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Newcastle city center has an oddly muted atmosphere for a Friday night.
This is a party town with an estimated nighttime economy worth £ 340 million, but as new local lockdown restrictions bite into, the gains are slim.
At Bigg Market, the destination of choice for generations of night drinkers, the 10 p.m. curfew imposed on bars and restaurants has exhausted customers.
Taxi driver Richard Bradley in a nearly empty Bigg market
Taxi driver Richard “Brad” Bradley has been driving these streets for 24 years and believes that the new restrictions, imposed just as business was beginning to recover, will hit the city hard.
“September is [usually] our busiest month with all new students, “he said.
“They just put our city on a curfew and it’s going to push everyone back to the beginning.”
The new restrictions bring with them an enforceable ban on households mixing at home and advice not to mix elsewhere.
Trisha Means, who goes out for pizza with her husband Tom at the Portofino restaurant on Dean Street, says it won’t make much difference to them.
“We have parents who are in a high-risk group, so we try not to socialize too much,” he said.
Trisha and Tom Means at Portofino restaurant
But for restaurant owners, who say cancellations for Saturday alone amount to 100 and still count, the story is different.
In other places, there is some concern about the gap between some of the messages and reality.
At Strawberry Bar, limited to table service like all bars in town, Lynn Campbell (rightly) suspects that she can’t be fined £ 100 for sharing a table with friends, despite being told otherwise.
Beer pumps and sanitizer in the low-key Strawberry bar
Lynn Campbell says the rules are ‘vague’
She has come to realize that some of the confinement restrictions are the law, and some are just a guide, and it has left her suspicious and confused.
“Can people socialize together, or can one person in a household sit with another?” she said. “It’s too vague, we just don’t know.”
However, the law is clear about when Lynn has to go outside.
At 10pm the Strawberry is empty, the doors are closed, and the owner won’t make any more money tonight.
He and the rest of Newcastle wonder what the next few weeks and months will bring.
