New Dock Hall

The Saviles Hall is in the Clarence Dock area of Leeds, a rather curious spot with the odd bit of retail, a few grandiose looking restaurants, plenty of flats and The Royal Armouries within one space. It’s an odd location in some senses — you get the impression that once it was built, and everything still looks really rather spanking new, that they assumed folks would flock there to shop and whatnot, but in my few experiences here it’s often been really quite quiet. Perhaps it’s the nightmare of navigating the Leeds one way system via car, or the slightly out of the way canal-​side walk (which is rather pleasant) that puts people off.
In any case, that’s where she stands. I visited there today, my first ever visit, to attend the Thought Bubble convention –a wondrously magnificent collection of all this graphic, comic and hand penned, for the truly geeky (and some might say, enlightened). For myself, being part-​geek, this was an awesome place to spend a few hours, perambulating the large space in search of something special. The trouble is, with such a convention as this, everything catches your eye… I rather needed the Unilocal of the graphic novel world to help me navigate which stalls I should stop at, but there you go. I managed to unearth a few gems, needless to say.
Other than this event, the Saviles seems to be the place for Christmas dos, Weddings and all manner of other large scale events –the hall itself being gargantuan. I’m sure in the ceiling there were lighting rigs too. Other than that, I’ve not much to report, except that the refreshment stall was out-​of-​this-​world expensive -£1.70 odd for a bottle of pepsi. No ta. I’ll wait. In any case, I’d keep an eye on their programme of events as despite the slightly ghost-​town atmosphere nearby, it’s not a bad place to be. Plus the canal side wander is pretty lovely –especially in the mist as was today.