Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

i'm saying shopkeepers on the whole are some flavour of little Tory and have little room to complain at being gamed by the system they presumably favour

This seems like a truly grotesque generalisation that I can't help but resent. I am certianly not any flavour of little tory - as I grow older I'm turning more into some horrible hybrid of little makhno x little lenin - and was not so at any point during the years I ran my little shop in South Shields. I don't recall any of the shopkeepers who were my neighbours being so either. The main memory I have of little shop vs big shed shop is that no matter what I did, if B&Q started selling something I sold, it just stopped selling out of my shop, one line I sold for a while till the big shop wiped me out, they had it in for three times the price I sold it for, and still they took all my sales away, fucking hopeless, man. It kind of felt like not so much a level playing field as a vertical wall with them at the top and you at the bottom., ugh too annoyed to even be coherent about it.

v. sorry Pash, always make mental exceptions to my smash the system ramblings for people i like. but point took.

also mrs v. is opening a shop for the charity she works for, so what kind of double hypocrite bullshitter does that make me?

^^^ had forgotten that earlier

that sounds crazy depressing pash

even disregarding political arguments, that every fucking town in england looks like

what is bromsgrove?

is immensely dispiriting

what kind of double hypocrite bullshitter does that make me?

Oh, you're a terrible, terrible man, for sure ;)

Probably a cliche to even relate it - when we took on the shop in Dean Road, in IDK 1980 or thereabouts, there was a butcher shop, 2 greengrocers, baker shop, fishmonger all in the area of 3 blocks, every one of them got ground out of business as the big supermarkets expanded into the town. Now the street is the archetype of a small town shopping street - all charity shops, shortlived hairdresser shops, a bunch of shuttered up shops. Pretty fucking sad for a whole bunch of reasons beyond sentimentality or archetypal guardian readerish hand-wringing (which I am prone to admittedly, being an archetypal guardian & all that)

thanks for all that info aldo - interesting, definitely good to hear from someone on the ground rather than falling into the automatic "protesters GOOD tesco BAD" mindset that so many do.

in other news MARINA HYDE IS BACK! omfg can we ensure she never gets pregnant again, can't take this long without her again. bitch still has it obv.

Being prime minister is rather like being able to play the fantasy dinner party game for real, so the fact that Tony Blair could have rifled through a near-limitless Rolodex of fascinating public figures, yet plumped for Vernon Kay, speaks volumes about his character (were further volumes in any way required). That Vernon should once again find himself at our nation's high table says more about Where We Are At than any number of dystopian social treatises, and we can only await the Boltonian Zelig's next state appearance with infinite resignation.

these sentences are perfect <3

Except she misspelled "riffled".

I think both spellings are ok.

nah you would riffle thru a rolodex but rifle thru a wardrobe

blame the subs

one line I sold for a while till the big shop wiped me out, they had it in for three times the price I sold it for, and still they took all my sales away, fucking hopeless, man

:(

If mixed usage is a sign of health of a town or neighbourhood then once local stores are pushed out of business and there's a decline in the actual number of functioning stores, it really makes a place not just less cohesive but gradually more unsafe

i.e. well street, which is now

all charity shops, shortlived hairdresser shops, a bunch of shuttered up shops.

and an oversized tesco metro stuck up at the top of it, selling books, flowers, videogames, stationery, kitchen utensils, etc.

guess where jack cohen (tesco founder) got his start? at a stall on well street, back when market traders could earn a living... back when there weren't any tescos

hackney is the centre of the universe

all charity shops, shortlived hairdresser shops, a bunch of shuttered up shops.

Should try Paisley, they have fake shops there now, to try to make you feel less suicidal when you visit the town centre

I have a correction, one of the accused in court isn't from St George, he's from St Paul's which is much closer.

Protesters chased out of a community meeting on Saturday, particularly after they told the guy from the bike shop he should just put up with the broken window as "there are innocent casualties in every war".

xpost Do you mean the Arnotts building in Paisley town centre with the pictures of people shopping over the old windows and "Park Lane" signs over the walls? That's really grim, especially when you see foxes running in and out the holes they've chewed in the boarded up windows and doorways.

No, they've actually got fake shop fronts in the High Street, blown up photos of butchers shops and cafes etc

Still, it's work for makers of fake shop fronts... every cloud...

jesus christ that's absurd

fuck...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255162/Fake-shopfronts-built-improve-look-recession-hit-high-streets.html

Apparently it's increasingly common, seems to have started in the North East

(xp)

There's a Tesco Metro at one end of my road and a medium-sized Sainsbury's at the other and any number of small shops (both Mr Patel-style convenience stores and the pastel-coloured places that middle class people like), all of which seem to be doing reasonably well. There's been a thriving street market on Lewisham High Street for decades despite that having both a Tesco and a Sainsbury's there for as long as I can remember.

It's as much to do with the social make-up of an area as anything else. Most of the people who live on Well Street will be shopping in that Tesco because it's cheaper and more affordable for people with limited cash - can't blame them. But if the people with the disposible income aren't going there and putting money into it then you might as well blame them, or blame Broadway Market or somewhere, as much as Tesco.

... yes, they say shit like "This could be a shoe shop" (but it's not it's only a photograph of one) (xp)

^ this is massively fucking depressing, aye. The only actual shops left are WH Smiths, JD Sports, MacDonalds, and a fuckload of charity and pound shops.

xposts about Paisley

There's a Tesco Metro at one end of my road and a medium-sized Sainsbury's at the other and any number of small shops (both Mr Patel-style convenience stores and the pastel-coloured places that middle class people like), all of which seem to be doing reasonably well.

Pretty sure London's a different case entirely

as a cheapskate who only buys 2nd hand books, i like the high streets that are lined w charity shops

The only actual shops left are WH Smiths, JD Sports, MacDonalds, and a fuckload of charity and pound shops.

Don't tell me the tanning salons have gone tits up? ;_;

Pretty sure London's a different case entirely

Different to Hackney?

hackney is the centre of the universe

it is though! for me.

But if the people with the disposible income aren't going there and putting money into it then you might as well blame them, or blame Broadway Market or somewhere, as much as Tesco.

broadway market is only on saturdays. the rest of the time bway market shopping is basically on par with well street unless you want some expensive coffee table books or argentinian steak - which i don't think is too much of a threat to well street businesses.

what should people w/disposable income be putting money into? the shops that couldn't compete with tesco are gone now.

I get a bus through Paisley every other day and I've never noticed that many fake shops - either they're really convincing at masquerading as shops, or they're so terrible that I don't take them in as shops at all. Either way I can't imagine being able to feel less suicidal when spending time there.

It's in the pedestrianised bit where citizens are able to browse fake shops at their leisure

Tracer - I think it's as likely to be a result of hiked up rents as the arrival of a Tesco there, although one may feed into the other its also a result of ongoing gentrification surely?

The irony is that in the longer term you might see a Well Street or equivalent market as full of the sort of independent businesses that the Stokey/anti-Nando's crew want to see, that are out of reach to people living in nearby estates, who'll be shopping oh guess where? It's as much a feature of the socio-economic changes taking place in the East End as anything else, and will get even pronounced in the aftermath of the Olympics and the housing benefit cuts kicking in.

i don't really understand how w.h. smiths survive, to be honest.

no one buys books. everything else is cheaper at tesco and stocked there, except for, i don't know, board games and some stationery.

strangely there's not a lot of gentrification going on around well street. there are very nice houses around cassland road but they've always been nice. and the rest is estates. about 80% of well street patrons are from estates.

there's an argument that says you don't have to have high prices to sell to poor people. i.e. stack em high, sell em cheap. and indeed i think starbucks would do very poorly on well street. even costa. but nobody can stack em as high as tesco.

Yeah but the landlord will be charging, or trying to charge, the market rate and that'll be distorted by what's happening elsewhere in the borough. It's also as much as issue of anticipated gentrification as actual gentrification.

Tom D, the tanning salons are all still around, just not on the High Street. I forgot, there's a cafe which keeps changing names every couple of months, punctuated by periods of vacantness. I've never seen anyone in any variation of it.

what i don't understand is why a landlord would prefer an empty shop (about half the shops on well street are empty, some for several years) to a trader tenant. even if the trader isn't maying very much in rent it's SOMETHING, and that trader's going to be doing the kind of routine upkeep that helps retain some value in the property. and presumably, a street full of shops is going to boost everyone's property values in a way that a half empty street doesn't. but instead of filling the empty shops the landlords on well street are asking the well street shopkeepers to pay (in some cases) more than triple their current rent (which is admittedly currently hilariously low).

actually i think it may be down to the vacant shops being now in a terrible condition and the landlords simply not having the cash to make them worth anyone's time to move in.

They should get Christo to wrap a whole town centre with sheet saying "This could be a high street".

In the early '90s - before Shoreditch became what it now is - landlords offered generous rent-free periods to live/work and commercial tenants to allow for renovations.

Ailsa you forgot M&S. The fake bakery in Paisley High Street is brilliant - they've blown the photos up so big the loaves are all HUGE. I would buy all of this fake bread!

I will be walking past it in a couple of hours, I'll try to remember to get a photo.

Fake Department Store and Fake Toy Shop

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paisleyorguk/4745451485/in/photostream/

Found one of the Big Bread
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paisleyorguk/4745444303/in/photostream/

Thinking that, in Paisley, fake shops might be a popular idea, you don't have to spend any money in them for a start

I took a photo of the fake Italian deli in Dumbarton High Street the other month.

aldo, did you post yr Bristol info on that grau thread alba linked in the end? think it's the kind of stuff that would be really useful in the non-ilx public domain.

I thought about it, but after reading the comments thread it seemed fairly pointless as everyone seems to have made their mind up already.