Market Street Hilton

SITUATED IN AN imposing and solid 1920s building in Newcastle’s city centre, the Market Street Hilton has been offering basic but very secure accommodation to the public for many years.

Its exclusivity is ensured by the fact guests can
only stay there by special invitation. However, their checkout time is also at the management’s discretion.

You will arrive by the side entrance accompanied by at least two of the uninformed employees, who will remove all your valuables – and belts and shoelaces – for safekeeping, before being escorted to one of the attractively-named ‘Custody Suites’.

Naturally, weekends are the busiest time at the Market Street Hilton, and you may find yourself sharing your room with up to a dozen other guests.

But this minor inconvenience is more than compensated for by the lively atmosphere, communal singing, and impromptu bouts of wrestling.

Overnight rates are often very reasonable, depending on your status. If you’ve enjoyed a heavy session on the drink the night before, this could be
as little as £80 – payable the following morning at the Magistrates Court next door.

Pasha

THE NEXT Local Landmark is Pasha, on Nelson Street, which sells a large selection of drug-taking paraphanalia. Their window display is a magnet for local charvers, many of whom spend hours gazing at these mysterious devices, before returning home to their buckets and empty White Lightning bottles.

As with any congregation of charvs, there’s the usual trail of spit and phlegm leading up to the shop, culminating in a large pool of saliva from their drooling mouths on the path below the window.

You can’t miss it.

Smokers

THE GOVERNMENT ban on smoking in pubs has had many obvious benefits. But one unforeseen advantage is that you can now judge an unfamiliar establishment by the look of its clientele, gathered outside.

Nowhere is this more evident than around the Grainger Market, where the leather-lunged customers of the area’s many Gadgie Pubs spend more time on the street than in their seats.

Clayton Street West, in particular, is thronged from opening time onwards, with all manner of major and minor dramas being acted out in public.

This tableau of typical Geordie life is a wonder to behold: on any day you’ll see large groups of men and women squabbling over who’s got ‘fog on the tab’ (and sec, and third…); wives slapping their blokes about - and occasionally vice versa; drinks being nicked, spilled and fought over; and, most touchingly, romances blossoming between bleary-eyed boozers over a shared Lambert & Butler.
For a true taste of Geordie life, join the crowds on the streets around the Grainger Market. But you probably won’t want to join them at the bar.