An award-winning tour guide has described the "torrent of abuse" and worse she endures during a night in York, and has demanded urgent action to tackle drunken rioters.
Alicia Stabler directs the highest rated bloody york tourguiding people through centuries of often gruesome history.
But he regularly encounters all-too-modern horrors on weekend nights, including abuse by foul-mouthed drunks, people urinating in the street and some even throwing missiles at tour parties.
Matters came to a head on Saturday night when he was subjected to "a torrent of ill-treatment" by a woman who had littered the ground at a city center supermarket.
The worst was yet to come as she took her guests around town.
“You're trying to tell them the stories of York, the places to see and what to do. But when there's a man behind you openly urinating on a doorway in the Shambles. It is very difficult to say that it is a lovely place to come and visit.
“Frequently I have spent with my tours men and women urinating in the doorways and in the streets. But it's also the mob mentality, the thug mentality that some people have: being very loud, very disruptive, very disrespectful not only to me, but also to the visitors.
“One of the other tour guides who was away just a couple of weeks ago had a kebab thrown at his head during the middle of the tour.
"In the past, a pint was thrown at me in the middle of the street."
early start
Alicia, who plays the role of Mad Alice on her tours, is not late. Take two tours at 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., finishing the last one at 9:30 p.m. But during those weekend hours, the drunkenness problem is already afoot.
On Saturday night "I came home and I was so angry and upset and a little bit distraught about the amount of abuse that I've had to endure just this weekend." Then she tweeted:
Alicia added: “I have been doing my tours for ten years. And this problem has really gotten aggressively worse, this anti-social behavior just in the inner city.”
She believes that the police and the city council are "trying to address it but at the same time they are burying their heads in the sand."
York has been awarded Purple Flag status by the Town and City Management Association for being a “safe, entertaining and prosperous destination after dark”.
Alicia says that there are plenty of nights when that's true, but it certainly isn't on many Friday and Saturday nights.
“I don't think they are fully aware of what York is like at night. I am at the heart of the matter,” she said.
“Moreover, I see it in the faces of my visitors when we turn a corner and you see this rush of people urinating in the street, yelling insults at each other; there were a couple of fights we witnessed while on tour.
"They are shocked and bewildered, because that is not the York they were sold."
He said that "people have made enough comments to me to say that they are not going back to York in a weekend."
It's time for York to take a stand, Alicia says. And she is urging the police, council, parliamentarians and other stakeholders to say 'no more'.
“I don't see why York can't be the forerunner to do something about it and say we're not going to stand for this.
“If you want to come to York, you have to abide by our rules. And if he's going to be aggressive and abusive to the locals, to people in industries like me in tourism, then he's just going to be asked to leave, we're not going to tolerate that behaviour."
licensing laws
There are already sanctions that are not being used. “As far as I know, it is illegal to serve someone who is intoxicated. So why not hit the bars with tickets to make sure they are serving the people they should be serving and not contributing to this anti-social behavior that we have in the city?
She said that “the heads of the city really need to come down and take a look and see what is really going on.
"I think we all need to sit down properly and address this all together."
Allowing more empty shops in York city center to be turned into bars was not helping, Alicia added.
Fears that a crackdown on alcohol problems could harm York's tourism economy must be set aside, he argues.
“All the local residents know about the problems that are going on, and they are fed up to the teeth.
“It seems that the foreign economy is put first, rather than local residents. We are the ones who have to live here. And we are the ones who have to put up with it on a daily basis. And it's just not nice."
It has already stopped running runs during the major race weekends, during the Ebor Festival and the John Smith Cup Meeting. And you may have to cut other tours as well. "If it starts to feel unsafe, I can't get my visitors out."
Alice said: “There's no reason why York shouldn't be the main force to go, you know what, we're going to be the only city in England that doesn't tolerate this kind of behaviour.
"So if that's why you're coming here, just don't come."
