to think chavy, tacky hen parties should SOD off [Edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[CannoninD]

I’m fed up.
I’ve lived in my beautiful, respectful and historic city my entire life .... but over the last year it’s been invaded by GOD AWFUL hen parties!

20+ strong groups of horrifically common (referring to behaviour not social class) women who inflict their horrific behaviour on everybody within reach.

They’re EVERYWHERE and I know it’s not just me as there are sunbstantial concerns being raised by residents all over the city.

I counted 23 large groups this weekend (I only walked into the (small ish) city centre on Saturday morning and witnessed the following behaviour-

• Loud swearing (F and C word) right in front of/across young families and children just trying to enjoy a day out.
• Shop doors slammed in elderly shoppers faces (too busy pratting around to pay any attention).
• Stock being damaged by pratting about (and then hidden) to avoid paying.
• Horrifically vulgar and inappropriate content being loudly discussed in family areas (a garden/park area) to the point that families got up and left.
• Completely inappropriate Lingerie being worn in the street (before 2pm).
• Vomiting in the street! Whilst being jeered by the rest of the group.

Personally I would rather bleach out my own eyes than go on a hen do like this- but honestly at what point do we just call the police on these ridiculous idiots inflicting such unreasonable behaviour on families and regular people? What’s worse is, I bet back home they’re perfectly normal women. They just all get together and come away from home and behave like total arseholes!

Being in a large group and celebrating an event- does not give you a hall pass to behave like scum. 😡

I know London pretty well, relatively speaking, but I'm always looking for recommendations.

The last few times we stayed at the Hilton Metropole with saved up Hilton honors points. We often do self catering in other parts of the UK, but I like the convenience of a hotel in London.

San Francisco provides a counter example to New York. They've cut policing and reduced the penalties for many non-violent crimes. For example, you can take up to $950 worth of merchandise and you will now be charged with petty theft instead of shop lifting, which the overworked police will now usually ingnore. This has resulted in an explosion of property crime. Expectations do matter.

[[https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/petty-theft-shoplifting-burglary-hayes-valley-13544921.php
'I'm so fed up': With shoplifting all too frequent in Hayes Valley, some merchants are at wits' end]]

It's not just shoplifting either.

Property crime rates test San Franciscans’ values

In 2014 Californians passed Proposition 47, which downgraded a variety of “non-serious, non-violent” crimes to misdemeanours instead of felonies. This measure has had no impact on violent crime, but it has coincided with an uptick in property crime.

In San Francisco, local prosecutors are less inclined to bring charges when there is pressure not to incarcerate people for non-violent crimes, and police do not want to pursue cases that are unlikely to result in charges. Tolerant attitudes towards crime may also be a factor in explaining why arrests and prosecutions for property crime have declined. “The Bay Area has a culture that’s very tolerant of disorder. Culture is holding up general safety,” says Justin McCrary, who recently moved from the law school at the University of California, Berkeley to Columbia Law School.

**

I won't go there anymore because of rampant begging, pick pocketing and general sense of mayhem.

I was due to go on a hen do to Marbella in July but the WhatsApp group chat was getting so gross about what they were going to get up to that I pulled out. It was bad enough we were all going to have to wear matching t-shirts at the airport, but willy hats and vagina buckets (to throw up into!!) and other stuff much worse started getting talked about and it really put me off... I’ve lost the money I paid for the flights but I don’t care - I’d rather be at home with my family! In fact I would rather give birth to septuplets naturally and without pain relief than go on that sort of hen do!!!!
I’ve never been into that sort of very Americanised thing anyway... bridal showers/bachelorettes/baby showers/gender reveal parties/ingrown toenail parties... seriously - get over yourselves!!!!

*can I just add most of my family are American and Canadian. My sister lives out there with her husband and kids. My mum is American. My dad’s first wife was American, my half siblings are all American - we are all very close. It is not a dig at Americans before I get attacked mumsnet-style! It’s just those things are all coming from America and weren’t a “thing” here 20yrs ago... my friend insisted on a rehearsal dinner for her wedding recently - it was a shambles and no one quite got what the hell was going on or whether they had to go to both events lol! Half the people that went to the rehearsal didn’t go to the main event 🤣

No one wants to go on a city break during the week. No one.

Sometimes they do cccameron. It depends how the city manages it. I tag along with my husband on a trip to a huge international trade fair in Florence in January from Sunday to Thursday.

After that we go by train to Bologna, which is one of my favourite places. Once we went a bit further to Venice which is good in winter. Freezing though.

I've never been to York but Bologna is the reason I'd like to go. Both medieval university cities with a wealth of history and nice places to explore and eat.

No one wants to go on a city break during the week. No one.
More to the point, most people can't- they're at work but why the hell should people be limited to enjoyable days out at fixed times because of anti-social twats?
The Middlesbrough train masses and Donny hens do not spend much - they are all Groupon and Yates' anyway. They are stopping affluent locals spending in their own bloody city.

It’s just those things are all coming from America and weren’t a “thing” here 20yrs ago

British style "hen-do's" did not come from America. Perhaps the idea of having a bachelor and bachelorette party did, I really don't know, but if so, like baby showers, y'all seem to have transformed them into something completely beyond recognition of what happens in the US.

Well, I may not have put it exactly the same way OP, but I agree actually.

I'm a lairy cow sometimes, but nothing like some of the things I've seen in some cities.

It’s just those things are all coming from America and weren’t a “thing” here 20yrs ago

To be honest, the American equivalent of the “hen do” it is more likely to involve the mother of the bride inviting her own friends and some of her daughter’s friends to get together to provide “good marriage advice” to the bride, have cake and pray (yes PRAY) for a happy marriage blessed with healthy children.

The hen night as seen in the UK, is a home product, it didn’t come from anywhere else. There are not many places around the world were women can get totally wasted and sexually aggressive without facing a huge level of disapproval.

"I'm a lairy cow sometimes" What do you mean by that? What sorts of things do you do?

What, you think every geordie hen went to Madrid to pay 11,000 euro to watch Liverpool win the European Cup? What a fucking weird thing to say. Or are you one of those odd people who think football fans are all savages.

It was a joke in the context of the threads. Roll your neck in.

Hen do’s absolutely did exist here 20 years ago, I had two myself.

I think though they’ve gone crazy. It was a case of going out for the night with your friends and maybe your mum and aunties, having dinner in a veil, having drinks and a few silly table games and dancing.

Next came Chippendale style events. Things got crazier.

Now, as this thread demonstrates, it’s gone way too far. The “fun” being had is at the expense of others. It doesn’t matter if it’s York or anywhere if a type of group is hounding out all the others it’s not fair.

British-style hen dos don't really come from Britain either. They've just grown like Topsy.

I married in 1992 and someone at work persuaded me to have one. I wasn't that fussed but I'm so glad she did. It was great. We went for dinner in a piano bar - it was just pizza but it was a special place.

At the end we were quite pissed but didn't piss in the street. Two of my friends, Dawn and Jenny are tall - like Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones-type- 6ft+ tall and one of them had a bleached blonde crop just like Brienne. We were walking down the street at the end of the night to the station with Dawn and Jenny in the vanguard when this frail woman coming the other way quaked at the sight of us. Dawn and Jenny said: 'Make way for this lady. Lady coming through.'

They didn't make me wear a sash or L-plates but when the pianist realised it was a hen party he played for me

I really feel for people in Brighton too

My former boss lives in the basement flat of a fine Regency house on Brighton seafront. It has outside steps down to her front door.

She got sick of finding piss, vomit, shit and, on more than one occasion, people shagging outside her front windows, that she had a lock welded to the gate at street level.

That worked ok for about a year, until one night a drunken hen decided to climb over the railings for a pee, and fell down several feet. I think she broke an ankle or something, and the paramedics had a devil of a job getting her out.

I rarely go to Brighton these days and if I need to for any reason, I avoid going on a Friday or Saturday. The last time I was in Brighton on a Friday, I walked through the pavilion gardens and saw a couple of drunken hens with their drawers round their ankles weeing in broad daylight. They didn't make the slightest attempt to go behind a bush or anything and there's a public bog less than 100 yards away.

Brighton's always had its seedy side, but it's unbearable now.

limitedperiodonly I was given a bachelorette (as we call them in the States) party when I got married in the 1980s. It was a dozen women or so at a friend's house; she and another friend cooked the meal. I think I may have had two glasses of wine (not much of a drinker, me). The rowdiest it got was the gift of some jokey lingerie. It's a nice memory.

Hen parties were a thing here over 30 years ago because I had one. It involved being dressed up with a bin bag over clothes that had pictures of fully clothed men pinned on it and also L plates and condom wrappers. We went for a meal, then lots of pubs then a night club and got very very drunk. But we stayed in our own town, no one was sick in the street and no one abused any passers by. That's how things have changed.

Have you seen this yet?

YorkMix story

I just came on to share the link

The guy from YorkMix emailed me to say they’re going to do more on the issue, and that he’s had a chat to one pub landlord who wants more done.

Maybe your thread will change things, OP!

Oh come on just let people have their fun. I used to live in York and you get constant hen nights and on top of that you get the races.... it was difficult trying to get to work when in the middle of the day the streets are heaving with wasted barely dressed people out on their jollies... like it's their toy city and not actually a place where people genuinely have to live.
What does piss me off is people who drop rubbish. The streets could get littered with plastic cups and just crap... that's not okay....
But people just being a bit lary? You just get used to it really.. and more importantly factor it into your journey times for getting anywhere! Especially on weekends in the summer or when you know an event is on!
I mean I've got kids and yes I hope they dont end up behaving like some of these people do, staggering about and swearing... but really if my children saw it I'd just laugh it off... theres more important things to get angry about than some people trying to have fun. And tbh I bet most peoples kids will at some point stagger around and swear during their teens and early twenties... if only once or twice....

Batten... where you crapping in doorsteps and sexually harrasing teenagers? Attacking other hen groups? If so, please have your fun in your own town.

It worries me what some people consider to be fun.

Sorry, WERE not where!

My friend had a hen night in the late 80s. It was brilliant fun. It was a private disco in the supporters club of a local football team - lots of teasing by the DJ as her brother was the manager at the time. All female relatives on both bride's and groom's sides, aunties, cousins, plus female friends. The best one I've ever been to.

Another one was a bit more rowdy but not like now. A dressed up bride selling kisses round the pubs, money into a baby's potty. Apparently it's a lowland Scotland tradition but I'm from the 'blackening' area myself.

I had a two - a pub crawl around York for my friends - but nobody would have noticed.

But by far my favourite was the one I had with my family. A dinner with my mum, ex-mum-in-law, older sisters, aunties etc. It felt like a real rite of passage. Wedding day stories related, marital advice given...it was lovely.

Didn’t help a bit, mind - first husband was still a twat