This morning's commute and other commuting stories

S'funny - if you think that when I was a kid, Streatham High Rd was known as Little West End.
Ballroom, theatre, two cinemas, bowling alley, ice rink, no shortage of pubs and restaurants, live music in several of the pubs. There was also a branch of John Lewis.
More recently, it's the first place in the UK that had a McDonalds close down.

Many London high streets were like that. Most larger London town centres had sizeable department stores--recently, even Allders closed down in Croydon--as well as cinemas and theatres. There were five or six large cinemas/theatres on a fairly short stretch of Stoke Newington Road until as late as the 80s. Now only the Rio is left, and the recently-reopened Savoy, now called Earth. There was an ice rink on Lower Clapton Road. Etc. etc.

Changes came mainly because of London's tremendous decline in population until the beginning of the 80s, which made fewer and fewer of these enterprises viable (plus the typical generational change, with younger owners not wishing to continue and things like that), the rise in car transport (before that, when public transport stopped running and you didn't cycle, you were basically stuck with your local entertainment options), but also with new(er) forms of urban public transport, e.g. the expansion of the Tube network, diversification of entertainment, home entertainment, and so on.

With London's again expanding population (whose density is still nowhere near pre-war levels in the LCC area), some of these things are coming back, although hesitantly because of the much greater demand for flats than before the war (people back then living in far more cramped and confined conditions), which is squeezing out much of the space that used to be available for the aforementioned entertainment venues.

(Other factors: I also think that the development of the satellite towns contributed tremendously to the West End's importance and commercial fortunes compared to smaller town centres within London, as many people come to the West End from outlying places. The change from the LCC to the GLC also had something to do with it, as the resulting increase in development further out reduced the cohesion of formerly densely-populated parts of town (which were obviously generally full of overcrowded, poorly-serviced, unsanitary, and dark accommodation), as well as that of their communities. Also, after the abandonment of the 'postwar consensus', e.g. the Bretton-Woods agreement, inequality rose, and this was very much felt on the streets of London.)