Death of the high street

tenofspades

tenofspades

tenofspades

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10 Apr 2021
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Just been to my local town (hadn't been in a year...) to see the new WHSmith (TGJones), and to go Walterstones.

It was so quiet, and TG Jones they've cut the range of books on sale. Surely that's the biggest reason to go WHsmith?

Walterstone's prices seems to have stayed relatively staple, £12.99 for a book, always been about that.

I don't know if the high street dying is a good or a bad thing. I know Councils probably are taking a hit with less people parking.
 
The only reason I go to the High St now is for food.

Everything else is online.

As I get older and more infirm and can no longer ride a bike (hopefully years away), I guess even all the food will be online as well.
 
Out of town centres doing much better at the moment. In Leicester at Fosse Park there are a decent variety of shops, free parking, no druggies and far safer for kids etc. In town it is overrun with druggies etc, no free parking, much more unpleasant experience, rates for the businesses are crazy too so no wonder they are leaving
 
Waterstones rebranded to Walterstones too? :p

I remember every weekend, there was such a buzz of going to the shops down the high street where I previously lived about 15 years ago or so. Just isn't the same anymore with shops closing down, most things moving online, etc.

I particularly hate buying clothes online nowadays. I know there are still shops around, but it's becoming increasingly harder to find what I want in the shop and actually try it on there and then. Sometimes get told "we don't have X, Y, Z in stock, but you can order it online."
 
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High streets that haven't adopted a primary focus on being a social hub have long been dead.

I live between two locations.
One a mile long is full of coffee shops, bars, restaurants, hair dressers and barbers where a men's cuts starts at £30 and between all of this are many independent shops. In this place it is full of people and lots of very expensive cars, usually illegally parked.
The other one is half a mile long, full of mobile phone repair shops and is frequented by unemployed people. The council pushed any social places out on the roads connecting to the main road so no one sees them (and parking is expensive).
 
The misses and I popped into town yesterday. £1.90 for 2 hours parking within few mins walk of the high street. (quicker, cheaper and more convenient than the bus!)

It was pretty busy, which was good to see.
 
Cardiff has made driving in a pain. And the buses are terrible. What used to take 15 mins now takes about 30 mins by car and an hour by bus! A big one was 1 pound parking after 6. This is now pay by the hour. So what cost 1 pound before is now 6 pounds+

Literally only reason I go to town is if I have a specific reason to go
-cinema (but that's a retail park)
-dentist (because they are in town)
-special event (ie escape room).
-catching a national express bus to airports.


Don't go otherwise. Next move is going to be rural as its just not something I do anymore.

Parking Charges, poor public transport, online shopping, eating and drinking is too expensive for what you get.

For me, it's just not needed really.


To be fair I am not a town person anyway. But I'd say with the parking charges, hassle and basic cost of living increase on food I go into town 75 percent less than I did before covid.
 
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Went into Norwich to do school uniform shopping in late August. Ended up getting everything online as the size needed wasn't in stock and to top it off cost 14 quid to park.

I haven't really had a need to visit a high street in years, being 6ft 7 getting clothes has always been a challenge (my weight doesn't help!) and my interests/hobbies have always been fairly niche so not served by normal shops.

What I don't understand is the amount of mobile phone repair/vape shops there is. Never see any customers in them, every other shop always has a couple people wondering around in them put these shops just always seem empty whenever I walk past
 
Given the average person you seem to see in local town centres these days all they need are weatherspoons, greggs, bettting shops, and a cash converters.. oh and of course 1000 empty barber shops.. which of course do not launder money.

It's the british way.. and we should embrace our heritage..
 
413x said:
Cardiff has made driving in a pain. And the buses are terrible. What used to take 15 mins now takes about 30 mins by car and an hour by bus! A big one was 1 pound parking after 6. This is now pay by the hour. So what cost 1 pound before is now 6 pounds+

Literally only reason I go to town is if I have a specific reason to go
-cinema (but that's a retail park)
-dentist (because they are in town)
-special event (ie escape room).
-catching a national express bus to airports.


Don't go otherwise. Next move is going to be rural as its just not something I do anymore.

Parking Charges, poor public transport, online shopping, eating and drinking is too expensive for what you get.

For me, it's just not needed really.


To be fair I am not a town person anyway. But I'd say with the parking charges, hassle and basic cost of living increase on food I go into town 75 percent less than I did before covid.
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Where do you live ? i thought you lived not far from me? it takes me about 10-15 mins to drive in to town.

I have the benefit of getting free parking down the bay (multi-storey carpark) i usually do this and then just walk 15 mins in to town, I have a season pass at the QPark - don’t have to worry about paying for direct city centre parking. St Davids parking in town can be a nightmare if there is an event going on. If there is, and you time it wrong, you will be waiting 1 hour to get out of the carpark.


I know of some free street parking near the city centre.

The only downside about where i live, its a really nice area and propety prices do really well, but they are still lacking a train station within 0.5 - to 1mile radius.

hopefully there will be one when they sort it out.
 
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Shadowness said:
The misses and I popped into town yesterday. £1.90 for 2 hours parking within few mins walk of the high street. (quicker, cheaper and more convenient than the bus!)

It was pretty busy, which was good to see.
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Cheap, parking in a town carpark here for two hours costs me £3.90, which makes for an expensive trip out for a coffee.
The town is generally rammed though, as it's a tourist destination full of coffee shops and restaurants, with only the occasional homeless person to step over and gang of lager swigging layabouts to avoid on the way.
 
I'd also say that someone like me is partly responsible for the death of the highstreet, because if I go into a Waterstones and find a book I like, the first thing I do is go online and see if it's any cheaper, which it generally is.
I don't know how any of these sorts of shops survive these days tbh.
 
DJMK4 said:
Where do you live ? i thought you lived not far from me? it takes me about 10-15 mins to drive in to town.

I have the benifit of getting free parking down the bay (mutlistory carpark) i usually do this and then just walk 15 mins in to town, dont have to worry about paying for direct city centre parking.
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The bay isn't too bad. But town is.
Odeon cinema (bay) is reading as 19 mins right now.
Capitol car park is reading as 27 minutes. But there's no traffic.

So the main issue is when they turned the drive to Capitol car park from almost direct to having to drive past every multi story. The traffic round John Lewis and Dewi saint can be horrendous. I've been waiting 30 mins to get into the car park before.

You also get free parking if you go to the cinema at red dragon. Almost all my town visits are there. Cardiff centre? Avoid if possible.
 
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This is Swindon town centre. It used to have a certain energy, but now it's a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Yeah, yeah Swindon worst place ever blah blah blaaaah.
 
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Zefan said:
This is Swindon town centre. It used to have a certain energy, but now it's a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Yeah, yeah Swindon worst place ever blah blah blaaaah.
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Never been. You're not really selling it tbh.
 
413x said:
The bay isn't too bad. But town is.
Odeon cinema (bay) is reading as 19 mins right now.
Capitol car park is reading as 27 minutes. But there's no traffic.

So the main issue is when they turned the drive to Capitol car park from almost direct to having to drive past every multi story. The traffic round John Lewis and Dewi saint can be horrendous. I've been waiting 30 mins to get into the car park before.

You also get free parking if you go to the cinema at red dragon. Almost all my town visits are there. Cardiff centre? Avoid if possible.
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The way i drive in to work every morning is


Pontprennau (home) > A48 - Off at the junction to get on to newport road, drive down newport road past the retail shops (Wicks, morrisons, etc) > carry on down newport road, which goes part the escape rooms, if you drive 20 meters down the road from here your at queen street train station - i leave in the morning around 07:15 to 07:30 - this time of the morning its not too bad however, if you do this same journey at around 08:00 to 08:30 or 08:45, the a48 is a horrendous nightmare. Peak traffic.



Yeh i work 2 seconds from the Red dragon centre. the carpark i use is the Qpark multistory which is behind the red dragon centre.


As for the city centre, i mean, I do go, although shopping ? maybe not so much, i generally still use online retailers. Even next in town now which i used to visit quite a lot for clothes, has been raising prices quite often. Althoguh i did go there a week or so ago to buy some new jeans.

There are parts of the city which has older shops and some of it which is much newer (IE newer part of st davids)

I think the smaller arcade shops in cardiff are quite good though. They do seem to be quite popular.


Walking around on a friday night is also quite entertaining.
 
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Phone shops.
Phone repair shops.
Vape shops.
Charity shops.
Gambling shops.
Banks.
Pawnbrokers.
Boarded up shops.
Drug dens, I mean mini-markets.

Welcome to Stafford, and pretty much everywhere else.
 
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