Bouji bakes, cool bottleshops, last-minute gifting: step away from the screen — here are the UK’s coolest high streets and where to shop
Switch off that screen — the best shopping this Christmas is to be found on the Great British high street, and we’ve pounded the country’s pavements to find some of the best …Try the cracking Irish boozer the Man of Kent for “a really unassumingly good Guinness” (a recent Duda Diner residency dished up Malaysian Kelantan chicken bathed in coconut-lemongrass sauce cooked on hot coals streetside), and the Old Nun’s Head, a trad 1930s mock-Tudor pub on the green. There’s the prerequisite zero-waste shop (BYO); Alkemi Store Nunhead for all your homeware and K-beauty needs; Near Beer, which makes low-alcohol beers; and El Vermut, a friendly vermouth bar.Tucked below a curve of the River Avon, North Street is Bristolian hipster heaven — a mural-adorned road running between Southville and Bedminster (aka “Bemmie”). There’s loads on the go arts-wise, plus plenty of stylish spots to eat, drink and shop.The rock band Idles recently joined forces with North Street’s Friendly Records for a benefit show to raise money for War Child, while at No 198 you’ll find Upfest, a gallery and picture-framer responsible for Europe’s largest free street art and graffiti festival — this year’s headliner, the trans artist and activist Mister Samo, “sprayed messages of love” across BS3. On the corner of Raleigh Road, Tobacco Factory is a community hotspot housed in a former industrial building, complete with an on-site farm shop, film school and café-bar with a theatre upstairs.
