West Riding

Hmm. Where to start?
West Riding is located on Wellington Street, right in the heart of Leeds’s financial district and a stone’s throw from Leeds city train station.
Quite why you would want to throw stones at a train station, I don’t know. I’ve always thought they were rather useful places & if I’m brutally honest, we should have a lot more of them than we currently have.
*shakes fist and yells profanities Dr Beeching & previous /​current Government-​wards*
Erm. Anyway. Where was I?
Oh yes. West Riding. The bar’s located next to a strip club (which I’m obviously not going to talk about here. any fair, impartial review would require far more dedicated investigation and research.) so it’s a little overshadowed by the lurid blue neon sign and gaudy frontage that seems to be the preserve of «gentlemen’s» clubs the world over. (Why are they always neon? Has no one thought of trying a more floral or chintz based approach to strip club frontage?). So, you might not actually notice it immediately — despite the fact it’s on a very busy main road right near an incredibly busy mainline train station.
But — when you do, it’s worth a trip in for a post work (or, dare I say it in this culture of paranoia and worry in the workplace) — a quick Friday lunchtime pint. There, I’ve said it.
There’s a reasonable range of beers /​lagers on tap (including some rather delicious Copper Dragon), the drinks are reasonably priced and the staff are generally friendly enough, even on busy Friday evenings. The house red wine is, erm, well «interesting» is the way I would politely put it, but it’s pretty cheap, so (to quote Aldous Huxley* and (bizarrely) also Status Quo**) — you pays your money and you takes your choice.
Décor — nothing amazing, pretty generic but comfortable enough. One minor gripe is that the gentlemen’s toilets seem to be located somewhere on the outer fringes of Bootle (all right, they’re upstairs) so are quite tricky to find when a) you’ve never been before and b) you’ve had a few too many Copper Dragons.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend West Riding as somewhere for a long and lengthy alcohol fuelled chat about life, the universe and Everything But The Girl, but it’s worth nipping into for a quick cheap pint or two .
Maybe not when it’s packed with noisy Leeds fans waiting for their trains home. To be fair, they were just noisy (there was no trouble) but I really don’t appreciate being barged out of the way by ignorant, unapologetic Neanderthals when just standing near the bar waiting for a drink.
*Preface to Brave New World — one of the greatest books ever written.
**Lyric from «Whatever You Want», one of the — oh, well, let’s just leave it there. It is a great song though :)