Just had a gander at them mate, and I can't believe the amount of boarded up back street boozers.
What a crying, fucking shame.
It's just unbelievable.
When I was up in town a few months ago and having a drive round it was really noticeable. I was trying to point out to my son some of my old drinking dens around just the University area and up to Wavertree and they'd gone, and when I drove up Derby Road on the Way to Southport it was seriously depressing.
But it's throughout the country. Our little village had 4 pubs when we moved here 22 years ago, now it's just the one.
I talked to the wife about it (well I have to have some excuse to talk to her) and she reckoned it's just that times have well and truly changed from when we were young.
Our kids for example, if they are going out, they'll all go round to a friends house and have drinks there before going off to a nightclub, whereas our generation 20-30 years ago would have met up in a pub first. That trade has just disappeared. Taken with changes to transport and also if we are honest, attitudes to drink driving which is a good thing, it's no surprise that so many have closed.
I look back in horror to times around the mid 70's when a gang of us would pile in a car on a whim and go off as far as Blackpool or Manchester clubbing, but we'd all get absolutely tanked up in pubs on the way, including the driver on more than one occasion. Really moronically stupid when I look back but I expect we all did it at some time back in those days.
Anyway, on those photo's, the mosaic ones reminded me about
this article from Scottiepress all about Little Italy and the mainly Italian immigrants who specialised in the marble and mosaic work around Liverpool. If you drill down, there's some great photo's of their handicraft like below in the White Star building