Corn Exchange

So i'm now in Leeds, located in West Yorkshire. It's about 2.5 hours from London, in the middle of the country. I'd say it's exactly what you'd expect in a "small provincial English town" (someone's definitely going to flame for this).

Leeds has a storied history of a manufacturing town, a great University of Leeds, fabulous shopping and so on. It's known as "gateway to the Dales" - a big national park. Sounds great, doesn't it? I may be biased, but coming from both San Francisco and most recently New York it appears a little small and boring. It's the same as the kiss of death when you are describing a guy to a potential date: "he has a nice personality". Just like St. Louis Mo, which is "gateway to the west", Leeds is a great place to live if you are already married, or are a college student set on spending more time drinking than studying.

So, first impressions of Leeds - very cute. Old buildings. Cars driving on "wrong side" of the road. Giant double-decker buses hugging the curb (I bought emergency insurance. One of these things is bound to run me over some day).

Since I don't have a car, I walk around for transportation. The city centre is fairly small, it's about a 10x6 block. You can get walk the entire "downtown" in about half an hour.

Which, of course, brings us to the "Corn Exchange".
It's a giant building (shopping mall) on one side of town where most of the bars and clubs are.
Anywhere you go, you end up at the Corn Exchange. For the first few days, my coworkers and I walked around in circles, trying to find a particular bar, and would always end up at the Corn Exchange.
The hilarity would be that no matter where we went, it would always be near the Corn Exchange. Anything. All directions began with "go to the Corn Exchange and turn X...".
Naturally, all the streets are crooked, so it worked out well - i live about 2 blocks from it, work another block from it, and all the bars really are next to it.

So yeah, Corn Exchange. I'll never forget you....