Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/18/national-rail-selloff.html
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But just think of all the new chain drugstores, coffee shops and bank branches that can move into these spaces once they’re privatised. They’re in such short supply!
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You forgot betting shops (the new bank branches - they take your money and invest it badly).
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And pawn shops - they always look so charming when paired with their natural companions, the betting shops.
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in the states the pawn shops are paired with the title loan places.
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The revolution can’t come soon enough…
I’m not prone to suicidal thoughts, but if this sort of depressing shit keeps up unabated for another decade or so, I might just fucking check out. I’m getting sick of people.
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Yep, people are the ones responsible. Every fucking time.
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Can’t wait for the WeWork Arches™ co-working space!
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it’s not that it’s small businesses it’s what they think they can actually do with something that’s not that profitable which probably got lost somewhere else
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As far as I can tell, every railway arch in east London has a garage specialising only in taxis underneath. Or at least that’s what I found when I was trying to find a clutch cable for my car, and ended up walking for a few miles of railway. (my car was not a taxi, I was out of luck).
That said, most cites in the UK seem to have a dirty, grimy, brilliant, little club/venue tucked into some railway arches near the main station. It’s like a tradition, or an old charter or something.
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I’m expecting they will be repurposed as, “Luxury Inner City Living With Character”.
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#notallpeople #fuckerswithmoney 
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For anyone who doesn’t already occupy an arch, they’re already unaffordable, because when they become available there’s a chain of leases that makes them just as expensive as any other commercial property, even if the person at the top of the chain is paying 3 shillings a month to Railtrack Network Rail.
Plus, they’re weird-shaped, windowless, light industrial spaces with a bunch of restrictions relating to railway maintenance. They can’t be turned into flats, and in most cases they’re not attractive for retail (except where a railway viaduct runs along the edge of a high street, which is nowhere). So, they’ll always be used for the same sorts of activity.
But, from the fact that investors want to buy these arches, I infer that legacy tenants are getting a good deal, which the future owner will put a stop to. So it’ll accelerate the demise of art studios, clubs, music venues and practice spaces, gyms, funky cafes etc., and it’ll push a generation of auto mechanics and minicab drivers into financially straitened retirement. Perhaps big car-services chains like Autoglass and KwikFit will take over the arches, and employ the former independent traders to do their old jobs in a degrading uniform for less money?
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Probably. It’s been going on for a long time.
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Not to mention the folks who keep taking their money and letting all this shit happen.
We could all just turn around tomorrow and tell the billionaires to fuck right off, that their money wasn’t any good anymore, and eliminate 90% of the world’s injustice and stupidity in the blink of an eye, but noooo, we have to remain slaves in purely conceptual chains, because solidarity isn’t a fucking thing.
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And the corner liquor stores.
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