It’s Never Boring in St Judes Bristol – New Year 2017, Wade Street Fights and Josie Gibson

It’s never boring in St Judes. I find myself saying that to people very often. Wade Street was recently almost top of the polls for antisocial behaviour for the whole of Bristol. That it couldn’t even win first place at antisocial behaviour makes St Judes the ultimate winner. With that in mind, we jokingly Retweeted this from Avon and Somerset Police on new year’s eve:

It wasn’t long in the evening before one fight rolled out of the Swan With Two Necks on Little Ann Street and up Wade Street. That’s a fairly typical Saturday night and not deemed worthy by locals of a police response.

There was another police response fight on Wade Street that evening, but otherwise, it was a surprisingly quiet night. Party music from either The Swan or JamJar was still going strong at 4am. But, the rest of the estate was deserted and eerily quiet for such a lively area.

Now you don’t need to be a curtain twitcher to know what’s going on outside when it kicks off. The reason everyone knows when a fight starts in St Judes, particularly on Wade Street, is due to the beautiful acoustics. The area has tall blocks of flats in formations that allows sound to keep bouncing and echoing. A simple shout is amplified so you can hear it throughout the area. It really is a special thing in the early hours of the morning.

At 12.10am on new year’s day, Wade Street was quiet and still though fireworks exploded around Bristol.  It was so unusual to be so free of drunks fighting, I stood at the window stating the fact three times to family who have no idea what it’s like on Wade Street. It was some kind of rare eye of the storm stuff.

By 12.35am at home, new year was all about sorting out the big tub of Playmobil from rogue Lego pieces whilst a Minecraft marathon was being battled from various computers. Somewhere between 12.25am and 12.35am, family were being waved off down Wade Street before the potential 1am post pub madness started.

So it is with some surprise that Bristol media and subsequently the national press picked up on a fight that happened on Wade Street – the one night of the year it should have been out of control but was noticeably quiet.

Reality TV Bristolian Josie Gibson, named and claimed on social media that she was beaten up by a Bristol boxer shortly into new year. Various media outlets reported that the incident occurred on Wade Street.

Wade Street doesn’t want antisocial behaviour that doesn’t belong to it. We have enough of our own to celebrate. Luckily, we also have our grainy CCTV cameras which picks up a blurry thing or two.

But Wade Street also isn’t where most people think it is and often blame it when they should be talking about Houlton Street. Pedantic? Yes. But when stories fire through the media like this one has, where a person has been named and shamed publicly, then details are everything. A story doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make sense.

So this is our no expense spared map of Wade Street in Bristol. Cabot Circus car park is on Houlton Street. Staples is off Wellington Road and Wade Street is where the old school shouting people fight with cans of Special Brew at 7am.