Village needs tidying up
2007
“There’s the ‘Castro’ here (the gay village) now, isn’t there, for a start off. The gay quarter is quite vibrant, it needs a lot of tidying up, I think it’s a bit scruffy but perhaps the Loft Lounge is giving a bit of a nudge because that’s very smart and I have lunch parties there sometimes. I certainly don’t do clubs but I’m quite happy to stand in a bar and try and make myself heard when we’re having a chat - nobody should complain about the noise because immediately you add twenty years to your age - but if I have any friends coming here to stay we always go to the quarter, I’d rather our money go there but, a lot of the bar owners need to tidy up a bit. The Equator needs a bit of a facelift as well, needs some money spending on it. That might tidy up a bit but, of course, if all these residents coming in are going to start bitching about noise at night, of course, the quarter will need to move elsewhere again so that’s got to be sorted but we need smartening up. I think tatty, gloomy, dirty bars are no good to any of us and we’re actually lowering our standards if we allow it to happen. I wouldn’t be averse to going and telling the bar owner that it needs tidying up a bit. Of course, I’d probably be banned but maybe I wouldn’t, maybe he’d say ‘Find me a decorator’ and I could do that as well. I think we need to watch standards”.
Contributed by: Robin McGarry, 66