CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
"Irvine Welsh: ‘Leith is yang to stuffy Edinburgh’s yin’ "
(14 posts)-
Posted 7 years ago #
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"I think Leith was perceived as a no-go area for tourists" - well, apart from having the country's most popular private sector tourist attraction (the Queen's old boat) and most of the city's Michelin starred restaurants.
Pity it's also stuffy old Edinburgh Council that owns the Leith Theatre. I suspect the delights of Chicago may have clouded his views on his old stomping ground.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Trainspotting was a great book, but I think he is a bit of a one hit wonder.
Posted 7 years ago # -
There have been several waves of gentrification in Leith. The area around the Shore started to gentrify in the 1980s: that's where all the swish eateries are located. Most of the Georgian stone properties between there and Pilrig have been snapped up relatively cheaply by the middle classes. In the 1990s and 2000s the Pilrig colonies gentrified, and various new build flats went up on the western side of the Water of Leith near the Shore. However during that 20 year period places like the horseshoe flats (and surrounding streets), and the less salubrious tenements around Constitution Street and Leith Walk were still too 'edgy' for gentrification.
In the 2010s and recently, Leith Walk has been colonised by young people who can no longer afford areas like Stockbridge, Morningside, Marchmont, the Old Town or Bellevue/Broughton end of the New Town. The arrival of Out Of The Blue in the old Drill Hall at Dalmeny Street is a bit of a watershed in that regard, symbolising the movement of young arty bohemians from the Old Town to Leith. Hipster bars and eateries have replaced windowless pubs, old men's pubs and traditional butchers.
There are still substantial pockets of deprivation in the side street tenements and social housing, despite the gentrification. Pay a visit to the New Kirkgate shopping centre most days and you'll still witness the 'real Leith', but maybe not quite as radge as it was back in the late 1980s/early 1990s.
Posted 7 years ago # -
New Kirkgate's standout shop to me is the staple of a deprived area - the hire purchase shop where you can pay £10 a week for a £500 tv and eventually have paid them back £1200 at the end of your agreement.
Do regularly use the LIDL there but won't need to when Easter Rd is finished - Dalton Demolitions currently on site doing surveys on B&Q and car garage
Posted 7 years ago # -
windowless pubs, old men's pubs and traditional butchers
A true hierarchy of Leith boozers there.
Posted 7 years ago # -
@crowriver For me you missed the most important stage, the influx of largely Polish workers/families.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Trainspotting was a great book, but I think he is a bit of a one hit wonder.
I found Marabou Stork Nightmares a compelling read. My only criticism would be that then ending doesn't quite do justice to the rest of the book. His first collection of short stories, The Acid house, is also pretty good.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Marabou Stork Nightmares was a good story but seemed to me to be cribbed almost entirely from Iain Banks' The Bridge, which was a much better book in my opinion.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Leith now has new gentrifying pressures coming from the south in the shape of the omnipresent luxury student accommodation. These are creeping ever further down the walk now that they have filled every nook and cranny of Southside and are bringing with them undesirables like Starbucks, Costa and more "Express/Local/Metro" supermarkets. They crossed McDonald Road recently and the development off Bothwell street is going up at a giddy pace. There's a small space off the Walk currently occupied by a builders yard just north of Balfour Street which has a planning permission out to cram in a student prison block.
For eating and drinking in independent locations, Leith has a lot to offer - a lot more than the city centre which has long been largely swallowed up by chain restaurants and bars.
When Leith gets a Nandos you know it's all over.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"Do regularly use the LIDL there but won't need to when Easter Rd is finished"
Likewise, though I hope the new one doesn't go down the route the Broughton LiDL seems to have taken - slightly increased prices for certain items, more premium product lines at the expense of everyday essentials. If so, Kirkgate will still feature as my destination for a range of products. If, as anticipated, the Easter Road LiDL is slightly bigger than the Kirkgate one, that ought to be good news.
"A true hierarchy of Leith boozers there."
Ha. I was referring to the large number of small butcher's shops that existed until quite recently on Leith Walk. Some are still around, but many have gone, and in their place are bijou cafes, shops for nick-nacks, wee offices, etc.
"For me you missed the most important stage, the influx of largely Polish workers/families."
I think that influx is just part of the historic cycle of immigration in Leith: like London's East End, Leith has traditionally been a site for newcomers to the city making a start. The Italian community still quite prominent in Leith, Chinese community too, a small but notable Afro-Caribbean population; Also people from the Asian sub-continent, Turkey and the Middle East, and then the more recent Poles, Latvians, Romanians, Spaniards, etc. Also young people from across Scotland migrate to Leith. All do so because it's relatively affordable to rent a flat (for Edinburgh) but reasonably central with decent amenities and transport links.
Certainly lends a multicultural texture to Leith (and especially Leith Walk/Easter Road) that is less prevalent in the leafier parts of Edinburgh. Not quite the same process as gentrification though. Some new arrivals put down roots and stay long term, but many are just passing through. That and (as kaputnik notes) the growth of dedicated student accommodation blocks creates a large transient population, which brings certain issues with it.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Personally, I think it all started to improve when I moved there in 1990 ;-)
Back then, Malmaison was still the old sailor's home, with a GoGo bar at ground level. The Malt & Hops on the Shore was the Drawbridge, an old man's bar with strippers. Constitution Street had Burke & Baldies, another old man's bar which would be full of drunk men at 7am when I passed on the bus to work. You could have a shower in Bernard Street's 'The Cavern' before you dried off and went to the bar for a drink. Commercial Quay was still a row of derelict warehouses, with only the very end section in Dock Place converted to flats. Outside were acres of steel pipe storage, and a nice dark area just inside the dock gate at Dock Place where the men would drive into the shadows and conduct their business with the local ladies of the night.
Yeah, changed days :-)
Posted 7 years ago # -
I ducked and dived through most of the 90s in Leith. Bernard Street for much of it, and cameo stints in Albert Street, Iona Street, but the pièce de résistance was an unlisted shack behind the Walk Inn on Leith Walk which was basically little more than a garden shed. Only lasted one winter there, but my god what a winter that was. The horror.
Posted 7 years ago # -
In fact I recall emerging from my pitiful shed late one night that very same winter, skint and unable to feed the electric meter, and there was Irvine himself and his pals heading down the walk with a big carry oot and grins to match.
Alas I could muster no more than a disenfranchised scowl.
Posted 7 years ago #
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