Rose Street

[Lachlan09]

How many pubs are there in Rose Street nowadays ?

When I was a young 18 year old in 1971 and just starting my drinking career, the story was that there were 28 pubs. Tartan Special was 8p a pint. I never got near to completing the Rose Street Challenge ! Rose Street was a lot different back then ! No pedestrian precinct. Pubs weren't for sitting and relaxing (not many chairs) while slowly supping a half-pint (a nasty English habit ) and the Scottish version of today's gastro-pub was one that sold crisps and peanuts ! (Vinegar crisps if an exotic pub !)

A really unusual thing back then was the Abbotsford Bar (at the East end of Rose St) which nearly always had a young lady dancing totally scud in a large gilt birdcage above the bar !

[tig]

ive not been in rose st for a couple of year but there was no where as near as many pubs as there used to be.

some of the old style pubs where still there tho but a few had turned into these wine bar things.

i never seen any birds in cages or 8p pints when ive been there either lol

ive birds in cages in other places but im waaaaay too young to ever have seen 8p pints.....£1.80 when i got my 1st one i think

[Lachlan09]

Seems like another lifetime ago !

Maybe while I've still got my faculties I better jot down the memories of my young days, places I knew and people I met as my sordid social history !

I even remember at Valentinos disco (I think its name may just changed from White Elephant at that time), Tollcross up to 1973, they used to have gogo dancers on stage while everyone danced. A bit like Pans People sort of thing. Me jigging to Roxy Music's "Virginia Plain". Great stuff !

[Lachlan09]

Coming to think about it, when I was a young lad in the 1960's, I seem to recall that Rose Street had a reputation as a den of vice with red-lit flats and naughty ladies of the night beckoning passers-by !

Can anyone remember that ?

Mind you, the area now occupied by the King James Centre and near St Mary's Cathedral was a collection of verminous, run-down tenements, notorious for being a place of footpads, cut-throats and infected prozzies (half-price on Tuesdays ).

[Polwarth]

I remember my older cousins saying that in the early 60s 'Rose Street' were two of few words of English that foreign navy personnel left ship knowing... along with Lothian Road and Fairley's (a dance hall, which I think, but can't be sure, was somewhere down Leith Walk, and had a less than stellar reputation. Naice lassies wouldn't go to either place!)

However, by the late 60s, Rose Street had cleaned up its act, the brothels that used to be on the 'bad' side of the street were gone (or went deeper underground) and we all used to frequent pubs such as Milne's, The Abbotsford, Paddy's Bar, the Guilford Arms and the White Cockade. Paddy's Bar was a rugby pub, where we all met up before and after Murrayfield matches - it disappeared in the later gentrification of Rose Street, and the space is now a microbrewery or somesuch.

[Touring]

The Abbotsford
Milnes Bar
Filling Station
Black Rose Tavern
Auld Hundred
The Thirty Seven Bar
Amicus apple
Element
El Barrio
Kenilworth
Citizen Smiths
Dirty Dicks
Scotts
1780
The Gordon Arms

These are the only ones I found listed.
I tried checking them out on google maps, but I dont think their cameravan drove down Rose Street.

[tig]

Touring most if not all of it is pedestrians only so i dont think the google machine could have went down it