The Ladbrokes Life

[Dosser-fae-the-shire]

Is there not another dodgy looking one outside B&Q  right at the level crossing? 

Quick Google search and the bookies was J&H McKenna. Don't think it's still open though. There's a photo on Google images but I'm fucked if I can work out how to attach it.

[The_Craig]

This is the bookies in Chapelhall, outside Airdrie. There used to be a wee wall where you could sit and eat your chips from the chippy next door.

Now it looks like a prison.

[alta-pete]

There's a tiny wee shack behind Sauchie's famous Bridge chippy that used to be a bookmakers - IIRC, they used to have bars across the windows covered in barbed wire. A grim wee converted toilet in the middle of a public park.

Can't find any decent pictures of it, but the building's still on Google Street View.

I was involved with that one. It was a Tote (who were bought by Betfred) and they had the idea to move it out onto Sauchie Main St. Nice new shiny shop, 500m away from all their customers who were now captive in the pub with no reason to escape. And Betfred now have a new shiny shop up the street with no customers...

[alta-pete]

I dont know if im right (perhaps a nightmare) but there was a really really grim bookies on Maryhill Road that was on the way to Firhill.

That'll be this one:

[alta-pete]

And, for the hat trick, I give you what is - quite genuinely - a converted public lavvy in Lochore. And for those of you who don't know where Lochore is, that's the bit of Fife to where Cowdenbeath banishes its outcasts. Just let that sink in...

[philpy]

Apparently there's a plaque on one of the tables at the Hilton shop in memory of one of the (former) regulars.

What are the odds on that, eh??

[welshbairn]

39 minutes ago, yoda said:

Apparently there's a plaque on one of the tables at the Hilton shop in memory of one of the (former) regulars.

There probably is one but I can't think of any pubs or cafes round there apart from the chippie. Could be the only place to go out to apart from some godforsaken community centre.

[Hedgecutter]

@Hedgecutter must have spotted a few on his travels.

Skipped over this thread until now.

Ballingry (a stone's throw from the aforementioned Lochore, but somehow worse) jumps to mind:

Amazing what a fresh lick of paint can do though.

[dotman]

Has this one been knocked down yet?

[BFTD]

Most of these premises look like their next occupancy will include a printed A4 sheet in the window - "SEX SHOP".

Except for Dotman's. That's got a meeting with a bulldozer, surely.

[Ranaldo Bairn]

Would you really have the nerve to go into one of those wee sex shops? I remember I walked past one in Tonbridge for years on my way to work, and despite being a grown up and confident independent male (stop laughing), I could never summon up the courage.

[mjw]

Would you really have the nerve to go into one of those wee sex shops? I remember I walked past one in Tonbridge for years on my way to work, and despite being a grown up and confident independent male (stop laughing), I could never summon up the courage.

The worst part of those shops was the lack of actual sex on sale.

[BFTD]

1 hour ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

Would you really have the nerve to go into one of those wee sex shops? I remember I walked past one in Tonbridge for years on my way to work, and despite being a grown up and confident independent male (stop laughing), I could never summon up the courage.

I summoned up the courage to go into one in Bexley Heath when I was 15. It was even more depressing than it looked from the outside.

In hindsight, the bloke behind the counter seemed like he'd have been up for some sex, judging by the way he leaped out and tried to steer me towards the gay section.

[ICTChris]

There used to be a sex shop near the top of Easter Road.  It was initially called Leather and Lace but then changed it's name to the more edgy Eros.  I never visited but you'd occasionally see old men sloping in or out.

It shut down a few years back and is now a computer repair/phone unlocking shop.  The contents were being removed one night when I was walking past and one of the things they were removing to the van was a manniquin wearing a rubber nurses uniform but in place of the head of the manniquin they had a goats skull.  Obviously a bit niche.

[Bigmouth Strikes Again]

5 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

 a manniquin wearing a rubber nurses uniform but in place of the head of the manniquin they had a goats skull.  

Wid.

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

6 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

The contents were being removed one night when I was walking past and one of the things they were removing to the van was a manniquin wearing a rubber nurses uniform but in place of the head of the manniquin they had a goats skull.

I didn't know that Garrincha had ever been to the Easter Road area.

[H Wragg]

That'll be this one:

Featured in Trainspotting, no less.

I'm in my early 40s and this is the only bookies I was ever in where they still had a guy scribbling the odds and results up on a black/white board on the wall.

There was quite an art to it, especially on a day with a lot of race meetings on.

[ICTChris]

This is probably me being a great big middle class snob but I hate bookies, they all seem really grubby and sleazy.

[throbber]

1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

There used to be a sex shop near the top of Easter Road.  It was initially called Leather and Lace but then changed it's name to the more edgy Eros.  I never visited but you'd occasionally see old men sloping in or out.

It shut down a few years back and is now a computer repair/phone unlocking shop.  The contents were being removed one night when I was walking past and one of the things they were removing to the van was a manniquin wearing a rubber nurses uniform but in place of the head of the manniquin they had a goats skull.  Obviously a bit niche.

I believe you, thousands wouldn't. 

[KnightswoodBear]

2 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

This is probably me being a great big middle class snob but I hate bookies, they all seem really grubby and sleazy.

The rise of online gambling has given an air of respectability to having a punt.  You can piss your money up against the wall from the comfort of your own home.  Bookies shops just reek of desperation and no amount of trying to spruce them up with faux laddy banter will ever be able to get rid of the stench.