When Beanscene first arrived in Edinburgh about ten years ago it was quite exciting. Open til 11pm, regular live music, CD sales in association with Fopp (RIP) - and in an unconventional move at the time it was non-smoking! I remember more people complaining about not being able to smoke than applauding the move... how the world has changed.
The coffee was never terribly good, at one point the decaf was actually nicer than the real thing. But people liked it there with the big sofas so they went anyway.
Over the years the business has opened and closed around town and there are currently two branches. The CD sales have dried up, there's not much live music and there's an air of desperation about them now. The only thing which kept the places going, as far as I could see, was the lure of being open til 11 with free wifi and sockets aplenty. Students who didn't want to hang out in the library could hang out and drink their soy chai lattes in comfort.
And then something changed. The opening hours went into flux. The sockets got sealed up. Now the Haymarket branch is open til 8pm (if you're lucky) and the other til 10pm (when they feel like it). And there are no sockets. And the wifi isn't all that. And the coffee still sucks.
Beanscene #fail
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