Changed days

Look around York. Go for a walk around the various pubs and bars. Try buying a pint of lager and examining your change from £3, look out for chrome, pavement seating and alcopops, get yourself a drink just before midnight and try to remember the name of the buildings that were there ten years ago.

This is the new face of York, a completely changed way of drinking.

"Gone are the days of coachloads of trouble turning up on Micklegate," says PC David Boag, York licensing officer, while thumbing through the city's protocol, the blueprint for a sea change of licensing policy.

"The new breed of caf bars attract a different kind of customer - there is less trouble in York now then there has ever been.

"I was surprised when these new places opened at their prices. I didn't think people would pay as much as £2.50, £2.60, £2.70 for a pint. But they do. And these new bars are full all the time.

"It seems that York can support a lot of these kinds of establishments."

Micklegate has suffered as Coney Street has become the new 'place to be seen' but pubs there were warned, he said, that they needed to clean up if they wanted to keep up with the spanking new bars that have since opened.

Pitcher and Piano is as good an example as any of the way drinking has changed.

It is a huge expanse of a bar with high ceilings, loud music and lots of very well-dressed young people out for more than just a drink; they are looking for a big night out.

Prices for food and drink are high, but customers are more than willing to pay it and well-dressed and polite doormen happily shepherd in the punters all night long.

The riverside bar can not have been cheap to open, but the chain is more than reaping its reward now.

"These places are doing very well," PC Boag continues.

"The days of the traditional licensee are over, the new breed are more like business managers."

But he doesn't fear for the traditional pubs.

The Golden Slipper, First Hussar and King's Arms are all York pubs that tourists and locals still visit, and although young drinkers seem drawn towards the wine and caf bars of an evening, there is still a place for the 'real' pubs.

"I think these places will always survive," he continues.

"They offer something that the caf bars never can and people will always want to visit them.

"They may have suffered a little as trends change but I can't see them disappearing."

Go on holiday for a fortnight and there is bound to be a new pub open when you come back, but the 179 pubs, seven caf bars and four wine bars open and ready to serve you in the city are still not as numerous as in York's heyday.

The old 'one pub for every day of the year' did actually hold true at one time, in the days when Walmgate and Fossgate were full of knocking shops and boozers.

York remains a drinkers' city and will always be popular with pub owners and users alike.

"There is no doubt more new premises will open in the near future," the licensing officer continues.

"We do get regular inquiries and we duly send out a copy of our protocol and then consider their responses."

Whether it is bars or pubs you prefer, York does seem to offer a lot.

Although, where all the punters who can afford, or stomach, £2.70 for a pint come from, will always remain a mystery to some.