Bradford Live

....you look forward to it all day, join the queue!, and when the entrance opens up you dive straight in

 

I went to the Wool City Rockers event at Bradford Live on Saturday. As I was really only interested in seeing New Model Army, I didn't miss out on the City game in the afternoon. I really like Bradford Live as a venue and I think it's been worth the wait. However, having also been to The Fast Show Live a couple of weeks ago, I knew that the prices, queues and lack of seating facilities at BL meant that we'd be better off trying to get food and drink in town beforehand. The Midland Hotel was good for both, and there were a few other City fans in there as well. We headed off up to the Darley Street Market as I hadn't been inside it before, and although most of it was closed, the upper floor for food and drink had a decent number of guests and we had a good pint at Northern Monk. Although we weren't really familiar with the Bradford "nightlife" any more (not really having been into town since the days of Tumblers etc.), we decided to venture further to see what we could find at the lower end of town. Answer: sod all. Sunbridge Wells - quite quiet and disappointing. Wetherspoons - busy but an overwhelming smell of disinfectant. Pictureville bar - shut. Alhambra bar - shut. We couldn't see anything else open anywhere so decided to just go straight to BL. (As we were walking back through town afterwards, we did spot The Exchange on Market Street, which looked nice and we wished we'd seen that on our way in earlier.) Overall though, a very disappointing impression of what Bradford's evening hospitality sector has to offer in the centre of town. We knew that North Parade has some decent places, but we didn't want to have to schlepp all the way up there just for a pint. For all its jewels (and Bradford Live is definitely now one of them), we felt that the city's nightlife is just quite intimidating and very disappointing (unlike in the 80s and 90s). So we'll continue to use Bradford Live (as well as Pictureville, The Alhambra, St. George's Hall, etc.) and look forward to more decent bands and acts there, but the rest of the town centre just has so little to offer.

Edit: Actually, where do university students go in an evening? The Queens Hall behind The Alhambra was a good place for live bands. We used to go and see bands up at the uni as well.

 

Leeds. Greek Street or Call Lane in Leeds will have more students out that the entire BD1 postcode on a Saturday night these days. It's a ghost town in Bradford, but even the people that do go out, you wont see a lot of youth anymore.

 

Yeah, Leeds doesn't surprise me. A good student city with a vibrant nightlife and diversity of eateries, pubs, bars, live venues, etc. The polar opposite of Bradford really.

 

Bradford died on its arse a long time ago. Not the only place, nightlife as we would know doesn't exist anymore in a lot of places. Can still find.dexemt places if you look elsewhere, Halifax has more eating and drinking choices than Bradford as do outlying areas such as Solitaire and Hebden Bridge.

 

The proportion of students at Bradford Uni who now go out for traditional student nightlife is tiny. The vast majority of Bradford Uni students are now from local Asian families, who live at home and don’t drink alcohol, or overseas students who tend to stick to their own groups.
I worked as a part time lecturer at Bradford Uni between 2016 and 2020. The contrast from when I was a student was stark. The whole setup has changed from when I was there in the early 80s. There are no student discos like Pickwicks, Champagne etc. There is now only one tiny bar on campus, buried deep in what used to be the Commie Building. What used to be a nationally vibrant university campus live bands circuit died out years ago - not just in Bradford..
Any student from elsewhere in Britain wanting to go to a university with something close to a traditional student social life would look at the Bradford student demographic and read about the social activities and choose to apply to other universities.