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REBECCA BAIRD: Late-night cafes are the key to a livelier Dundee city centre

Dundee folk want to go out - just not 'out, out', writes Rebecca Baird.

Could cafes become the new pubs? Image: Shutterstock.
Could cafes become the new pubs? Image: Shutterstock.

‘Think Thursday’ is the snappy new slogan that Dundee City Council have come up with to get folk down the city centre of an evening.

A laudable goal, I’d say, although the lazy alliteration leaves me a little lacking in lustre.

Still, it’s a problem I’ve seen with my own pair of peepers (I’ll stop now), the ghost town that is Dundee on a weeknight.

Mind you, with expensive parking charges, chronically unreliable public transport and a cost-of-living crisis keeping citizens inside, that’s hardly a surprise.

And somehow I doubt that state-of-the-art fairylights will be enough to entice the public out of their weary weeknight couch-nests.

So it’s heartening to see businesses such Dock Street Studios, the Botanist and Bee and Dundee Science centre all trialling a late-opening until 8pm on Thursday nights.

More lighting banners could be put up in Dundee city centre. Image: Kim Cessford/DC Thomson.

Particularly for young people and students, free-to-occupy spaces like the McManus and V&A staying open later could make a huge difference.

But the one I’m most excited about is Dundee Espresso Lab.

The only coffee shop on the list, it will join Blend on Reform Street in offering late night Thursdays.

And in doing so, it will start to answer a growing call that I’ve heard countless times during my time in Dundee, first as a student and still as a young professional: WE WANT NIGHT TIME COFFEES.

Alcohol is out, so Dundee’s stuck in?

Even as a small city which thrives on its village feel, Dundee is able to compete with most larger European cities in terms of its lifestyle offerings.

Museums, restaurants, quirky bars, outdoor activities, escape rooms, theatre, cinema… you name it, we’ve got it within walking distance of the train station.

But god love you if you want a wee chai latte after 5pm in the greater Tayside area.

Moving to Dundee from Glasgow, the lack of non-alcohol-driven ‘sitting about’ space on an evening was a bit of a coffee shop culture shock.

On the west coast, I could sit any one of the city’s many internet cafes sipping £2 pots of tea and chatting comfortably with my friends until 4am if I wanted to.

London, Edinburgh and other major cities all have coffee shops open late into the evening. Image: Shutterstock.

Here, I found that if I wanted to go out with my friends after a day shift, my options were pubs or… well, other pubs.

In fact, in every other European city I’ve ever been to, from Barcelona to Budapest, cafes will stay open until at least 9pm – to the point where one of my friends, an international student from Greece, once asked me around 6pm: ‘When does everything open up again for the evening?’

Dundee’s 5pm city centre shutdown is the exception, not the rule, and it’s suffering economically because of it.

Just last week, my fellow Courier columnist Kirsty Strickland noted the massive generational shift towards sobriety which is taking place in today’s Scotland.

I certainly got into the habit of ‘just one or two’ on a weeknight trip to the pub since I moved to Dundee, and I felt all the worse for it. Nowadays, I just stay in.

Because even though being in a pub doesn’t mean you have to drink, it does usually mean being around drunk people.

It’s often noisy, crowded, and the non-alcoholic drink selection is often underwhelming.

Plus, as a former barmaid, trust me when I tell you that no one wants to be the customer ordering a hot chocolate at the bar.

Dundee Espresso Lab is the only coffee shop signed up to the Think Thursday scheme. Image: DC Thomson.

If we want to bring life back to our city centres, then we must entice the city’s working population to spend their money.

Increasingly, there’s a reluctance to part with hard-earned cash in exchange for a hangover, but that doesn’t mean people don’t want to go out.

Coffee shops are the perfect alternative evening spot for those who want to get out on the town and meet up with friends without bursting our eardrums or drowning our livers.

So I for one will be making good use of the poorly named Think Thursday opportunities, in the hopes they inspire more non-licensed businesses to open later.

I just hope Dundee’s well-stocked on decaf.

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