One of the roads I regularly travel down on the way into my local town centre is quite a good barometer for the local economy. It's long, it has nearly every conceivable type of shop and it's easy for me to spot day-to-day or week-to-week changes.

For a while I've been seeing businesses shut down, not just for economic reasons - one isolation tank business probably closed because of a fatality. However the bottom seemed have to fallen out of one sexy clothes for women shop, for example.

However recently I've seen new businesses start to spring up. I guess the empty spaces, and presumably lower shop rental rates, have allowed people to experiment with new business ventures.

What have other people noticed locally with similar streets?

I know of a chain of shops that shut down because they were so successful. The owner of the chain had had enough and decided to cash in while the going was good. This was a couple of months back mind...
My sister works in Asda and says they have not suffered but the kind of things people are buying has changed

Some of the top clubs in London have closed down quite recently. Canvas (originally Bagleys), The Key, The Cross, The Astoria, Ghetto, The End (closes in February 09), and my all time favourite venue Turnmills.

They have all closed because the owners could make more money selling them to office and housing developers.

One of the resident DJ's for my night Andy Baker played at the world famous Ministry Of Sound and apart from Alex Collins it was a shit night and Andy said he would never play there again.

It seems like if you want a good nights music now you need to go to smaller underground clubs like my Relentless @ The Dogstar or Lost Souls @ Public Life.

Its a great shame.