Wanna terrify your friends and family? Utter one of these and watch as they recoil in horror...
1. ‘There’ll be a bar open on Broad Street’
.Martin.
Yes. Yes there will be a bar on Broad Street. You’re quite right. It is, after all, a nigh-on 24/7 orgy of puking, fighting and pulling (often at the same time). However, there will also be a fresh carpet of chip wrappers, off-duty footballers looking for schoolgirls to interfere with and three women called Tracey, on the kerb sat next to a pair of stilletos, crying. Count us out.
2. ‘Looks like you’ll have to get the nightbus home’
Hamish Duncan
Nightbus? What’s that when it’s at home? Yep, we might be the UK’s second city, but for some reason, Brum has the late-night bus provision of a shithole coastal hamlet in the 1930s. Need Network West Midlands to get you home from town after 12.30am on a weeknight? Then you best lie in wait outside their office building for a night-shift worker you can hop aboard and piggy back ride home. Because Christ knows their buses aren’t gonna help you.
3. ‘The Hagley Road looks like the most direct route to work’
hillman54
Sure, take the Hagley Road. Never mind that it’s rush hour, maybe it’ll be running smoothly. And maybe time will run backwards, unicorns will roam Cannon Hill Park and Needless Alley will have stopped reeking of stale piss. Not only is the Hagley Road congested, it’s so maddeningly traffic-jammed a stretch of tarmac that two years ago it was named one of the slowest roads in Britain. Avoid. Avoid at all costs.
4. ‘Birmingham City Council redevelopment scheme’
Elliott Brown
Oh, Christ. Why don’t we just call it ‘massive balls up’ and have done with it? Yes, there are parts of Brum that could do with some work. But can the council be trusted not to screw it up? Nuh-uh. Item 1: the library that they can’t afford to actually run. Item 2: The attempt to make our new indoor markets sound like rip-offs of London’s Smithfields Market. Item 3: the redevelopment of New St station. Or, as we like to think of it: ‘The Transformer’s Eyeball’.
5. ‘How about a night-time canal walk?’
Basti V
Three words: don’t do it. Sure, we’ve got more miles of canal than Venice, but at night-time we also have more miles of man-on-man sex action, weed smoking teens and terrifyingly unlit stretches of towpath. The latter of which are particularly scary once you’re out of the city centre, and the inky gloom is full of the creepy squawks of the city’s wildlife. Or at least we think it’s the wildlife. Could just be some cottagers who got lucky.
Like this? Read Alexi's 'Ten ways to annoy a Brummie'.