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16 July 2007

Dudley Zoological Gardens - an amateur review We went to the zoo in Dudley. It was kind of a shithole, to be fair. [More:]Even as you drive up to it, you see nothing but burnt-out empty buildings and litter. If I could've pulled a U-turn and gone back towards Brum, I probably would've done it.

I feel bad, really, for disliking it so much. The people who run the zoo are saddled with a bunch of ugly old listed buildings/animal enclosures which cannot be torn down because they are prime examples of some architect's workd. Walking through them feels like being on the set of Planet of the Apes. The Oran-Utan exhibit is criminal, and people were feeding the apes despite massive signs forbidding such behaviour. There were two newish enclosures, one for lemurs and one for small monkeys, and they were very good, but the rest of the place had serious issues. Apparently, there is a £40m upgrade in the works, and I hope it goes through.

I think the people who work there are nothing short of heroic, but that's not enough to make me recommend the experience to anyone. There was a serious effort to close the zoo at one point, and, after a visit, I can see why. They have improved it, but there's no way to really 'fix' the place short of tearing most of it down (which is impossible).

There is a pretty nice 13th century ruined castle [cool trivia: the oldest condoms found (rather than just pictures or descriptions) are from 1640, discovered in Dudley Castle] on the site, but climbing up to it only offers views of Dudley itself, which is probably the most blighted, ugly, worn-out, battle-scarred town in the free world.

I mean it's UGLY. Even the widdwe baby Jesus hates this town. Satan would take over, but he's afraid to park his car there.

Right across from the zoo, there's a hideous old Georgian building [with a gold sign that reads 'Dudley Central Mosque'] that's situated between a dilapidated casino and a massive bingo parlour. And THAT'S the high street.

Freakishly, Dudley is the 19th largest settlement in England, and is the second largest 'town' in the United Kingdom, behind Reading [because it lacks a Cathedral]. It is also the largest town in the Black Country. I genuinely feel sorry for all of the 195,000 people who live there. It *sucks*.

Everywhere you look, children are smoking cigarettes, french kissing each other, fighting, loudly cursing and littering. It's like the Worst Place in Britain: the city that never made it onto the brochure. Even the local accent is the worst thing you've ever heard, and is universally lampooned.

Dudley is the largest town in England currently without and, indeed, never to have had a league football club. The town's key football team, Dudley Town F.C, has never progressed beyond the Southern Premier League.

Don't let this site fool you. I guarantee that there are no reasons to be cheerful this summer if you live in Dudley. It's like Bad Lucksville. The village of Lower Gornal, just outside Dudley, was the epicentre for the Dudley earthquake of 2002, the largest earthquake to hit the United Kingdom in nearly 10 years.

I took some photos of the prettier bits, but it was quite a challenge to find any.
I considered taking a job in Dudley, once, though have never been there: I was deterred by reports I’d heard about the place from West-Midlanders, which were no more complimentary than yours.

You might enjoy reading some of the reports of crap towns at The Idler.
posted by misteraitch 16 July | 04:29
What a link! That's got to be the meanest list I've ever seen.

It's genius, really. I mean:

Liverpool

You get a vague indication quite how bad “The ‘Pool” is from the preponderance of shifty Scousers handing out flyers for live, hardcore porn shows outside Amsterdam’s Casa Rossa sex club.

If they can’t bear to call their grimy, broken-glassed, metropolis home then why should anybody else in their right mind go there?

You could put your powers of taste and decency on hold for a while and visit for a few bitterly unfulfilling hours but surely you’ve got more rewarding things to do…like cleaning the oven.

Come to the home of the Beatles, they whine. Well, why bother? Do you really
want to listen to the bitter outpourings of a prat (now thankfully dead) who “Imagines no possessions” while sat on his fat arse at a Steinway in his gated £3m pad.

Or there’s that wonderful Scouse wit. That’s the sort of repartee celebrated by the funniest man in the cosmos - Stan “I could kill an Indian” Boardman - or that colossos of the comedy world Jimmy Tarbuck.

Truth is the sense of humour’s fine as long as it’s directed at somebody else….but as soon as it’s fired back at them, the thin-skinned slimeballs launch into howls of self-pity.

If they’re not cramming chips into their greasy maws, they they’re piling as many as they possibly can onto their round shoulders.

They’re misunderstood, they’re misinterpreted, they’re patronised, they’re underinvested, they’re unappreciated. They’re Scousers.

And as for the thieving….

Ringo
posted by chuckdarwin 16 July | 05:15
I remember going to Dudley Zoo on a school trip when I was about 8. They had a killer whale there called 'Cuddles' who got his teeth cleaned with a giant toothbrush. Oh, and there was a chairlift, which was probably condemned by the council as a mortal danger to life and limb even then.
posted by essexjan 16 July | 06:00
Yeah, said chairlift has been condemned, but is still extant. Ugly as shit, as well.
posted by chuckdarwin 16 July | 06:19
Seems odd to call an urb with 200,000 people, "a town". That would be a decent sized city in the US.
posted by octothorpe 16 July | 08:54
Traditionally, the criterion for being a city was to have a cathedral, which means there are plenty of cities that are smaller than towns. Technically, the mechanism for a town to become a city is for the Queen to issue letters patent.

Wikipedia has a vast article about this.
posted by matthewr 16 July | 10:16
Thanks, matthewr! I had no idea about this.
posted by chuckdarwin 16 July | 10:41
The smallest city, St David's in Wales, has a population of 1,800, while the largest town, Reading, has a population of 230,000.
posted by matthewr 16 July | 10:42
I remember the Queen declaring Derby a city during her Silver Jubilee tour of 1977. There'd been a cathedral there for years before that. Despite it not appearing in Crap Towns, Derby was a shithole then and remains so to this day.

Oh, and in honour of the Queen's said visit the council built a fancy new toilet in the council offices, just in case she needed to use it. Well, she did, but some prankster (who deserves a medal) had been there first and didn't flush. I believe the council used the entire next year's rates budget on the enquiry to find out who it was (they never did, and no, it wasn't me), thus ensuring the financial ruin and closure of various schools and leisure facilities in the new city.
posted by essexjan 16 July | 10:51
ning? Pownce? Twitter? That other twitter? || Um, Michael Bay? Really?

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