Only mad dogs and reporters would attempt the obstacle course which currently is north Belfast, where loyalist roadblocks, burnt-out cars and stone-throwing crowds add that little bit extra to your journey home.
North Belfast has been one of the areas worst hit by the Troubles, a patchwork of staunchly nationalist and loyalist enclaves distrustfully eyeing each other across narrow streets. Almost 600 people died here during the sectarian strife of the past 30 years, a toll only surpassed in west Belfast.
Arriving at the interface between the nationalist New Lodge and the loyalist Tiger's Bay areas, the first new addition to the scenery is a 30-feet-high green security grille which has been put up around a number of Catholic houses.
"We hope that in the long run, we can provide something a bit less obtrusive, more pleasing to the eye, but for the time being, residents feel safer that way," says local Sinn Fein MLA Mr Gerry Kelly. Reports of Catholic families being forced out of their homes by crowds of loyalist protesters have so far not reached the proportions of previous Drumcree protests.
In fact, a spokesman for the Housing Executive confirmed only one such incident, at Fortwilliam Parade several days ago. Many families, however, do not take chances and move in with relatives for the time of the "12th Holiday" in "safe" nationalist districts such as Ardoyne. "Thank God, we have sent our children on a language holiday to the Gaeltacht. I'm so glad they are out of this place, I would worry myself to death if they were here. If it gets any worse than this, my husband and I will just go up to my sister's in Derry. Then again, you would worry about leaving your house empty," says a local woman who does not want to be named.
A crowd of teenagers is manning a roadblock just opposite an Ulster Defence Association mural of a Red Hand of Ulster with the inscription "For God and Ulster - quis separabit" on North Queen Street. A car pulls up and is turned back.
"Look, I just live round the corner, I know your mum - let me through," says the driver.
"Nobody is getting through here - up the UFF," a heavy-built youth in his mid-teens shouts. There are cheers all round. "If you are not with us, you're against us," the youth's girlfriend chips in.
The driver takes a look at the 20 teenagers surrounding her car, another look at the skeleton of a burnt-out car on nearby wasteland, and turns back.
The smell of burnt rubber fills the air after some children, the eldest about eight, have set the rubber-tyre swings of the local playground on fire.
"Sure, they are bored now that school's out for the summer," an elderly woman says. It turns out one of the little arsonists is her grandson.
Local residents swap traffic information. One woman is frantic after receiving a call from her daughter, who works in a garage near the loyalist Rathcoole estate and is unable to get home. Staff have barricaded themselves inside the garage after rumours spread that the business's owner is a Catholic and menacing crowds are gathering outside.
"This is the worst I have seen since the early days of the Troubles. I thought all this was behind us," the woman sobs.
As the night progresses, the protests are taken over by older, more sinister-looking elements who set crates alight and throw stones at a couple of RUC Land Rovers. Further up the road, on Skegoneil Avenue, a derelict building is set on fire. Some boys half-heartedly hurl stones and bottles at the arriving fire engines but are stopped by older ones and told to save their "ammunition" for larger fry.
This arrives in the shape of 15 armoured RUC cars containing officers in full riot gear a quarter of an hour later. After a short standoff during which stones, bottles and fireworks are hurled at police lines, the crowd eventually disperses around 1 a.m. With the remains of the derelict house still smouldering and debris and shattered glass littering the street around a three-inch deep crater where somebody burnt an old sofa, curtains eventually stop twitching and north Belfast's exhausted residents finally get to sleep.