Dialling In: Ground Floor, Edinburgh
Home to community radio station EHFM, Ground Floor is a shining example of the bonds that can be built around food and drink, writes Anahit Behrooz
I’m writing this sitting in Ground Floor and my best friend has just run in to drop something off behind the counter and run out again and I’ve spent 20 minutes swapping dating horror stories with the barista, and they’ve remembered to cut me off caffeine now that I’m done moving house. I think it’s part of the magic of Edinburgh, a magic that hasn’t (yet) been crushed by the increasing corporatisation of hospitality and the arts: that places like this can exist, part-café, part-community radio station, entirely third space.
I’ve been fixated by the idea of third spaces ever since I can remember, although I didn’t for a long time realise that there was a term for them, that they had a definitive social function, and that other people longed and fought for them in the same way that I did. Places like this foster a sense of creative possibility – not just for the people who use the studio, but for the people who pass through the café and now have physical proximity to Edinburgh’s grassroots arts and music scene. Grab a flat white, pick up an old-school toastie or one of Alby’s famous loaded focaccia, and peek into the glass-fronted studio, a terrarium for softboi DJs and the coolest women you’ve ever met.
The idea behind a third space is that it is somewhere that exists beyond the home and workplace; that is, somewhere that resists the atomising effects of late-stage capitalism. It’s the quickest way I can feel connected to a city, or remember why a place I’ve lived in for so long is still home. There are so many complexities to what community building is, but it can also be so simple: the everyday minutiae of familiarity and belonging, extending outwards to everyone.
Ground Floor, 125 Great Junction St, Edinburgh; Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 10am-4pm
This article is from issue two of GNAW, our new Scottish food and drink magazine. Free copies are available in venues across Scotland, or read the full thing via Issuu. Follow GNAW on Instagram @gnawmag