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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/24/stag-hen-dos-york-anti-social-behaviour
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| Nobody actually enjoys stag and hen dos. Especially not the city of York | Nobody actually enjoys stag and hen dos. Especially not the city of York |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The city of York has had enough of organised fun, and I for one applaud it. | The city of York has had enough of organised fun, and I for one applaud it. |
| This week the council invited the city’s bars, clubs and off licences to attend a meeting to discuss the antisocial scourge that is stag and hen parties, in an attempt to curb the drunken behaviour that is turning the city centre into a no-go area at weekends. “It’s an issue, I think, which has been developing for some time, and it’s something the city as a whole has to get to grips with,” Make it York’s Kay Hyde told the BBC. I always enjoy quotes like that. It’s nice to imagine rowdy stags jostling into Make it York’s Kay Hyde, shouting into a traffic cone – if a stag party happens without someone shouting into a traffic cone, did it ever really happen at all? – and vomiting into plastic pint glasses. Or giddy hens elbowing into view with ratty pink boas and dick-shaped deely boppers. Ah, York. Such a princely city. | |
| The thing with stag and hen dos is nobody really enjoys them, do they? Nobody likes sitting down to lunch and having a hen party clatter down next to them. Nobody enjoys the ominous stag party battle cry of “O–WAY O–WAY! O–WAY O–WAY!” rumbling in the distance. Nobody likes being in a club and getting lassoed into their hollow, empty version of fun. Bartenders don’t like serving them. Police don’t like having to arrest them. And, crucially, stags and hens don’t even like them. | The thing with stag and hen dos is nobody really enjoys them, do they? Nobody likes sitting down to lunch and having a hen party clatter down next to them. Nobody enjoys the ominous stag party battle cry of “O–WAY O–WAY! O–WAY O–WAY!” rumbling in the distance. Nobody likes being in a club and getting lassoed into their hollow, empty version of fun. Bartenders don’t like serving them. Police don’t like having to arrest them. And, crucially, stags and hens don’t even like them. |
| Nobody likes sitting down to lunch and having a hen party clatter down next to them | Nobody likes sitting down to lunch and having a hen party clatter down next to them |
| Does anyone actually enjoy paying £60 to go go-karting before trying to make smalltalk with someone’s investment banker uni friends? Has anyone truly gained any pleasure from a cupcake-making masterclass they’ve had to go on because one of the hens is pregnant? | Does anyone actually enjoy paying £60 to go go-karting before trying to make smalltalk with someone’s investment banker uni friends? Has anyone truly gained any pleasure from a cupcake-making masterclass they’ve had to go on because one of the hens is pregnant? |
| Because it’s never just a night out anymore. According to Nationwide, the average cost of a stag and hen party is £157, a high premium to pay for having the temerity to be friends with someone who is in love. But the additional, emotional cost starts months in advance. It begins with a 50-person email chain that includes the words “Can everyone let me know your dates?” That’s your inbox in bits, now. That’s 100 emails in the same day that just say “I cannot do September”. | Because it’s never just a night out anymore. According to Nationwide, the average cost of a stag and hen party is £157, a high premium to pay for having the temerity to be friends with someone who is in love. But the additional, emotional cost starts months in advance. It begins with a 50-person email chain that includes the words “Can everyone let me know your dates?” That’s your inbox in bits, now. That’s 100 emails in the same day that just say “I cannot do September”. |
| Such is the core notion of the stag and hen party: not one last jolly or hurrah, but a final reminder of how bleak and upsetting it is spending an evening in a nightclub without managing to have any fun. It’s like a Willy Wonka-esque vision of hell – oh, you’re going to miss doing shots? Well, have all of the shots at once. Think you’ll miss single life? Tongue-kiss this drunk person and feel not even a shred of arousal. Sad at the prospect that you might never see a taught, oiled, lithe young naked body again? We paid this stripper to gyrate in front of you until we all felt weird. | |
| Stag and hen parties aren’t about fun. They are a high-production-value immersive event designed to make the person getting married really yearn to be on the sofa in their pyjamas watching Netflix with their intended. | Stag and hen parties aren’t about fun. They are a high-production-value immersive event designed to make the person getting married really yearn to be on the sofa in their pyjamas watching Netflix with their intended. |
| Do I have a solution to York’s feral stag and hen party problem? I do: Hag’s, a hen- and stag-friendly superclub built in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. This will be the only legal place in Britain stag and hen parties are allowed to celebrate; far away from residential homes and streets, far away from normal people trying to have fun. | Do I have a solution to York’s feral stag and hen party problem? I do: Hag’s, a hen- and stag-friendly superclub built in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. This will be the only legal place in Britain stag and hen parties are allowed to celebrate; far away from residential homes and streets, far away from normal people trying to have fun. |
| Related: York becoming overrun with heavy drinking stag and hen parties, locals say | Related: York becoming overrun with heavy drinking stag and hen parties, locals say |
| At Hag’s, herds of stags bump sexlessly into screeching broods of hens. At five-minute intervals, strippers are summoned from the baby oil-rich coop they are kept in out back, forced to undulate on stage to the strains of I’m Too Sexy while people throw their drinks in the air. At Hag’s, there’s always one lad per group who has got his curiously waxed arse out. At Hag’s, you’re literally not allowed in through the door without a penis-shaped straw or a blow-up sex doll. They have a designated zone where sterile lampposts are available for men to be cling-filmed to. The smoking area doubles up as a paintball arena. There is a special step for all the recently single women called Tina to cry on. A special soothing pen for all the bewildered mothers-in-law that inexplicably got dragged along. After a night in Hag’s, marriage seems like the natural conclusion, like one big funeral after a life well-lived. | |
| Get in touch with me, York. Together, we can rid Britain of this plague of stags and hens. | Get in touch with me, York. Together, we can rid Britain of this plague of stags and hens. |