EXCLUSIVITY

When a hopeful new manager takes over a pub takes over a pub with a certain reputation you often hear that they want to "increase the tone of the business".  Or "kicking out the scrotes" as it is more commonly known in the trade.  Pubs, with their literal open door policy, have throughout history attracted people with shady intentions using them as a base for borderline illegal activities, presided over with a thick atmosphere of incipient threat.  And such things will never do.

The new manager has many weapons in his gentrification arsenal.  They can paint the interior in white or pastel shades (more light means fewer hidden spaces where "stuff" can occur).  They can raise prices of all the drinks by 25% (hopefully pricing out those who's minimal subsistence comes from benefits or petty crime).  And if they're really serious, they can install some handpumps serving Real Ale (a definite signal to the lower classes that this is no longer their kind of place).

But what happens if they succeed? Will the nice people who are both well-behaved and high-spending fill the pub up with chat about university fees and the clink of prosecco glasses?  Who knows? And the former customers who have moved on?  What happens to them?

What indeed.