Delaneys Bar

Ah Delaneys. This bar is honest to god as mad as toast.
A little piece of Ireland squirrelled away in the back streets of Beirut. You may have spotted the front door that isn’t a door (on Harehills Road) if you take the 50, 50a or 49 from town to Harehills/​Seacroft but the real magic starts around the corner. At the ACTUAL door. Where like the finest of the super exclusive London clubs you have to ring a buzzer and be scrutinised via CCTV before the owner (Irish Elvis, or Elvish as I like to call him) will stand down the Aliens style sentry guns and let you in. A word of advice, if you have even one vaguely female person in your cohort then entry is pretty much guaranteed.
Once inside and up the rickety stairs you will come to a plain brown fire door, where either Elvish himself, or more likely anyone standing by the fruit machine, will let you in. Aaaaaaaaand that’s where the comparison with an exclusive London club ends. In fact it doesn’t just end. It expires combustively.
You have to have the laisse-​faire attitude of an alley cat to want to drink in Delaneys, and perhaps that’s why I like it. There’s lurid flashing neon signs, tanned old Harehills battleaxes in white lycra and sovereigns, pool tables, gambling, a totally bonkers ‘UV seating area’ which makes your skin purple and your teeth yellow… for no apparent reason, sports on tv, live Irish violinists, those funny straight armed dancers who seem to have a thousand legs, proper Guinness, improper language and once you’ve passed that CCTV entry system you are pretty much one of the family.
I wont lie, there are some really quite rough sorts in Delaneys of a night, but just smile without showing your teeth and go sit in the window to watch the crazy world of Harehills ignite below, whilst you drink inexplicable wine and slowly adopt an Ulster accent. It’s clean, well looked after and up to you if you want to talk to everyone or no-​one at all.
Delaneys is a world apart, 30 years out of date and odd as a box of frogs but it’s great fun. Elvish is massive and takes no crap off anyone, I may have found the way some regulars LOOK intimidating but I’ve never seen any trouble there– who in their right mind would take on a 6ft high 7ft wide drunk Irish landlord in his own gaff with rusty farming implements hanging above the bar? No-​one, that’s who. Elvish for Yorkshire Police Commissioner! Cast your votes now!!!
Give Delaneys a try if you are ever on Harehills Lane/​Road, it’s open all day and seemingly all night. Bonkers bars like this are an increasing niche in cosmopolitan Leeds and I strongly recommend you man up your inner David Attenborough and go see some local wildlife before it goes extinct.