Ruin pubs ordered to close at midnight
July 15th, 2020An independent pundit slams the local authorities who have decreed that catering units in Budapest’s famous ‘party district” must close from midnight to 6 o’clock in the morning.
On Hírklikk, Róbert Puzsér describes Budapest’s ’ruin pubs’ as an expression of spontaneous ingenuity which rescued a district which had been neglected since World War Two. Creative entrepreneurs used the empty lots of the inner-city 7th district, the legacy of war-time bombardment, to set up extremely popular ‘ruin pubs’ which attracted millions of young people from throughout Europe, generating unprecedented tax revenues. The Airbnb industry that developed around them generated incomes for thousands more people, and the ruin pub district has contributed to making Budapest one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Writing on a left-wing website, Puzsér excoriates the local left-wing council elected last October for ordering the pubs to close their doors at midnight, in what he describes as a gesture of ‘janitor terror’. In his concluding remark he asks, rhetorically: ‘who would cure their toenail fungus by cutting off their legs?’
Tags: tourism