By Sam Billings
Hyde Park, Leeds. Perhaps the epitome of metropolitan student living. Its alleyways and occupants are of the same charming, chaotic disposition. In their fluorescent grime and friendly aggressions, the streets’ pubs, offies, and takeouts inspire a symbiosis with the students’ invariable endeavours towards absolution. Whilst only occasionally successful, such ventures are consistently characterised by absolute intoxication. By 8pm, one comes to recognise the average gait of a Hyde Park resident to be reminiscent of the flails of doggy paddle; they likely won’t drown (or fall face first into the tarmac’s recently claimed doner kebab) but they’re hardly making their way through town in style. I maintain that Hyde Park, the little corner of Leeds I have called home for the past two and a half years, operates in a similarly hindered yet resolutely resilient manner.
Aspiring to avenge their Tory forefathers’ failed austerity fuelled ambitions to cripple the town, a new generation of North Londoners have had their gentrifying aspirations similarly met with a principled and unflinching spray of Tetley’s. The soul-sucking plight of matcha coffee houses, natural wine bars and Gail’s couldn’t possibly make a dent in Hyde Park’s identity. The town’s stalwarts of grime, culture, and joy, such as Brudes, Hyde Park Picturehouse, and Pizza Canó, all have too much integrity, too much resolve to fall into the hands of corporate inauthenticity.
It is this plucky nature, this unshakable character that causes me to proclaim that I love Hyde Park. My true and honest love, fostered by the true and honest shithousery of the place itself, has made me unwaveringly loyal to my new home. Bohemia in Hyde Park is living and breathing; it is not yet lost as it is in places like Camden and Shoreditch, once made glorious by the art amongst their gunge. Anything that should threaten the sanctity of Hyde Park’s character, therefore, must be resisted. And such threats still loom over its terraced roofs and graffiti-clad walls. This time, however, they have taken shape, not in gentrification or austerity, but in the form of a different scourge: the scourge of the Uber Robots.
“But they’re so sweet!” I hear some of you say. That, my friends, is what they want you to think. These godless automatons are something of a techbro’s wet dream, a horribly pristine love child of Musk and Zuckerberg, not a reincarnation of your once-loved Tamagotchis. And, oh yeah, so convenient… Not only do you no longer need to make the mighty five-minute trek down to HFC for some well-earned grub, now you’re greeted with the dulcet tones of a corporate, automated jingle. You needn’t even speak to a human being!
Am I being dramatic? Perhaps. But do these whirring little beasts belong anywhere other than the sterile glitz of Canary Wharf? Maybe… But they sure as shit don’t belong amongst the streets of Hyde Park. Here the constant burning of rubbish-fuelled bin fires and the blasting of fireworks is a staple simply because, in this dirty, humdrum nook of Leeds, you can. It is no safe place for a good night’s sleep, let alone for the commercial ventures of Uber.
Thus (perhaps unsurprisingly) Hyde Park’s anarchic disposition gives me great hope for the eventual downfall of the Uber Robots. In fact, we’re already beginning to see how the town’s penchant for chaos is claiming the droids. My recently adopted habit of kicking (and occasionally flipping) the robots on my bleary strolls home from the library is almost deferential in comparison to how many treat these little harbingers of our oncoming cyber-dystopia. Students seen replacing their signature drunken stumble with an adoption of an often-uncooperative Uber Robot as their neo-steeds, for example, is by no means uncommon. Hearing their whirs descend into mechanical moans of struggle under the great weight of human freedom sat atop their robo-backs fills me with optimism.
No act of resistance, however, could possibly inspire such extensive delight as the one I witnessed the other day. In the early hours of the morning, as I walked towards the park itself, where the Uber Robots reconvene in times of idleness, I came across the magnum opus of Hyde Park’s battles against them. Having been rudely awakened from their slumber (in which they undoubtedly dream dreams of an algorithmically-orchestrated stream of Uber Eats adverts) the robots had been fashioned to the will of Hyde Park.
Here they stood, beeping wildly in distress, one on top of the other, as little driverless cars forced to partake in a hilarious robotic rendition of the human pyramid. Standing at about seven feet tall, it baffles me how on earth anyone managed to achieve such a feat; these androids are dense little creatures for one. Nonetheless, here it stood: a farcical testament to the undying character of Hyde Park. The people and the place had, in typical unruly fashion, made their statement: bring on the Uber Robots, and the only profit that will be made will be for our entertainment, not for your pockets.
Featured Image: Alamy