{"id":2368,"date":"2010-09-20T11:10:17","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T10:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=2368"},"modified":"2010-09-20T17:20:43","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T16:20:43","slug":"goodbye-photographers-gallery-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/goodbye-photographers-gallery-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Shoddy goings on at the Photographer&#8217;s Gallery, London?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/photographers-gallery-cafe.jpg\" alt=\"Goodbye Photographer's Gallery, London\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/london\/photographers-gallery.html\" target=\"_blank\">Photographers&#8217; Gallery<\/a> in London has long been one of our favourite haunts in central London but closed\u00a0 last weekend for a lengthy, year-long refurbishment which will see major changes to the building.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/photographers-gallery-cafe-1.jpg\" alt=\"Goodbye Photographer's Gallery, London\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Before moving to their current location near Oxford Circus, the  Gallery was at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/london\/photographers-gallery-old.html\" target=\"_blank\">Great Newport Street, Leicester Square<\/a>, and along with  the interesting exhibitions, books and magazines on offer, a major  attraction was the great cafe inside.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been going for something like 15 years and &#8211; to be honest &#8211; at times, the cafe has been the best thing in the place.<\/p>\n<p>Serving up delicious home made cakes (made by the manager&#8217;s wife),  freshly made sandwiches, snacks and coffee, there&#8217;s been a familiar face  at the counter for the entire time we&#8217;ve been visiting, a lovely fella called Billy.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/images\/photographers-gallery-cafe-2.jpg\" alt=\"Goodbye Photographer's Gallery, London\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Kicking out the staff<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sadly it seems that Billy doesn&#8217;t figure in the exciting new plans for the Gallery, and after years of service it appears that he&#8217;s not been invited back to run the new cafe.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, we&#8217;ve been told that it will go to a franchise, and we think that&#8217;s rather a shame.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve always liked the friendly, independent atmosphere of the cafe, and feel that without Billy and his cheery staff &#8211; and excellent food &#8211; we&#8217;re not going to find the new premises so attractive.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/images\/photographers-gallery-cafe-3.jpg\" alt=\"Goodbye Photographer's Gallery, London\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We wrote to the Photographers&#8217; Gallery a few weeks ago to ask what&#8217;s happening about the cafe, but they haven&#8217;t bothered to reply, so we can&#8217;t confirm the story.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re not happy about seeing the old cafe go, why not drop them a line and implore them to make Billy and his staff part of the new Gallery&#8217;s plans?<\/p>\n<p>After all, he&#8217;s helped them make the cafe a success for all these years.<\/p>\n<p>Email them here:\u00a0 <a href=\"mailto:info@photonet.org.uk\">info@photonet.org.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>More: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bjp-online.com\/british-journal-of-photography\/news\/1730571\/photographers-gallery-close-answers-criticisms\" target=\"_blank\">Photographers&#8217; Gallery to close down for a year, answers criticisms <\/a>[BJP]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Photographers&#8217; Gallery in London has long been one of our favourite haunts in central London but closed\u00a0 last weekend for a lengthy, year-long refurbishment which will see major changes &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,193],"tags":[102,18],"class_list":["post-2368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-places","tag-cafe","tag-photography"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/photographers-gallery-cafe.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-Cc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2368"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2368\/revisions\/2370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}