Warming Up

Friday 15th August 2003

The most striking change about Edinburgh this year, and one that I thought I was prepared for, is the disappearance of the original Gilded Balloon.
I got a taxi today, that went down the hill that used to have the Gilded Balloon at the end, and even though I was more than aware it had been burnt and then demolished, I have to say I was still surprised by its eerie absence.
Where there used to be drunks and comics being heckled off (including myself on a couple of occasions) there was now just some rubble and a bit of wall.
It's clearly a bit of a tourist attraction (nothing on the scale of the Pencil Museum of course) as people stop to look at the thing that is no longer there.
It's hard to imagine how it all fit in to such a small space and is also interesting to work out how the floors above became the shops (and I think an amusement arcade) on the road above.
I never had that much fondness for Late and Live after my experiences there as a young man, but it still brought a lump to my throat. OK, so the building had facilitated a bad heckling for me, but it didn't deserve this.
I noticed that the boards that had been put up around the site had been partially covered in posters for shows.
There is no time for mourning in Edinburgh. The death of a venue soon becomes another advertising opportunity.
It seemed a strangely apt image for this festival city.