La vie de Lark Lane

“Now… would you like to hear about the drugs?”

It’s a Tuesday night, it’s barely past 8pm, and I only met this group of 40-something-year-old men a few minutes ago. Despite all these mitigating factors, we’re already jumping right into the gritty stuff. 

We’re propped up in the back of Keith’s Wine Bar, one of the most famous spots on the iconic Lark Lane by Sefton Park. The group have agreed to speak to me about their long history with this street — ‘The Lane’, as it’s affectionately called — which includes, somewhat surprisingly, the drug trade.

“Cocaine came in during the 90s, and then the dealers came right after that,” a man named Joe says. “That’s when the hippie vibe dispersed a bit.” All three of his mates nod in agreement. Joe has been coming to Lark Lane since 1993, and he’s seen it morph from a bohemian paradise filled with independent makers and shakers, into a version of other “trendy” places in England — say, Call Lane in Leeds, or Camden Market in London — that get swamped with tourists over the weekend. 

“We’re now living in a tourist aftermath,” his friend Gabriel chimes in. “It’s taken away the personality of the street a bit. It used to be a real eclectic mix of personalities, and now it’s become a bit generic.”

That’s exactly why I’m here. Since moving to Liverpool last May, countless people have told me that Lark Lane is the creme de la creme of the city; its portrait sketched out on postcards, and graphic prints of the street sold in souvenir shops nearby. 

From old photographs (and from the drunken nights and mellow Sundays I’ve spent here) it seems effortlessly chic and cool — an array of quirky shops and hairdressers interspersed with bars and al fresco dining tables.

But like any place there’s the projection, and then there’s the reality. 

While no doubt still possessing some of the bohemian flavour it always has, Lark Lane has undergone massive change over the last ten years. Gone are the greengrocers, laundrettes and fishmongers that put the street at the heart of Aigburth’s community. Instead, fleets of new bars and pubs (mostly owned by the same few names) dominate the road, catering to the partygoers who flood the street each weekend. 

It’s no wonder I’ve heard murmurings of discontent that the Lane has lost its way. Since the 1970s it has been a hub for artists looking to set up shop and hone their craft — hell, even Elvis Costello was papped here back in the day. Now, with the street dominated by new bars and eateries, does that sentiment still remain?

There’s only one way to find out. It’ll take me two trips to the street – one by day, one by night – to make my mind up. Because, you see, the first thing you must know about Lark Lane is that it's something of a Jekyll and Hyde.

In daylight, cafés and shops pull out their pretty outdoor displays and pastel painted signs. People mosey up and down the street, quietly chatting to vendors while searching for an Instagrammable cup of coffee or cake. As night falls, it is an entirely different world. The airs and graces of the Lane are eclipsed by crowds of twenty-somethings stumbling from the doors of Blondies or Keith’s or Love and Rockets or Rhubarb or — we really are spoiled for choice, aren’t we?

Let’s rewind back to when I first began my Lark Lane deep dive, outside Lunko bakery on a wet Thursday morning. You’re bound to know about Lunko — since opening last year the place has received rave reviews, with pictures circulating online of huge crowds queuing outside, waiting for a slice of pastry heaven. I’d been told by friends to get there early if I wanted a chance to interview those in line, so I head down just before 10am. 

As I edge round the corner I hold my breath, listening out for the sound of a hungry mob banging at the windows. Silence. 

A man in a van slides open his doors and starts unloading crates of bread, taking them into the bakery. I’m the only other person in sight. I hang around hiding behind a row of cars, hoping I’d simply beaten the Thursday morning croissant rush by a few minutes. I wait for another 20 before realising that perhaps I was a little misguided to assume a mob would be here on a weekday. 

I’m starting to look a little shifty standing here, I think to myself. I call it quits.

“I remember when you’d get dozens of people coming here all hours and days of the week, it was like nothing you’ve seen.” I’m inside the Amorous Cat Gallery, talking to Christine about her art collective, Eclectic Minx, and her time on Lark Lane. I’d already tried chatting to a few shopkeepers on the street, some of which gave me the side eye before telling me they’d “email me” later instead. 

Christine and her business partners Ruth and Karina, on the other hand, seem far more forthcoming. They’ve got a pop up shop here on the Lane for a fortnight, selling upcycled furniture and knick knacks. 

Christine tells me she’s lived around the Aigburth area for most of her life, briefly moving to Ireland before returning just over a decade ago. She says the footfall on the Lane has “dropped off a lot” over the past five years, and the removal of parking spaces after Covid has been a real kick in the teeth to shoppers and residents alike. “Just see for yourself today,” she says, gesturing out the window towards the empty street. “Even though it's raining it would have been packed a few years ago — now look.” 

I ask her what she thinks of the street nowadays. Does she miss some of the old businesses — say, the bookshop, or Pistachio restaurant — that used to have pride of place on the street, or is she happy with its new direction? 

“Lark Lane will always be Lark Lane to me,” she says, but admits the increased numbers of food outlets has been a point of contention at times. “You see them all opening and closing down within a year,” she says. “There’s already enough food places and the overhead costs are just too much for them.”

This is something I hear across the board from the people I speak to. Running a small business on Lark Lane has become significantly harder in recent years — the rising price of bills due to the cost of living pushing less established businesses out of the fold. Instead of boosting fresh ideas and businesses like the street originally intended, it has become somewhat of a revolving door for them; a sense of impermanence dampening a street that is meant to thrive off its legacy.

That evening I decide to journey down to The Green Man pub, one of the older buildings on Lark Lane, to see if the regulars there have noticed that same trend. Before long I’m wrapped up in another conversation with a group of middle-aged men, all of whom have been coming to the Lane for over a decade. One word keeps getting thrown around the conversation like a ticking bomb: Gentrification, gentrification, gentrification. But what do they actually mean by that?

“It’s like what you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts,” Anthony, the man closest to me, says. “Do you get what I’m saying?” I’m afraid not, Anthony. “Look at the pubs around here,” he says, gearing up to explain himself. “They’re good imitations of old school boozers, right? But it’s exactly that — an imitation”. 

For as long as he’s been coming to the Lane, he says, it has always been home to working class creatives first, then outsiders. Yet in recent years, things have shifted. Now, pints have risen to over a fiver and the folk who used to drink here have begun feeling excluded by the changing of the guard. “Lark Lane is all about the people,” he says. “As long as you maintain a local core, you can still have a good time. It’s still a good area to be around but I’d say we’ve lost a bit of that.” 

I can understand what he means. As a newbie to the city it’s easy to get caught up in the glitz and glamour of the “new” Lark Lane — pop-up trinket shops and fancy orange wines adding to the coolness of it all — but you end up forgetting about its history and the people left behind. While, of course, I’m grateful I can spend a night stumbling along this street, weaving in and out of countless fantastic bars, I can’t help but feel sad for the old traders that once thrived here, now closed for good.

I decide to head to my regular spot, Bookbinder, to find out a little more about the street’s history. I order my usual pint of Landlord and get chatting to bartender Rosie, who tells me even though the pub opened three years ago now, she still gets people coming in to inform her of the building’s rich past. “Yoko Ono used to visit when it was a restaurant, do you know?” she says, smiling. “And Elvis Costello back in the 80s. People just love to come here and reminisce, that’s kind of the beauty of it.”

It’s here I think Rosie is onto something. Lark Lane is a place that thrives on nostalgia; its pubs stripped back to expose original wooden beams and bricks, books written about its history and locals often talking about “the good old days” of a place in its prime. While it may have lost some of the smaller, old-fashioned haunts like its laundrette and fish and chip shop, the sentimentality of the street to the people who come here still remains. “In a way, it’s a bit of a caricature of itself really,” Rosie says. “It will always entice people for that reason, no matter how it changes over the years.”

With that, I finish my pint and head to the only place to end any Lark Lane night on: Keith’s. The stuff of legends, Keith’s Wine Bar opened in 1976 and — while perfect for a 1am singalong — is never short of people at any hour. Walk past here at 2pm and you’ll be met with a scene straight out of Last of the Summer Wine; old men clinging to their pint glasses, no more than a few gruff words exchanged every hour. 

Unfortunately when I pay it a visit the man himself, owner Keith, isn’t in. But two days after my trip to the wine bar he gives me a call. “It would be lovely to have the [old smaller businesses] back but they just can’t survive,” he tells me. “There’s competition from supermarkets nearby — I know people say they like to go to their local fishmonger or something but it’s really hard to survive nowadays.” 

The longevity of Keith’s is thanks, in part, to its iconic status. There’s paint peeling from the walls, a musty smell emanating throughout, but none of that matters when you know you’ll have the best Friday night of your life there. Its old guard status gives younger people a chance to mix with the regulars, they themselves sharing stories of past nights out drinking the very same bottles of Rioja you are.

It’s easy to look at a street with so much history and feel disappointed as it evolves into something less recognisable. People feel that aversion to change when they see nothing wrong with the way things were run before, it’s human nature. But there are few streets in the city that have the pull and, dare I say it, branding, of Lark Lane.

Part of that brand is locked into its ability to morph and evolve; to throw back at us what we want from a night out. And if all those new bars aren't quite to your taste, give it a little time and there'll be a new opening to look forward to instead. 

As midnight hits I stumble home from Keith’s, aware I’d had one too many on a school night. The next morning, my pounding head and I wake up to a text message. 

“The Lane tonight?” it reads. 

“Always.” I type back.