CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
“How Edinburgh was transformed from dump that inspired Trainspotting”
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Posted 5 years ago #
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I remember Edinburgh in the early 1990s as a place with relatively high unemployment, and nowhere near as many tourists. There was also more poverty and a tougher edge to life back then: areas like Easter Road for example had a rougher feel and criminal elements were pretty visible. OTOH it was also still relatively affordable to rent or buy somewhere to live, even in areas like Morningside or Marchmont. Also the city had not yet succumbed to the homogenising effect of large supermarkets, retail and catering chains in the way it has now. Internet shopping was still in its infancy, and there was a profusion of small independent shops selling all kinds of goods: some still exist but most disappeared in the zeroes. I recall there was a covered market arcade off Great Junction Street (now given over to LiDL et al). Also in most areas there were local butchers, greengrocers, and those old fashioned shops we called newsagents.
It is a bit too simplistic to say things have got better. Economic growth brings positives and negatives. The winter 'festivals' are a mixed blessing as we head towards 'over tourism'. The city is certainly different: a much larger population, more transient, maybe more anonymous, becoming more like any other city perhaps. Also gentrification has proceeded apace, so that in much of the city the kinds of people living here have changed quite a bit. Edinburgh today is increasingly difficult to live in for people on modest incomes, which was not the case 25 years ago.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Buuut, you're less likely to get jumped walking back along Gorgie road after a night in the pub...
Posted 5 years ago # -
@steveo, I got jumped in the Meadows one night in 1991. I legged it before the neds could do anything further than swing a punch. Hard to imagine now...
Posted 5 years ago # -
Even Lothian Road is a fairly safe spot these days, when I were a lad...
Posted 5 years ago # -
@steveo, all the night clubs have closed down, that's why. Century 2000 was a real hub for mass street brawls...
AirBnB visitors maybe don't go clubbing, or at least that's not why they visit Edinburgh.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Thats a fair point, can't remember the last time I was in a night club.
AirBnB visitors maybe don't go clubbing, or at least that's not why they visit Edinburgh.
I'm sure the masses of stag/hen do's must though.
Posted 5 years ago # -
"I'm sure the masses of stag/hen do's must though."
Aye, but where do they go? Espionage?
I suppose there is a string of mega pubs and a few night clubs along the Cowgate. That''l be where most folk end up...
Posted 5 years ago # -
Aye, but where do they go? Espionage?
No clue!
Posted 5 years ago # -
There isn't a nightclub on Lothian Road anymore. The Cav is still going strong at tollcross. On kings Stables Road, the terrible Jaffa Cake Club turned into the trendier Silk but that has not prevented it being knocked down for flats. Hive in the vaults at Niddry Street might still be going?
(I can ask my eldest who is the world's expert on Edinburgh niteclubs).
I came to Edinburgh in 1987 and loved hillwalking in Pentlands (just been out today, hills not shut down yet). I also liked many of the pubs. Saw some good bands Swamptrash/Critterhill Varmints/Deaf Height Cajun Aces etc. But the niteclubs were all a bit dull. Also for definite in 1987 in Edinburgh on a Sunday morning there was nothing open except churches. No cafes, restaurants or shops.
Also Scotmid ( or St Cuthbert's co-op) was only slowly losing its grip on the supermarket market. Asda had opened at the start of the 1980s. William Low had a store at the university and one at canonmills (both tesco's now) and the safeways with the carparks in the roof were built in comely bank and marchmont. Scotmid pretty much still covered the rest of the market?? Where The Point Hotel is now was a massive St Cuthberts Department Store. My pal Joe was able to buy a two bed flat in Marchmont with help from rich friends. The old lady Miss Brash who had lived in it since she was a child would not have known what to do with all the cash. Good flat, needed heating put in etc Miss Brash was still burning solitary lumps of coal. This was 1989. Maybe this flat would now cost ten times what Joe paid for it now?
I came back in 1992 and went to La Belle Angel club in the cowgate a fair few times. It was good, the shore bar and the waterfront restaurants in Leith were good (the shore still going strong)
By 1995 I do not think it was possible to buy a flat in marchmont unless you were bankrolled.?
I was working in Muirhouse at the time and the most notorious housing The Ramps had been demolished. A lot of the housing stock was still terrible though. Nowadays Muirhouse and Craigmillar are being rebuilt. This already has happened to an extent in Wester Hailes.
I like to walk around the old town or the new town or up Salisbury Crags or Calton Hill or visit Stockbridge with its boutiques and similar in Morningside. These aspects of Edinburgh and its proximity to Leith give Edinburgh an atmosphere of gentility. This can be traced back to The Enlightenment / Athens of the North. The dump of Trainspotting was caused by thatcher and heroin. Prior to this Edinburgh was a very prosperous city built on slavery.
All a far cry from my days in Maryhill Road in Glasgow. Much nicer in Edinburgh but after a while you start feeling a little like you are walking through a stage set.
Posted 5 years ago # -
All the clubs I used to frequent have closed. I was strangely conflicted when we moved into the offices where The Ark (dearly departed) used to be!
Posted 5 years ago # -
> By 1995 I do not think it was possible to buy a flat in
> marchmont unless you were bankrolled.I remmber a friend bought a three bed flat in Newington in 95 for 50 000. I seem to remmber that a Marchmont Flat was around 80 000 in 96ish - seemed like a giant amount of money, but actually quite possible with 110% Mortgage, as a student if guaranteed by a parent.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Shared flats with an assortment of colourfully scarred gadgies back in the day, and became well acquainted and occasionally sickened by the late night taxing schemes of the peripheral ned interlopers
Different times, perhaps. Yet Edinbvrgh seems every bit the vulgar cesspit it has always been, now with an airbrushed veneer of sophistication applying the icing on a cake that's arguably well past its sell-by date
Your mileage may vary, naturally
Posted 5 years ago # -
"Also for definite in 1987 in Edinburgh on a Sunday morning there was nothing open except churches. "
Yeah that's an interesting one. I used to think Sunday trading was illegal, but that was only in England & Wales (until 1994)! IIRC it was just customary for shops in Scotland to not open on a Sunday until relatively recently. As of 2003 Scottish workers have the right to refuse Sunday working.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@bax, to an extent that's probably true. Some things have definitely changed though. There used to be a saying "Edinburgh's a village", i.e. you'd literally be bumping into folk you know all the time, even in the street. That's less true now with the increased population and a lot of people moving out to dormitory suburbs.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I first came to Edinburgh just after the lava flows hardened on Salisbury Crags.
I don't know how it has changed since as I have changed more. What hasn't changed is that I still find the city mystifying and regularly address it out loud, but only from the summit of Braid Hill. Anywhere else would be vulgar and make me look mad.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I bought my second Edinburgh streetmap from Menzies on Princes Street on a Sunday in 1994.
Posted 5 years ago # -
This is what happened to the indoor market on Great Junction Street: forgot about that fire...
Posted 5 years ago # -
Posted 5 years ago #
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@wingpig. John Menzies. I think still do logistics. Saw a lorry the other day.
Questions
1. what happened to your first street map?
2. Did you buy the second map in the afternoon
Posted 5 years ago # -
When Goldberg's first opened in Tollcross it was closed on Saturdays for the Jewish Sabbath but open on Sundays (which confused some people no end!)
Posted 5 years ago # -
@cyclops. I was pointing out The Broo to Mrs Garto the other day - and said - remember when we used to sign on there. She said, oh no, I used to sign on next to Goldbergs.
(We were standing at High Riggs)
I have been in goldbergs in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Ayr. Yes was open Sunday pms often when not much else was
Wiki says in the 1970s they were first company in Europe to have electronic point of sale. Also first to have a woman director in UK? Strangely no mention of the availability of Tick
Posted 5 years ago # -
@gembo
1: I still have it - it was a 1971 edition previously used by my parents when they were up visiting my great-granny and her children, so was out of date even then and also too delicate to carry around.
My second Edinburgh street map was stolen by an Australian tourist invited to stay in our spare room by a flatmate. He left his more-damaged and lacking-marked-locations copy of the same edition of the same type of map.2: Probably. We'd been to WmLow and the nearby Capital (now Farmfoods) in the morning to buy food.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Ice skaters on the canal when I first arrived in '91. Looks like The Good Companions in Oxgangs is still open.
There were mushrooms growing in the spare room of our digs at one point - not cultivated psychedelic but random ones growing through the carpet.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@morepathsplease, our probationer tried to convince me to go to the Good Companions after our Xmas night out. Our trainee proved more sensible and was driving.
Goldie's apparently had a roof garden in Edinburgh but I do not remember that
Spotted a mushroom on the path on White cleuch the other day
Posted 5 years ago # -
“
with roof garden, nursery and menagerie.
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http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_buildings_g/0_buildings_-_goldbergs.htm
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The department store had been intended as the showpiece in a new busy interchange at Tollcross, but the new roads never passed the drawing board and the store failed to attract the kind of footfall it had been built for.
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https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/remembering-goldbergs-department-store-1-4326904/amp
Posted 5 years ago # -
It isn't too long since John Lewis started opening on a Monday. Sunday opening came later. IIRC both events occured this century.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@acsimpson, yes I was caught out a few times trying to buy something in John Lewis on a Monday.
Schools in south west Edinburgh used to close for the afternoon on a Wednesday. Some shops too.
Edinburgh abides Despite detractors such as Lesley Riddoch (Dundee on the up? I think more like North Fife Coast extends middle class franchise to other side of the Tay). Slow news day?
One reason is the geography of the city. I was out near the source of the water of leith yesterday. Actually very busy on the hill walk as we encountered two women running with dogs and a chap who seemed just to be wandering (he tried to come off west cairn following a quad bike track instead of the path and ended up in no man's land)
I exhort all Edinburgh residents to get out to the further flung parts of the pentlands. You can take the train to Kirknewton then walk up Leyden Road to Selm Muir Wood go into the wood, after few hundred yards follow the sign post into the field and skirt the hilly cow wigwams. The path takes you to little vantage car park on the A70. This is also called The Thieves Road. Discussed previously. Drove road from Falkirk to Peebles via the saddle known as the
Cauldstane Slap. From here you can go up West Cairn and then maybe onwards to the Covenanter's Grave. Or East Cairn and back to Balerno if you can follow a map or your nose. Or straight down to west Linton on easy road. The Victorians then took the train back to Edinburgh from west Linton. But this option is not available nowadays.The pentlands are a great asset to the city and empty if you avoid the nearest hills to the city. The crags and Arthur's seat are also not going to have Cala homes so will be the last bit of greenery apart from Calton Hill which has been built upon over the centuries.
The water of leith is also a fantastic resource as is the union canal (I am including it as it is a contour canal). Then the boundary of the Firth of Forth also creates some semi permeable barrier to Cala.
These large geological/geographical features all cheek by jowl are enduring influences on why Edinburgh is a prime location for a city.
What politicians and drivers of single occupant vehicles need to wake up to is that this is a finite resource and more houses, more single occupant cars, more air BnBs and more hotels represent an expansion of this finite resource to breaking point.
The 2050 vision of Edinburgh cannot just be more of the same. It has to ban cars from the centre and it has to protect the geography/geology. Otherwise the 2050 vision is one of permanent smog, Edinburgh, Fife and Dundee all one big industrial housing complex,no countryside, a crash in hotel building as no one visits anymore. Anyone driving a single occupant vehicle into Edinburgh needs to contribute directly to preventing this by paying a hefty congestion charge. Just an idea, it may have been mentioned before?
Posted 5 years ago # -
Edinburgh abides Despite detractors such as Lesley Riddoch
When she is presidente of the Caledonian Republic we will install her in the Observatory on Calton Hill and she can summon anyone she likes for tea and quizzical looks.
Recent wanderings have revealed executive homes sprouting in very unwelcome places around Edinburgh. Who are all these executives?
Posted 5 years ago #
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