What can you remember from the 2000s?
You may remember nu metal which saw teenagers listen to music about breaking stuff and wearing stupidly baggy pants. Later in the decade, you may remember teenagers listening to music about crying ('emo') and wearing stupidly tight pants.
You might recall a fairly lacklustre England football team that failed to pass the quarter-finals in any World or European Cup. And you may have gone to the flicks to see such classics as Gladiator, The Dark Knight and Harold & Kumar Get the Munchies. OK, maybe not the last one.
Read more: What Leeds city centre buildings used to be before they became a Wetherspoons
But do you remember Leeds in the noughties and what could you do then but can't do now? Here are seven things. They weren't all sensible but they were possible.
1. Have a dip in Leeds International Pool
Controversial from the moment it opened in 1967, these city centre baths were nonetheless popular. Indeed half of Leeds' population had used them within the first six months of this angular, modernist complex opening.
The pool, which was notoriously expensive to maintain, closed in 2007 and was pulled down two years later.
2. Drink Tetley's Bitter brewed in Leeds
Tetley's Bitter had been brewed in Leeds for close to two centuries when owner Carlsberg closed the brewery in 2011. The giant brewery has all gone apart from the offices which are now The Tetley modern art gallery.
However, since 2018 you can drink Tetley's Pale Ale, which is brewed here in collaboration with Leeds Brewery.
3. Go up and down the 'Smartie Tube'
This covered escalator (picture above) took shoppers in and out of Leeds Shopping Plaza from the pavement on Albion Street. It probably looked like the future in 1977 when the mall, then called Bond Street Shopping Centre, was built.
By the end of the noughties, it look pretty naff and was dismantled around 2012 to make way for Leeds Trinity which replaced Leeds Shopping Plaza.
4. Throw shapes to the finest indie at Bar Phono
Phono, originally Le Phonographique, was at the heart of Leeds's alternative night scene. If pop cheese, banging house or metal wasn't your bag, Phono, in the Merrion Centre, was where you could get down to indie, alternative, new wave and punk sounds.
5. Throw shapes at Evolution
The nightlife antithesis to Phono would have been somewhere like Evolution. Superclubs were still packing in thousands of punters at the turn of the millennium, usually with the promise of commercial pop and cheap drinks.
This warehouse of cheesier sounds was Leeds's biggest club when it opened off Kirkstall Road, in 2001. The superclub era was over by the early 2010s and so was Evolution.
6. Take your pick of department stores
The noughties were probably the last gasp for department stores before online stores selling virtually everything made them obsolete. You could have shopped in Debenham's, Briggate (closed 2021); BHS, Boar Lane (closed 2016); Woolworths, in various locations (closed 2009); or Littlewoods, White Rose Centre (closed 2004).
7. Smoke indoors
Until 2007 you could legally smoke inside a pub, bar or club if the management permitted it. We're not saying we want it back.
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