Was at Ray's on Tuesday and have to say I found things pretty glum, compared to my last visit two years ago. The removal of the café area has taken away the atmosphere and left a lot of space which has been filled with patently non-jazz material, such as movie DVDs and world music. And business is definitely not booming! In the 40 minutes I was there from about 4:30 only one other guy came in (depressingly as old as me) and, like me, left without purchasing. One order was placed by phone while I was there, which accounted for total business. Otherwise the only action was the counter guy's chatting up an admittedly very attractive young woman cleaner as she passed through the shop. Dobell's in its heyday it wasn't! (Digression: yesterday's Guardian carried a brief obituary on Doug Dobell's 50-something-year-old actress daughter.) In comparison, things were buzzing in the classical section next door. Things aren't helped by the prices. Last week I received the Dutch Jazz Orchestra's Moon Dreams from an American supplier via Amazon.uk which cost me £7.33 plus £1.21 p&p, a total of £8.54. Ray's wanted £14 for it! So I think what I was looking at in Ray's was the final death throes of the once-booming bricks-and-mortar jazz record trade. Sad! But it was nice to see the "Rare As Hen's Teeth" vinyl section was still there and even nicer to realise that some of those highly priced items are sitting on my shelf here!
As to Central London being vibrant, I agree about the tourists, but found very obvious signs of the recession as I retraced my walking route of two years ago from Soho to Euston station. Then, despite the lateness of the hour (about 7pm) I passed many plate-glassed media/creative industry workplaces full of trendy young people still hard at work as I headed station-ward in a throng of late commuters. This time the stream of commuters has dwindled to a trickle and some of those workplaces were now empty premises. My daughter, now London resident, has a poignant tale of two acquaintances who were coining it as suppliers of champagne to city slickers, but are now working as supermarket shelf stackers! All of this was a revelation to me, as Manchester appears to be booming. One of our biggest industries here now is higher education and the dearth of jobs for 18-year-olds has led to such an increase in student numbers that we now have 90,000 in the three universities, which is putting a massive strain on the infrastructure - especially public transport and roads.
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Welcome to the Funk club!