When I moved up to Newcastle in the late 70s I was introduced to the elevated pedestrian walkways concept at Killingworth Township, a social housing development that was so succesful that they demolished the whole lot within 20 years - the elevated walkways, some of them eight to ten storeys in the air, were extremely popular for chucking your broken TV sets and refrigerators off, which didn't go down well with the police officers who were often walking beneath when, by coincidence, the tenents were also disposing of said white goods.

Done right, it could be a decent idea in a shopping centre.
If you've ever shopped in the Rows in Chester, you'll get an idea of how it can work very well indeed.
A bit like the balcony shops you get in shopping malls.

Done wrong you get the balcony shops that you currently have in the Merrion Centre - no-one goes up there although you can see that it would have been great when they had the cinema there and the nightclub at the other end.

It wasn't just 60s planners who made that mistake though - you've got the same thing in one of the Edwardian arcades (is it Thorntons) which also had balcony shops that no-one viisted.

Just out of interest, is there a particular reason why you're not posting as MF anymore?

Yes

Nothing really, as you can see the old user name still works and it still bans

I just don't have much time now for browsing, very busy at work and very busy when not at work so time for someone else to have a go and I think the apprentice will do a good job.

Lovely stuff.

Probably covered this back in the early days of thread, but McChicken's reminiscenses about old pubs got me thinking about drinking establishments from my early days of venturing into town

Ritzy & Central Park
Jacomellis
The Guildford - a couple of pints and few pints before heading off elsewhere
Stumps!

others will come back to me, plus the delights of ranchburger before every city had a mcdonalds on every corner.

Remember being spectacularly pished in Ritzy / Central park on trebles and a mixer for £1 when about 17, think the trebles were vodka with blackcurrant in it, made for a fairly lurid bout of vomiting

OK, if you want tolower the tone of the thread then let me describe every Saturday afternoon/evening/night during my summer of 74...

1. Spend all afternoon as professional scorer for the Leeds Cricket Team (home ground, Headingley) - professional in that the job carried a stipend of 2/6d per season, thats twelve and a half pence kiddies, for the whole season.

2. If it was an away game then spend 5pm to 8pm in a "pub with decent ale" for which the team captain had lengthy notes for every away ground - Barnsley was always a favourite with a pub attached to the famous Barnsley Brewery.

3. If it was a home game then straight to the Leeds Supporters Club in the southstand car park for one of the only bars in Leeds that still served hand pulled Tetleys.

4. By 8pm and well, well, blathered on decent ale, make my way up to The Woodman in Far Headingley (there's posh) to meet my mates coming off the bus, they ready for a night on the lash, me clinging hold of the bus stop trying to give the resemblence of someone still in control of his legs.

5. By 9pm and after a couple of pints of Whitbread Dark Mild on top of several pints of decent ale make my way out to the car park at the back of The Woodman where there was a handy drain - throw up a gallon or so of festering beer, wipe mouth, say something like, "Feel better for that" and head back into The Woodman for a fresh pint.

6. Repeat the "Feel better for that" process when I get home later that night followed by "Oh Jesus, never again, what did I do with the scorebook" early on Sunday morning.

The Sunset and Vine used to have a happy hour where trebles were a quid. I have very similar memories of regurgatating rum and coke in the toilets of Mr Craig's night club. what joy.

Not forgetting, hitting the Conservatory, the Bank and the Town Hall Tavern (I had a thing for Tetley Mild) along the way!

eek

remember 'flexying off work' and heading in there early doors, disappearing into the dark, hammering said trebles and mixer for a quid, then emerging at 6.30 / 7pm absolutely blitzed and the rest of the world was still in the process of going home.

Only went to the club upstairs a few times, Madisons?

Our happy hour spot used to be The Wig & Pen on Wellington Street, until loads of people cottoned on and it got too busy.

Stumps was also good for Happy Hour. We used to drink in there cheap till 7pm, then stroll to the Fox & Newt to watch whatever Friday night game was on sky.

City centre pubs were always a bit hit and miss when ah wor nobbut a lad but The Coburg was the ruination of my college career.

I did a day release course for a full day every Monday and a night class on a Tuesday, unfortunately The Coburg beckoned during those long Monday monring lectures and we'd run, literally run out of Kitson College across the road to The Coburg at dinnertime.

And then forget to go back.

On Tuesday evening we'd meet in the canteen for beans on toast before the lessons started and it only took one person to say "Ahh fook it, lets go to The Coburg instead" and the lecturer would find only a handful of swots turning up for his lecture again.

You won't be surprised to learn that I failed my ONC Electrical Engineering at the end of year one and was invited to leave the college after I actually didn't answer any of the questions on the exam paper, the only thing I wrote down was my name and then handed it in - why I never got sacked from my job I'll never know.

This was in 1974 and of course pub lunchtime catering consisted of a plate of cold pork pies under a glass dome on the bar or if you were lucky and called into the Tam o'Shanter at the bottom of Eastgate on the way to the bus station, you'd get a lukewarm pasty from a glass cabinet that heated pies under light bulbs to just the correct temperature so that the bacteria would wake up and start to multiply, but not quite hot enough to kill them off.

Cold pork pie in The Coburg, warmish greasy pasty in the Tam o'Shanter, we knew how to live in those days.

Oh, one more thing on 1970s pub catering - The New Inn at Headingley did cheese and pickled onion sandwiches on a Sunday evening, why only on a Sunday evening I don't know, but I always bought one, two thin wafers of white sliced bread, an even thinner slice of Kraft orange cheese (trade descriptions act ?) and a pickled onion on the side of the plate, the hieght of pub cuisine 1970s style.

Bake and Take in Headingly anyone ?