I'm sure this will be a familiar story across the UK. Here in a town in Mid Devon we used to have a thriving high street with butchers/bakers/newsagents/sweetshops/ironmongers/small electrical chains/banks and pubs etc etc. All this has pretty much disappeared and been replaced with charity shops/nail bars/barbers/fast food and convenience shops.
First it was the big supermarkets on the edge of town that damaged the pricing then the internet. Some of the banks are now being suggested as flats many shops just boarded up.
It seems the days of the high street are over, people tried local veg stores as start ups but they didn't last long and even the charity stores are struggling as there are so many of them. Maybe they are just a relic of the past.
In Rotterdam we have a Hoogstraat (literal translation, and actual name).
They exist in our little country, but mostly as tourist traps.
Internet is partly to blame, as are the chain stores. It's a sign of the times I suppose.
Supermarkets galore though, and not just at the edge of town.
I guess its what we all want, unless we want to 'go out shopping' it's mostly convenience we are looking for.
Hence all those convenience stores.
Can't recall the last time I visited a bank..
Never been much of a one for High Street Shopping, but Chesterfield has gone from a thriving Market Town to almost a ghost town. There's still a market, but it won't even be a quarter the size it used to be. Most of the big stores are now in a retail park.
There is a record store in town though, opened about 10 years ago and it's still going strong - no thanks to me as she doesn't seem to like METAL and Prog Rock much...
Still plenty of vertical boozers for all the local chavs and lowlives though.
Aww man, I just lost about 15 minutes of typing there, getting timed out.😢
Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on November 02, 2025, 03:42:47 PMAww man, I just lost about 15 minutes of typing there, getting timed out.😢
Copy as you go, copy as you go ;)
I can't remember the last time I went into Blackpool town centre (my wife pops in now and again), but it's like all the rest I suppose: Nail bars, bookies, vape shops, Turkish barbers aplenty. Some touristy places I've been too recently are still quite charming with lots of decent local shops.
The picture is a bit mixed in Halifax - while it hasn't been immune to the appearance of places with gaudy shop fronts, its social and live music scene has blossomed in recent years, in no small part due to the popularity of the summer series of gigs at the town's jewel in the crown, the Piece Hall.
There's also the tourism off the back of very successful TV series filmed in and around the town, such as Happy Valley, Last Tango In Halifax and Gentleman Jack.
Lastly, the reputation the town has as a great "away day" for visiting football fans is pretty glowing (and sometimes they can bring four-figure attendances), so to do my bit to maintain that I go into "Ambassador Mode" on the quite frequent occasions I interact with them, or indeed whenever I speak to any kind of visitor.
So the pub and bar scene in the town centre is the best it's been in years; we're lucky. :)
Ayr is a shit hole... try not to go anywhere near it tbh... full of tattoo places.. cheap horrible shops full of horrible people....the odd decent pub and a couple o& good eating places.... The railway station is awful with a half demolished old building near it that needs blowing up..... nice beach tho...
Tesco and ASDA killed off the old idea of going to the butcher, the baker, the fishmonger and the grocer, but only because that was far less convenient for consumers. Amazon and the Internet have done the same for the record shops, the bookshops, the electronics retailers and so on.
It's a shame, but I have to say that these initiatives to spend money on "revitalising" high streets are, to me, misplaced. The only reason that old model existed was that it was economically viable, that was its purpose.
If I think about Derby or Leicester, a lot of the old city centre shopping areas started to deteriorate when the big shopping malls got built, the Westfield and High Cross.
Same with Lynn Street in Hartlepool, when I was a kid it was heaving on a Saturday, then the "shopping centre" got built, now it looks like this (pic courtesy of Street View)
(https://i.ibb.co/r2NjHtgk/lynnst.webp)
I suppose the general direction of travel has been high street > shopping centre > supermarket and retail park > Internet.
Years ago, going out shopping was a pastime. People had few other things to fill their time when not at work apart from going down the pub and ferret racing.
There are so many other things people enjoy more (not all productive, of course) so going out shopping has become a chore - best avoided. The high street has to be re-purposed.