. It turned out to be the case, with a vegan Mexican place and a Thai truck on standby, although by the time we got there, they had sold out of most food. We had already eaten so this wasn't really much of an issue for us, although Brett and Jo hadn't eaten since lunch. The bar was still quite busy though, and there were a number of tables outside too, which is where we sat, enjoying the fact it was still light at such a late hour. There were a number of dogs wandering around, including a small doggo friend who simply just didn't care, even urinating on the green turf of the special throw the beanbag into the hoop game they had. Suffice to say, we didn't play after this. This was Jo's first time at the bar and she was very impressed, telling us so as we headed back into town, which from here is about a ten minute walk away.
We called off at Shuffledog on the way back as we noticed they had a Cloudwater brew on tap from which they were donating fifty percent of the proceeds to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. As it was such a good cause, we decided to waive our usual Brewdog discount so we could give more to charity. The beer was very good, but there was little else of interest in this bar, with the range of beer having gone downhill since the turn of the year. As a consequence, we decided to try Belgrave but that was way too loud and way too busy to be enjoyable. We then moved on, trying to find a place we could go. As Brett and Jo ordered takeaway in one of the dire fast food places on Briggate, I noticed that Slate (which has now been renamed to something else but I forgot what the hell that is) and Social were pretty quiet. Spying the open gate into their beer garden down one of the side streets, we dodged the bouncers and headed in, only to be told that the Social was closing and thus we had to go to Slate. This was fine, but the range of beers was nowhere near as good as it used to be, and we ended up getting a few in can and bottle. Still the Thai Green Tea one from Ridgeside was good, and it was good to sit outside in a beer garden, with a string of white lights twinkling above us and the warmth of a summer's evening consuming us.
We had checked North Bar before going to the beer garden but it was still busy. By the time we left, it was touching midnight so we made the executive decision to go into North regardless, which is what we did do afterwards. It was still exceptionally busy but there was nowhere else we could really go, plus they had their Scandi beer fest on, meaning there was a range of interesting brews to try. And try them we did, starting with the anniversary IPA and then moving on to a range of others. We had a 12% chocolate stout that tasted exactly like a Double Decker while I was encouraged to buy one of their 20th birthday packs, with the profits being donated to St Gemma's, a hospice in Leeds for which I do some mascot work. Inside the pack was a can of Transmission beer, a badge, a bobble hat, a bottle opener and a history of the bar, which for £20 wasn't too shabby indeed. There was cake on the side of the bar but alas I couldn't get any, with it being obstructed by an Austrian to whom I thought it would be good to speak German in a loud voice. I was clearly getting quite drunk by this stage, although I still felt sober when I had entered, and when the tunes became Nineties classics such as Parklife by Blur and Common People by Pulp, I was pretty much in heaven. Added to this was the 'Brexit is shit' graffitied on a blackboard in the toilets and it was pretty much perfect.
The bar thinned out shortly after 1am, and I think we stayed for another forty minutes, enjoying the beer and of course the company. Jo fancied some dancing and was starting to feel the alcohol, so she and Brett headed over to Mojo, an indie club around the corner. We followed them ten minutes later but we couldn't find them amongst the thronging masses. As a consequence, we left, noticing that The Domino was still open. This is an underground speakeasy which has been open for about three months. Situated inside a fake hairdressers, you technically need to know it exists and which one of two doors takes you down there. At that time of night, the door was wide open, so it was pretty obvious but the gentleman at the door was still watching out for things. He held on to my can of Transmission as we headed inside, with us ordering two peanut butter stouts at exorbitant cost. This is more a whisky and cocktail place than a beer place, but I did enjoy the underground vibe, even if I couldn't quite finish my beer. We called it quits shortly afterwards, walked down to the gay area to pick up a taxi and got dropped off at home at around 2:30am by a guy who said he never picked really drunk people up. Assumedly this was a sign that we weren't that bad. Still, once back we did polish off a full tube of Pringles so perhaps we were.
When you get to your Thirties, no-one ever tells you that two day hangovers are a thing but Christ was I still suffering on the Monday morning. It was that or my incredibly poor sleep, as I had suffered insomnia the previous night to nearly 4am. Wolfie was down in Bristol on Monday through Wednesday, leaving me pottering around the house on my own. Jo was in London on work too, having just been promoted at work. She was away Tuesday through Thursday, leaving Brett on his own for the regular monthly quiz they do in little Brewdog. He had asked me whether I could join him on the Tuesday (4 July) evening and I agreed on Saturday night, but as Tuesday became closer I started to have my doubts. I want to avoid drinking on a weekday ideally, and the quiz starting at 8pm meant I had a lot of time to kill in town. In the end, work overran and I ended up in little Brewdog anyway, talking to the staff about beer. This was after I had called in at a new heavy metal bar called Howl, which is situated near the Old Red Bus Station. The beer here is okay - Brooklyn Scorcher Ale was the best they had - but it was great to have a bar in Leeds dedicated to heavy metal. There were only four of us in the bar, all single and sat at different tables, and the place was small enough to make this awkward, but I am delighted I got to try it. The Russian lady at work had recommended it to me.
After this, I had developed a taste for alcohol, which is how I ended up in Brewdog. Starting a conversation, I found I had ordered a third, and I texted Brett to change my mind about the quiz, having turned it down earlier in the day. He was cooking but said he would get a cab and meet me in the bar, giving me just enough time to walk around Leeds to find then have something to eat. It actually proved tricky but I ended up in The Griffin, having a burrito which was cheap and cheerful. Brett too was slightly early and ended up in Friends of Ham, which is where we met before we walked over to Brewdog together. We were bang on time, but technical issues with the microphone meant the quiz started quite late. Still, we were patient and as we waited, Brett pointed out the main competition, a Scotsman with an insane knowledge for beer. With 30 general knowledge and 10 beer knowledge questions, this would prove crucial but Brett has a habit of finishing first or second in this quiz so I knew we had a chance. In the end, we romped it, getting 33/40, eight points more than the Scotsman's team and twelve more than the third highest. Our knowledge complemented each other's perfectly, with me getting the sports questions and Brett securing the music ones for example. I did struggle to remember that 'How To Disappear Completely' was the Radiohead song that BrewDog had named a beer after, getting it just as we had handed our paper to be marked, but I changed it quickly to grab an extra point. Aside from that, I was surprised by just how comfortable our victory was, and of course the £10 beer vouchers each made it for a rather cheap night. I headed off about 10:15pm, and stayed up until 1:30am as I got absorbed in the Ian Hislop documentary about the first great immigration debate from 1880-1920, which meant I was a little fuzzy for work and felt a little guilty too. It was still a great evening though and I am glad I went out.