Whether it’s a cheeky half you’re after, some delicious pub grub or a lazy afternoon sipping classic ales, drinking at one of the best pubs in Birmingham is a quintessential Brummie experience. These are the city’s best boozers of all.
Time Out tries sees writers test out new, unexpected and sometimes just plain weird experiences in the city.
I’m looking at a menu of activities. I don’t know what any of it means. What’s Airsoft? Who’s Hado? Why am I being offered LARP? Grange Live Gaming is an oasis of things you didn’t know you could do in Birmingham. Want to shoot opponents with plastic projectiles launched from replica air weapons? That’s Airsoft, apparently. Fancy competing in a sport that mixes VR and real exercise? As far as I can tell, that’s Hado. And, honestly, I still don’t know what LARP is but it stands for live-action roleplay and it doesn’t look like my cup of tea.
My cup of tea is smashing cups of tea into smithereens with a crowbar. And, amazingly, I’m allowed to do this in Grange Live’s Rage Room.
You’ll be dressed like a member of Slipknot but instead of a creepy mask they quite rightly give you a protective face shield and gloves.
The cheaper packages allow you to go to town on smaller objects – crockery, glassware – but pay more and the objects of your aggression get bigger. TVs, printers, keyboards; hammer at them with hammers, batter them with baseball bats, let your internal tiger out of its godforsaken cage.
‘Fancy upgrading to a photocopier?’ I'm asked. Yes. Yes, I do. I say the words without even pondering the question and my host wheels out a full-sized old school Xerox machine. I strike and strike and strike at the plastic, the glass and the circuitry, a world of frustration exiting my body from deep inside, through my arms, via a baseball bat. I am the Hulk. Then I go back to work. And the photocopier’s playing up.
