Pop-up shop elitism

Trend of the month: pop up shops, in empty store fronts, rent-for-the-day cafes, and around our streets. Everyone is talking about these

Except, Bristol's traditional pop-up retails are being given a harder time than ever before, as signs on Fox Road now warn you that your details will be passed on the police.

What details? That a white van with no wing mirrors pulled up? What do you expect? Have you ever tried paid-for-sex on the back of a #20 FirstBus bus? There's the half hour wait, the extra costs and the kids filming you with their phones and sticking it up on youtube later. Then you are stuck somewhere waiting for the next bus home.

No, never do that again.

Anyway, this shows how elitist  his pop-up shop theme is

• stall in stokes croft selling local bread: welcome
• Local vendors of sex: criminals
• City-centre market selling finely curated local cheese: welcome
• man in Picton Square selling finely curated local ganga: criminal
• cafe selling premium fair-trade coffees imported from South America: welcome
• street outlet selling cocaine-products imported from South America: criminal

See what we mean? Those of us who work in the sex- and drugs trades are being unfairly discriminated against.

And that's without considering that the cost of fuel has killed all the surburban customer trade, those people who would drive down from Emerson's Green and Bradley Stoke in search of a bit of low-cost sexual gratification and some recreational pharmaceuticals. That customer base has collapsed as bad for us as it did for best-buy and Cribb's Causeway.

Yet neither the local council or central government have recognised the role our industry has in Britain today. It's unfair.