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Is the High Street doomed

Serge Forward said:
Just watched the one on Stoke where he's walking round Hanley, the city's main shopping area. I used to know the place quite well in the early 80s. There was a nice radical bookshop (I think it was called Mushroom Books) where I was mates with one of the women who ran it. There was also a decent gay club there and a gay pub (can't remember the name of either). The city centre was pretty busy, though back then, the were loads of terraced streets in Hanley, all boarded up and waiting for demolition. This didn't bode well for the area.
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I ended up in n staffs in 1990 for complicated reasons and stayed for a couple of years. there was something about it i liked - had there been much chance of a job when the temporary thing i got ended, i might have stayed put.

i don't remember a radical bookshop (i remember a 'mushroom bookshop' as a radical shop in nottingham in the 90s, don't know if it was the same people or what)

as for gay pubs, the main one when i was there was the 'three tuns' on bucknall new road - think it was ken who was running it then. i was told that katz bar on the other side of bucknall new road (which i can't find any reference to on the web) was at least gay-friendly, but i was the only person in there the time i tried it and didn't go back. i can't remember what the club was called (although can find references to one just being called 'the club' which may have been it.)
 
OK, in recent days, I'm in love with that guy's YT channel, but on a local level.. well, in the comments he admitted he saw lots of stores when he drove in to Barrow (none of which featured in the video). We've lots of shops, way more than we should for the small population and although they are in retail parks, they are not really out of town, they're literally three streets or so back from the boarded-up high street. Biggest Aldi in the country (civil pride!) a B&M Bargains that might well be the biggest in the country, a huge Tesco, Iceland, Asda, Home Bargains, CFS, Currys, Next, all the fast food chains. All literally 5-10 minutes walk from the former Debenhams he was presenting from. I saw two people carrying Smyths bags only this afternoon, so I guess they are now open having recently taken over a former bingo hall.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
I ended up in n staffs in 1990 for complicated reasons and stayed for a couple of years. there was something about it i liked - had there been much chance of a job when the temporary thing i got ended, i might have stayed put.

i don't remember a radical bookshop (i remember a 'mushroom bookshop' as a radical shop in nottingham in the 90s, don't know if it was the same people or what)

as for gay pubs, the main one when i was there was the 'three tuns' on bucknall new road - think it was ken who was running it then. i was told that katz bar on the other side of bucknall new road (which i can't find any reference to on the web) was at least gay-friendly, but i was the only person in there the time i tried it and didn't go back. i can't remember what the club was called (although can find references to one just being called 'the club' which may have been it.)
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You're right, I got confused with plant named shops. Mushroom was indeed in Nottingham. The Stoke one was called Cactus Books and was in Shelton (half way between Hanley and Stoke town). There was also a place in Newcastle under Lyme called Kermase. It was on Liverpool Road but later moved to an arcade in Castle. It was mostly wholefood supplies but had all the left and anarchist papers and flyers. You could get Freedom, Black Flag, Workers Voice (CWO paper) and the local anarchist communist group's Careless Talk there.
 
ska invita said:
not a bad series this...quite sensitively done rather than misery porn...sort of
some pretty shocking high streets tbh

ep1 - Halifax

ep2 - Barrow in Furness

ep3 - Stoke - shocking to me
Click to expand...

Hanley Town Hall for 500k... mad.

Hanley Town Hall, Albion Street, Stoke-On-Trent, Staffordshire, ST1 - Louis Taylor

Find your ideal business property at Louis Taylor. Visit our website and learn more about Hanley Town Hall, Albion Street, Stoke-On-Trent, Staffordshire, ST1.
louis-taylor.co.uk louis-taylor.co.uk
 
Been years for me too. I'd sooner go to a Pizza Express anyway who seem to be turning a corner in their debt restructuring at least.

TBH, I rarely choose pizza as an eating out thing at all. I'd way sooner go to an Indian or even a Wagamama to eat something I couldn't just heat up at home.
 
Tanya1982 said:
Fuck. I watched the Stoke one. That’s unreal. I wonder what scam is going on with ‘Etruscan Square’. I like the presenter, and I really appreciated his refusal to film addicts in despair.
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Google tells me they only had plans approved a few months ago, so not exactly a surprise nothing has been built yet. but the Hanley town centre certainly looked a bit grim.
seemed to mainly be Hanley rather than Stoke.
 
Last edited:
Serge Forward said:
You're right, I got confused with plant named shops. Mushroom was indeed in Nottingham. The Stoke one was called Cactus Books and was in Shelton (half way between Hanley and Stoke town). There was also a place in Newcastle under Lyme called Kermase. It was on Liverpool Road but later moved to an arcade in Castle. It was mostly wholefood supplies but had all the left and anarchist papers and flyers. You could get Freedom, Black Flag, Workers Voice (CWO paper) and the local anarchist communist group's Careless Talk there.
Click to expand...

:)

i don't remember either of them - whether i didn't notice them or they weren't there by the time i was, i wouldn't like to say. although if a shop was outwardly mostly wholefood and that sort of thing, i might not have investigated further.
 
pbsmooth said:
Google tells me they only had plans approved a few months ago, so not exactly a surprise nothing has been built yet. but the Hanley town centre certainly looked a bit grim.
seemed to mainly be Hanley rather than Stoke.
Click to expand...
Hanley is basically the "city centre". It used to have all the main shops and department stores, etc. Stoke town itself (as opposed to the wider Stoke-on-Trent conurbation - 6 towns plus Newcastle-under-Lyme) was always a bit sparse and the shops there were fairly run down.
 
to be pedantic, stoke-upon-trent is one of the six towns that makes up the city of stoke-on-trent (from north to south, it's tunstall, burslem, hanley, stoke, fenton, longton)

stoke is - or at least was - the administrative centre (i had a temporary job with the city council, and worked briefly in the time warp that was stoke town hall in about 1990)

newcastle is not one of the six towns, nor part of stoke-on-trent. it's legitimately part of the north staffordshire conurbation, though, as you can't really see the join between the two now.
 
Aye, it's all connected even though Newcastle isn't technically part of "the Potteries". I moved to Stoke proper in 1980, then moved to Newcastle, Silverdale and finally Wolstanton (all while working at a pottery in Tunstall in the day and attending Newcastle College in the evenings) before heading south for Stafford a few years later to go to polytechnic as a mature student.
 
In response to an article about Ipswich being filthy, my daughter said it was now surprising as everything was closing down.

On the radio this morning a commentator quoted a recent survey to say there were 30% too many shops on the high street. They went on to say that
this will be helped by major chains closing down their smaller high street outlets and opening up larger out of town outlets which are far more efficient.
 
Buddy Bradley said:
We were in Kendal yesterday. There's a shopping centre there that is almost completely empty - the entire first floor is unoccupied units; the ground floor only has a handful of shops still operating.
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"The Galleries" in Wigan got like that until they tore it down earlier this year. Looked like a 1988 themed haunted mansion by the end.
 
PR1Berske said:
www.theguardian.com

Pub closures rise sharply amid warning over planned business rate change

Nearly 400 pubs closed their doors for good in England and Wales in first half of 2023, almost as many as the whole of 2022
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
Click to expand...
Have you seen how many of these might be spoons? There may be more. Certainly not all these have gone yet.
www.independent.co.uk

Full list of Wetherspoons closing as 32 pubs put up for sale

Pub chain warns it could lose £30m due to rising staff wages and repairs
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk
www.goodto.com

Which Wetherspoons are closing and why? Full list of their 22 pubs up for sale

Check our definitive list to find out if your local Wetherspoons is closing
www.goodto.com www.goodto.com
inews.co.uk

Full list of Wetherspoons pubs closing, and why it's happening

Despite the closures, Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin says he is 'optimistic' about the future of the pub chain
inews.co.uk inews.co.uk
 
Was in a town where there was a closing down Wilko, yesterday so I went in , seeing as it was 20% and 30% off and I needed some bits n' bobs. Pick n Mix was half price - get in! But some of the other things that were marked down that I wanted to get -boxes of Kleenex at £1.20, were still more expensive than B&M - £1, so I went to B&M. Which was absolutely packed out with stock and customers. So I'm not surprised they're closing down, if their closing down prices are still too much money. People are skint, they will buy the cheapest. and there's no getting around it.
 
hash tag said:
Have you seen how many of these might be spoons? There may be more. Certainly not all these have gone yet.
www.independent.co.uk

Full list of Wetherspoons closing as 32 pubs put up for sale

Pub chain warns it could lose £30m due to rising staff wages and repairs
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk
www.goodto.com

Which Wetherspoons are closing and why? Full list of their 22 pubs up for sale

Check our definitive list to find out if your local Wetherspoons is closing
www.goodto.com www.goodto.com
inews.co.uk

Full list of Wetherspoons pubs closing, and why it's happening

Despite the closures, Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin says he is 'optimistic' about the future of the pub chain
inews.co.uk inews.co.uk
Click to expand...
To be fair, as soon as those pubs close, the more likely it is the revolution starts.
 
pbsmooth said:
Hmm they're often the cheapest, that's kinda their thing. but I am sure it's slightly product dependent.
Click to expand...
They're often the cheapest delivered. Their prices have been good but not great for a number of years.
Eg: When I upgraded my PC a few months back, I needed three bits - CPU, RAM, motherboard. All of these could be found cheaper than on Amazon, but in different places, all of which had their own delivery fees. So I bought it from Amazon, because once you figured delivery in it was cheaper and much easier. This is pretty typical of their non-sale prices, in my experience.
 
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