The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in St Albans, Hertfordshire*

St Albans, Hertfordshire Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• the concrete square in the park
• The Cathedral at night all lit up is pretty impressive.
• Ye Olde Fighting Cocks.. the cocks that fight bring me pleausre all week long.
• Verulam School, home of the biggest psycho collective since Fido and his friends wore flight suits and broke into an old mental hospital. They discovered a whole stack of gimps all stacked up in a big heap with ball-masks on. Fido unzipped their leather clothing, and introduced himself to them. But he had to leave in a hurry because Martin J Ling wanted to play Vampire and Magic. One of the gimps had floppy hair, and liked to be known as Nicky P. Nihal and Guy got really cross when they discovered Nicky P was a gimp, as it really interfered with their street cred. When they left Nicky P to be gimped, they went back to Nihal's house, but their embarrasment was only to become greater, for Nihal's brother was holding one of his infamous 'Jacking Contests', and Shaihan, Frank, Peter, Warren and Ky were jacking off in Nihal's house. Nihal and Guy went to the snooker club instead.
• la centre pompedu
• the sick building
• My house
• The wall outside the Horn is an amazing work of art. You can have so much fun balancing on it when you've been on the pints.
• The Horn
• Hmm... Fighting Cocks, The White Hart, The Tudor Tavern, The Boot, The Fleur-de-Lys, The clock tower, the station box, the Abbey (duh!)...
• As has been said above, the roof of verulam school is amazing. It's like a whole new world. Many a midnight picnic I've had up there, or a quick f**k. Crap alarm which goes off when the wind blows, but not when gangs of rebellious teenagers smash the place in. Isn't it ironic....
• The bearded institution they call bakewells hatfielrd
• Verulam School - aaaah Nostalgia throwback. Still run by Bob who is controlled by Big Ron
• The old railway signal box that you go past around 100m from St Albans station south bound. It needs some new paint though. Its very cute
• the maltings
• er,.. the Maltings ?!? if you go in it its a shoping center, if you look at it from above it looks like a posh block of flats, cortyards and all .
• Pioneer of course
• The Clock Tower

Demolish It Now Building

• That tower block on Ashley road.
• topshop
• Demolish the Arena and build a decent venue with a moshpit.
• Every building in the town
• My house! Then I'd have nowhere to live! Um.. that's probably not a good thang actually. Someone mean's house..
• homebase burnt down yesterday. oh well
• Demolish the flat-roofed monstrosity between the LibDem HQ and St Peter's Chur4ch. Only a council controlled by Lib Dems would have put a preservation order on a series of fridge magnets held together with baling twine. If it's a seat of learning, rebuild it with wisdom and beauty.
• The shitty tower blocks
• Jon Hewitts house
• safeways if they did that and built a skatepark on it it would be the best in England
• Leave the old cinema alone. Flatten Batchwood! Shame the fire didn't completely destroy it.
• Software plus
• the police station. but then again. im an anarchist.
• Old Cinema Building - its a big pile of pants
• The Vintry with all the people still inside!!!!
• millenium dome. oh sorry you mean in st albans eeerr... the cross keys pub. its not a pub its a bar. it has cctv it has no atmosphere. it is torquoise. its full of underaged drinkers and 18-21 year old tossers
• Verulam School 6th form block- its seen better days.
• THE VINTRY --------- DESTROY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! where do all the dumasses go right here !!!!1
• The Bus Garage (old, shabby, not in use - but for some bizarre reason, listed)

The Best Things

• The people are so friendly.. you can go to the park with some friends and find other people to take home with you...
• It's home.
• the circular benches, oxfam, the abbey flyer, the top of the clock tower, the olive market stall, the 'six for £1' lighter market stall, creme eggs, the glittery bracelet market stall, the chain market stall, grasshopper, the station, abbey view road, the bricky, the walls round clarence park, the walled garden
• COOOOOOOL people. Woolfie the cat.
• The people are ok apart from the Garage boys and the pubs are probably the main highlight. We are close to London and Watford which is great because both these places have a high freak content which means we can get away from all the cap-wearing trendies. and "magic cigarettes" are easily obtained. I havent encountered much snobbery myself.
• The man who you can see dancing in just his pants in one of the houses in Jenning's road. Always a treat.. get a good seat on the podium in Verulam's field...
• i get away with doing nothing nowadays
• Being in the mosh pit down the front of the firkin when a really rocking band are playing, but only really in winter cause in summer everyone squashes out into the tiny little garden thing and ignores the band.
• All my friends.
• Local pubs Herons Book Shops 20 Mins by train to London
• St. Albans has got really beautiful areas, especially by the lake. If you go to the Lake on a weekday, you'll find it really tranquil. It's normally busiest on Sundays. St. Albans is a safe place, but with quite a good night life. It all ends quite early, apart from the Adelaide and Batchwood, or the Horn. But overall, with it's balance between its beautiful scenery, safeness and it's fun and entertainment, it's a good all round place to live.
• Me and H&H chiken and Kebabs
• The young men
• The people. The Fighting Cocks cats, especially Leroy tha lazy gangstah and Archie the psychotic bastard cat.
• The big concrete square in the park. It's fun for making big pagan phallic torches, which you then dance about shouting about the "Immense Man Penis" very loud, and hoping some tramp will give you head.
• Nothing ever changes - you can return at feel at home again
• More pubs per head of population than any other city in Europe!!!
• satelite tv
• My Friends live here and Verulam school is a sanctuary for the strange and non-conformists
• proximity to london
• pubs, lots of pubs. image(the other local towns suck so much), a known, joked about, snobery. - ohh so you come from St albans do you? hawdy haw.
• Very close to London. Not Hatfield.

The Worst Things

• other men
• the roman remains are wank. houses here are way too pricey for what you get. traffic is really bad - try driving to the m25 in the morning. Tescos - jesus, don't even get me started. Not only do they never, NEVER, have anything in there, but you have to wait in a queue of OAPs and freakish radiation-experiment-gone-wrong individuals to ascertain the fact. Oh, and while I'm at it, what is it with Woolworths?
• too many would-be-rock-hard people, greebos and other people, too many dodgy people, too polluted, too much litter.
• The load of old shoes that litters St. Peters STreet after a Friday Night out.
• Nothing to do for 16 year olds, so they clog the pubs up.
• No-one in St. Albans has a womb. There will be no children for our family.
• trendiness
• Watfords cool so dont diss. At least it isnt full of snobs like "SOME" places
• Townies. And hippies.
• We are far too close to Hatfield. And Harpenden. Both of these towns suck but for completely different reasons.
• There are 4 things that particular vex me about St. Albans: 1) The St. Albans Lad A young man between the age of 17 and 25 (usually lives at home with parents). Tries to talk in a cockney accent and fails miserably. Have egos and heads of equal and massive dimensions. Usually found in either the Vintry or Peahen pubs, on Friday and Saturday nights, wearing black leather shoes with huge silvery buckles, black jeans and a plain brightly coloured shirt sporting some designer label (usually untucked). A large group of "St. Albans Lads", can be termed the "Opal Fruit Gang" when wearing "those" lurid shirts. Head usually shaved (just like David Beckham, eeeek he's my hero!), obsessed with owning a sporty hatchback, such as a Peugot 206. To any "St. Albans Lads" reading, shouting, swearing and peeing in peoples' front gardens is not a requirement when walking home from the pub. Favourite game - my todger is bigger than yours. 2) The St. Albans Girl Like the St. Albans Lad, but instead models herself on Victoria Beckham. Generally have far worse attitudes than "The St. Albans Lad", have an obsession with noisy platform shoes that are obscenely difficult to walk in (listen for the tell tale "clomp" "clomp", just like a pantomine horse), and tiny rucksacks that are useful holding an "entire" mars bar... wow! Have a non-existent sense of humour and very little cognitive ability. Have all the style, intelligence, verbal ability and commons sense of Waynetta Slob. Have very little comprehension of the world outside "The Vintry", let alone St. Albans or the county border. Often dream about having boyfriend who owns sporty hatchback annd and looks like David Beckham, or owning a rip off Japanese four wheel drive ATV. Favourite game - moaning about boyfriend to her mates when he ignores her in the pub, (boyfriend often pays the fruit machine more attention) constantly threatens to leave him, and then doesn't. 3) People who pretend to be homeless You know who you are, stop hanging around the bustops next to the betting shop and the general vicinity of the Civic Centre, you are not homeless, you all live in the hostal on Bricket Road, so stop bothering me for money. 4) General Air of Snobbery Have lived here for 16 years now, and I am generally quite amazed by the "cliqueness" and petty behaviour. To Those living in 3 bedroom semi-datched houses, you are not lord and lady muck of the manor, under 13s playing football and other games in the street will not damage your prescious four wheel drive ATV (probably never been on dirt track, let alone allowed to get dirty), there are games other than "I'm better than you are". The word "genuine" can be applied to people as well as antiques. The only reason you live in St. Albans is because you can't afford Hampstead.
• The lack of cinema
• Everyone being ugly No good shops Everyone is a twat
• The Whipping. The way I get beaten with a massive licorice whip the size of a strong man's arm every time the residents chastise me because of my lazy eye. I can see where Thom Yorke gets his emotional torment from. God Dammit.
• traffic!
• Bankers in Porsches
• St Albans is a town full of its own self-importance. It is a very unfriendly place to live. The council are terrible to deal with, especially planning dept and council tax. The only reason for staying here is that the schools happen to be very good.
• The number of drunk kid you see crumpled in the road on a friday. i can use these to pave my drive, suckers!!
• Town centre mega-pubs The Maltings (esp. since they kicked out all the interesting little shops to make way for TK Maxx). The Council have some degenerative neurological disease which is causing them to destroy the place. No one interesting can afford to live here.
• Old people pubs
• Young ladies
• Bearded boyz/ guppies/ pikes/ dirty sewer ducks
• tourists dont taste to good
• Luton people trying to bring down the tone when they are shipped to St.Albans every Weekend
• TRENDIES they wear far to expensive shirts and other trendy clothing
• ...and Hatfield, and Hemel, and Watford.
• a known, joked about, snobery. - ohh so you come from St albans do you? hawdy haw. --> people i meet in London hate me before they know me if i say i come from S.A
• Not enough clubs. Too close to Luton.
• After reading the Knowhere guide to St.Albans, I felt compelled to just say what I think about the town from a 16 year olds point of view. I would say that there many good and equally many bad points to the town. The good points are that it is a really good town to get drunk in. If you don't get served in one pub then you go to the next. By that aspect it is a good town. On the other hand, it is crap for clubs and general hang outs and venues. There are hardly any clubs in the town. The only good one is Kiss which I may also add is re-opening this spring after it burnt down. Apart from this, the clubbing aspect of the town is poor. It is also true that there are too many over sad raver types around. Places to go: 1) Phil's snooker club 2) Firkin pub because that's where the coolest people go 3) MacDonalds at 11pm (Fridays and Saturdays) There is always a good fight here at this time Places not to go. 1) Owls house (George Street) It is a small gay bar. 2) Blue Anchor, because it is a gay pub (just to warn some heterosexual types).
• St. Albans is smaller than the town of Watford, but has a Crown Court (Watford doesn't). The Roman town of Veralanium was an important adiministrative town for the Romans, the ruins of which are located mostly under the city park, with the Hypocaust - a method of under floor heating - and the theatre open to the public. Alban (a Roman) became the first English Christian Martyr; it is said that the Cathedral is built at the site of his crusifiction. the Cathedral tower is built of Roman Bricks which were made near/in the area of Radlett, a nearby village.
• There are several museums in the city. The Roman museum is the best with some cool exhibits of dead Romans etc. The organ museum is also good if you're into organs(?).
• St Albans is also twinned with Nevers in France and with Worms in Germany.
• History - I've lived here for 38 years but I still go out regularly (single :-( ) Places have changed: the person who said the Crystal Palace was one of the best pubs must be older than me!! It was a bikers / greasers pub. (I never went there but it is legendary). The recently re-opened Mermaid is nice (quiet) but with a nice selection of beers/barmaids. I liked the comment about the Cock smelling of old people (in the sixties it had a folk club and Donovan played there). The Blacksmiths used to be very rough but all the musicians used to drink there before gigs at the city hall (now the Arena ). I remember sitting next to the Clash in 1977!!
  The city hall played host to the likes of T. Rex, Thin Lizzy, Hawkwind, Motorhead, Rory Gallagher - most of the popular bands around the 70s - mid 80s. The Arena is a different story - very sad.
  The Comic Kutz comedy evenings have stopped due to lack of interest, occasional good events. Last night I saw an excellent blues band at the Maltings Art Centre, next to the new library. The Firkin was the original library building - try their house brewed beer,it's really good. The Farriars Arms was the birthplace of CAMRA, the campaign for real ale, it's quiet nowadays (it didn't used to be) the landlord, Jim, is a nice bloke.

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Last updated: 2008-02-20