The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Southampton, Hampshire*

Southampton, Hampshire Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• The Hobbit pub is really nice from the back.
• Soton Uni union!
• Again, the Winston! Also, The Archers (opposite) coz I used to live there.
• the dell, home of southampton football club, rulers of the bottom of the premiership.
• Harbour Lights Picture House, City Art Gallery side of the Civic Centre, St. Michael's Church-Bugle Street, the Red Lion pub opposite Habitat on the High Street, God's House Tower, which is also the museum of local archaeology - (of which there is a lot, as Southampton was settled by successive waves iron age peoples, romans, and saxons. The collection also got 'designated' which means it's nationally significant).
• Tudor House - not only is it a house, but it's also Tudor! Its a good museum to visit too.
• The Dolphin Inn below Bar, Jane Austen got her ideas about dances here.
• The Bargate - the original gateway to Southampton
• The building that Goblets pub is part of - really old and beautiful

Demolish It Now Building

• Leisureworld, Skandia House, Marlands, Westquay, EastStreet, the whole city centre area, really. Buildings only a fascist could love.
• WEST QUAY SHOPPING CENTRE
• soton uni matha building
• Leisure World
• weston estate
• The Dell!
• shirley police station, actually, all the police stations in southampton
• East-Street multi-storey car park. aka the Bermuda triangle. You arrive on the top floor and exit on the top floor. How do you get down to the other levels?
• Macdonalds (not popular I know)
• The Civic Centre, it would be much better as a theme park............
• Ocean Village, East Street Shopping Centre and Town Quay must be destroyed!
• Most of Southampton City Centre-very post war ugliness

The Best Things

• the weather is good - with the added benefit being that gobal warming will eventually submerge southampton
• Some good nights out - by the water - an "open" town in terms of lots of parks, and fairly flat buildings and wide roads. As opposed to Winchester, which is pretty claustrophobic in the centre. Being able to stay in some clubs 'till 3am now thereby avoiding the lager boys (and related violence) between 11:30 and 1am
• It's sunny.
• NONE OF IT!
• town is a really good place to find sexy skaters/punkers etc, especially Mayflower Park. love those baggy jeans guys. another good thing used to be the HMV wall, but they ripped it down.
• There's a good underground dance scene and a pretty good indie scene.
• Mayflower skate park
• the common on the avenue
• hot women
• My Friends live here, there's always something to do, people are friendly (mostly), the new shopping centre is gonna be cool, and you can say southampton in a lock-stock accent - sairfamton! innit!!!
• the people
• The Common and the parks. The bits of the Solent you can see. and the fact that it's relatively easy to get out of, either to the bright lights of London, or to the beaches and wide open spaces of the New Forest.
• Cheap beer at The Institute's Student Union!!!
• The Civic Centre,( I suppose it is historic by now) in the 1940's my grandfather, born 1870, used to call it the "bloody jam factory"
• Friendly, happy and cool.
• Everyone wants to be a DJ! :)
• West Buckland is located between Barnstaple and South Molton in North Devon. Situated on the edge of Exmoor it is beautiful in the summer but a bit bleak in the Winter! Used to be reached by windy lanes, access is much easier now due to the North Devon Relief road. Nearby places - East Buckland, Charles Bottom.

The Worst Things

• A master of nothing much at all. As the sign says - Home of the BT Global Challenge - if that's the claim to fame then need i say what the bad things are!
• why oh why did they have to build st.mary's and the newtown estate-[the council hellhole].
• the people, the weird cockney/cornish accent, the general lack of atmosphere and the fact that locals are proud of coming from the same town as craig david
• Useless bus service in evenings, lack of a really good "superclub". I don't know who said IKON get big name DJ's but I've only ever seen Artful Dodger and Judge Jules, and they only bother to turn up on a Monday.... Total lack of a good metal club too, although I head about "the Base" sometime ago but never found it. faaaaaar too many traffic lights.
• Townies. Southampton women are all gobby cows. Southampton men are a joke. Portsmouth is too near. Fish & Chips are CRAP.
• ALL OF IT!
• All Sotonions are proud of the fact that the Titanic sunk after it left Southampton. Almost everyone in Southampton is related to the last survivor.
• West Quay! its just a huge space w/ hardly any decent shops, and a total waste of money. the stupid new benches which can never replace the wondrous thing that was the HMV wall.
• Where to start... Students and townies are moreorless indistinguishable, its like an experiment in conformity gone wrong. There's dull middle class bits, the polished evil of the town centre, a very dangerous red light district and nothing else really. Southampton is soulless.
• The boat show
• the buses(always late when it's cold/raining!)
• Someone give that poor little shit an education.
• southampton is a dump there is housing estates evreywhere there is fuck all to do the housing estates are filed with youths that roam the streets till all hours and the police do not do a thing about itok southampton has some nightclubs it as ikon and newyork newyork but that gets boring after a while any students thinking of going to southampton dont bother my course finishes soon and i hope i never have to see southampton again
• There are lots of students and they tend to make a mess, sorry guys but you do.
• some of the people
• public transport's not that clever - it's an 18hr city with a 12hr transport system. .
• The students - the new lifeblood of this city.
• Southampton F.C.!!! (Come on locals - admit it!!)
• Alan Mead's rambling on in "The Stuff We Can't Fit in Somewhere else" bit - Is he trying to sell a book or summat?
• Crowds of exchange students in the summer.

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

In most cases, the information in each section has been submitted by more than one contributor (the credits at the bottom of the page list some, but not all, of the contributors) and some of it dates back to the 1970s.

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Credits

Last updated: 2008-02-16