An award winning tour guide has described the ‘torrent of abuse’ and worse she endures during an evening in York – and has demanded urgent action to tackle the drunken troublemakers.
Alicia Stabler runs the top-rated Bloody Tour Of York, guiding people through centuries of often gruesome history.
But she regularly encounters all-too modern horrors on weekend nights, including foul-mouthed drunken abuse, people urinating in the street, and some even throwing missiles at her tour parties.
Things came to a head this Saturday night, when she was subjected to “a torrent of abuse” from a woman who had thrown rubbish on the floor at a city centre supermarket.
Worse was to come as she took her guests around the city.
“You’re trying to tell them the stories of York, the sights to see and what to do. But when there’s a man behind you urinating quite openly in a doorway on the Shambles. it’s very difficult to say it’s a lovely place to come and visit.
“I’ve frequently walked past with my tours men and women urinating in doorways and in the streets. But it’s also the mob mentality, the yobbish mentality that some people have – being really loud, very disruptive, very disrespectful towards not just myself, but also to the visitors.
“One of the other tour guides who was out just a couple of weeks ago, had a kebab thrown at his head during the middle of the tour.
“In the past, I’ve had a pint thrown at me in the middle of the street.”
Early start
Alicia, who plays the role of Mad Alice on her tours, isn’t out late. On a Saturday, she conducts two tours from 6pm and 8pm, with the last one finishing at 9.30pm. But during those hours at weekends, the drunken trouble is already well underway.
Last Saturday night “I got home and I was so angry and upset and kind of distraught about the amount of abuse that I’d had to endure just this weekend alone”. So she tweeted:
Alicia added: “I’ve been running my tours for ten years. And this problem has really got aggressively worse, this anti-social behaviour just in the city centre”.
She believes the police and city council are “trying to tackle it but burying their heads in the sand at the same time”.
York has been awarded Purple Flag status by the Association of Town and City Management for being a “a safe, entertaining and thriving destination after dark”.
Alicia says that there are nights when that is true – but it certainly isn’t on many Friday and Saturday nights.
“I don’t think they’re fully aware of what York is like on a night time. I’m in the thick of it,” she said.
“Even more so, I see it in my visitors’ faces when we turn a corner and you’re met with this barrage of people urinating in the street, shouting abuse at one another – there’s been a couple of punch ups that we witnessed as well on the tours.
“They’re shocked and taken aback, because that’s not the York that they were sold.”
She said “people have made quite a few comments to me to say they’re not going to come back to York on a weekend”.
It is time York took a stand, Alicia says. And she is urging the police, the council, the MPs and other stakeholders to say, ‘no more’.
“I don’t see why York can’t be the forerunner to actually do something about it, and say we’re not going to tolerate this.
“If you want to come to York, you have to abide by our rules. And if you are going to be aggressive and abusive to the locals, to people in industries such as myself in tourism, then you’ll just be asked to leave, we’re not going to tolerate that behaviour.”
Licensing laws
There are already sanctions that aren’t being used, Alicia said. “As far as I am aware, it is illegal to actually serve someone who is intoxicated. So why not hit the bars with fines to make sure that they’re serving the people that they should be serving, and not contributing to this antisocial behaviour that we have in the city?”
She said “the heads of the city really needs to come down and have a look and see what’s actually happening.
“I do think that we all need to have a proper sit down and address this all together.”
Allowing more vacant shops in York city centre to be turned into bars wasn’t helping, Alicia added.
Fears that a crackdown on alcohol-fuelled trouble could damage York’s tourist economy have to be put to one side, she argues.
“All the local residents know the issues that are happening, and they’re just fed up to the back teeth with it.
“It seems to be the outside economy is put first, rather than the local residents. We’re the ones that have to live here. And we’re the ones that have to put up with it on a daily basis. And it’s just not pleasant.”
She has already stopped taking tours during the biggest race meeting weekends – the Ebor Festival and John Smith’s Cup Meeting. And she might have to cut other tours too. “If it starts to feel unsafe, I can’t take my visitors out.”
Alicia stressed she wasn’t being a killjoy.
“I like to go out and have a drink as well. And so do my friends. And we sometimes go out in a big group, but we’re not there to cause trouble.
“It’s that fine line that keeps outsiders happy, but also the locals happy as well. And I don’t know what the actual solution is. But I do think that we all need to have a proper sit down and an address this all together.”
And she added: “There’s no reason why York shouldn’t be the leading force to go, you know what, we’re going to be the the one city in England that doesn’t tolerate this kind of behaviour.
“So if that’s your reason for coming here, just don’t come.”
I remember a lot of tourists used to come for the history, and there was good live music everywhere blues, jazz, and folk. Now it seems you get generic pop blaring out of doors. Micklegate used to be where you went if you wanted a drunken night after the races. It looks like Stonegate is now the new Micklegate, but this work like a trojan all week and then drinking to a stupor during any free time could be a symptom of having had a Tory government for so long, culture in general everywhere is suffering, people are not encouraged to be thinking sensitive beings under the tory rule, so art music and history decline, I think it may be happening everywhere, it’s probably worse in some other cities.