Knowing my great interest in Edinburgh’s pubs, a number of my acquaintances have recently drawn my attention to the Edinburgh Evening News’ Best Bar 2014 competition. Do you agree, they ask? Well, no. And that is no reflection on the eventual winner, The Mercat near Musselburgh, I just don’t agree with a random public vote to determine these things that is purely designed to sell papers and gather marketing data and has nothing to do with identifying quality boozers.
Edinburgh can be grey. Very grey. From around October to February, it is probably the most common colour in Scotland’s capital. The weather is grey, the buildings are grey and sometimes the people can be a tad on the grey side as well. Therefore we don’t need any more grey. Yet, current trends for pub frontage are adding to this great city’s greyness.
Pubs should be welcoming places. And this doesn’t just mean having a friendly face behind the bar. Before you get that far, you have to be enticed in. The place has to have “kerb appeal”, as smug Phil Spencer might say on one of his many property porn shows. So, why, why, why, are so many Edinburgh pubs’ frontages grey? And I’m not talking about old, weathered, faded facades. I mean new, and newly refurbished hostelries.