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A warm summer's evening: the perfect time to relax, writes David Sterratt.  

Just as summer arrives, Spitaki, a new Greek taverna, brings a taste of the Aegean to Broughton at 133 East Claremont Street!

Occupying the former Elbow premises, Spitaki is a joint venture between David Hastings and Christos Babalis.

We decided at short notice to eat at Spitaki on its opening night, and it was full, so we ate dinner on one of the outside tables. The experience was authentically Greek: friendly, family feel, wonderful home-cooked food and slightly chaotic!

Are you concerned about the quality of state education in Edinburgh? Or about social care for the elderly? What about how often the bins are emptied or potholes repaired?

Whatever your priorities, the Council Tax is capped, and there are further swingeing cuts coming to City of Edinburgh's expenditure over the next few years. Things don’t look like getting better anytime soon.

So, boring as it may seem, there’s a pressing need to think calmly and carefully about how we raise money to pay for local services.

NEW TOWN GOTHIC

—By David Hill  

If New Town streets, resplendently enigmatic in their hues and mysteries, are sometimes minded to reveal a little more of themselves, the familiar yet less discovered country of that most personal of local terrain – our own homes – can feel unyielding to our enquiries, even hostile to our aims.

In Issue 241, John Ross Maclean fondly recalled the Ritz cinema, which used to stand on Rodney Street where the modern flats are now. 

Reader David Boyd remembers it well …

Hard at work and battling the elements on Dalmeny Street this morning was artist Kirsty Whiten. 

She was putting the finishing touches to her public mural (between Buchanan Street and Out of the Blue), which forms part of an exhibition for LeithLate15.

Whiten’s mural has been turning heads these past couple of days, but in a good way. Locals have been delighted that a dull wall has been brightened up, and feedback has been extremely positive.  

REVIEWED BY RHYS FULLERTON 

He’s one of the most famous artists of all time and he created a body of work which seems to be endless.

There have been films about him, documentaries, books, retrospective shows and blockbuster exhibitions. You would have thought we already know everything that there is to know about Pablo Picasso.

And yet more than 40 years after his death, Picasso is still in the spotlight. So what is there left to discover? 

I eavesdropped the following snippet of conversation whilst waiting for a tram the other day.

‘You should have seen the amount of bottles that chap from No 27 put out for recycling. He must have had quite a party ... or a drinking problem!’

There was a time in Broughton where we would stand at the bus stop chatting casually about the weather. Now we stand at a tram stop discussing the contents of other people's recycling. 

George Reiss, former Broughton resident and community worker, has been researching changes in the area. An exhibition of his photographs is now on show in McDonald Road Library, and he's looking for residents to share their thoughts.

Last month I went down memory lane, he told Spurtle. Two decades back, to be precise. I revisited the very spots where I had stood with my camera in the mid-1990s, and tried to align my lens on the same sites where snooker halls, elm trees, taxi firms and the Neighbours bar once stood. The differences were dramatic.

A team of volunteers from the 11th Edinburgh North East (Broughton St Mary’s) Scouts were included in the Edinburgh Marathon Finish Area Crew on 31 May, writes Karen Todd.

They were assigned the task of organising one of the many baggage trucks used to reunite the runners with their belongings after completing the 26.2 miles of the Marathon.