“It wasn’t making money,” says Jackie Meikle, former manager of Oceana Bar on Ferry Road, which in June closed its doors for the last time after a decade in business. “It’s the way that working man’s pubs go.”
After the final farewell party, Jackie wrote an emotional post on the pub’s Facebook page thanking the regulars for being “the people that made me want to get up in the morning everyday”. She concluded with: “The Oceana now has new owners and will be closed for a refurbishment but those doors will open again it will just be different.”
Less than a month later, a former patron of Oceana shared a photo of a poster in the pub’s window announcing that it would soon become The Coalyard Tap, a sister pub to the Old Eastway Tap and Portobello Tap. The caption read: “We will have a Yuppie pub 🤣🤣🤣”.
Leith has become a prime high street location in recent years. It is home to three of Edinburgh’s seven Michelin starred restaurants, four of its seven craft breweries, and boasts independent bookshops capable of fending off the likes of Waterstones.
To some onlookers, these “yuppie” businesses are another hallmark of gentrification; a symptom of a neighbourhood gradually pricing out its residents.
But how much of the changes to Leith’s business environment is gentrification, and how much reflects wider economic changes? How exactly has the mixture of businesses changed in recent years? Are we actually seeing long-standing, cheap shops and cafes replaced by pricey newcomers? And most importantly, what do business owners themselves, as well as resident Leithers, think of the changing face of Leith Walk, the Shore and Ferry Road?
In a two-part series, we have been trying to dig beneath the surface of the generalised “gentrification” label, to understand what life in Leith is like, and how it’s changing. You can read our first part, focussing on living in Leith, here. For this second installment, we spoke to business owners and managers in the rapidly changing port district.
