Bristol had a number of internet cafes – but many didn’t survive the technology revolution of the 21st Century
onCoffee.Net at 11 Christmas Steps pictured shortly after its opening in 2000(Image: Bristol Post archive)
“The Internet is an international network of computers and one of the most exciting communications developments ever. It is going to become as much a part of our life as the telephone and television, revolutionising communication.”
That was the prediction of a 1998 article in the Bristol Post, just on the cusp of the digital age that has since transformed the world just as that journalist promised.
Back in that late 90s boom, those who embraced this new technology included an ever-growing list of internet cafes, where people could pay a few pounds per hour to browse the net while sipping on coffee and trying to keep cake crumbs off the keyboard.
The first to open in Bristol was City NetGates, which arrived on Broad Street in 1995 as one of the pioneers of computer technology. An article in 1999 reported on the city centre cafe’s success:
“At City NetGates, Bristol’s first Internet cafe, customers are able to use one of the 12 computers to get on-line as they drink coffee and chat. The cafe’s facilities cost £5 per hour to use, although it has run schemes to give unemployed and homeless people experience on computers.
“The projects co-ordinator at the cafe, which opened nearly four years ago, said that business had never been so good.” The staff quoted said it was “always busy” on the six days a week it was open, with a “broad mix of customers including business people, students and pensioners” who “come here to carry out research, purchase goods, such as books and holidays, or send messages to friends and family”.
It was noted at the time that only a handful of the city’s public libraries offered an internet service back then. Other Bristol internet cafes included The Internet Cafe on Whiteladies Road, Clifton, the Friends of Dorothy Internet cafe in Old Market, Oncoffee.net on Christmas Steps, and a free internet cafe at the Watershed.
City Netgates internet cafe pictured in 1997(Image: Bristol Post archive)
However at that time, shoppers were still staying loyal to the high street. A December 1999 article in the Post read: “Consumers in Bristol are sticking to the traditional shopping experience despite Internet hype, according to retail and computer experts.
“Bristol Internet Cafe owner David Lambert says people are only using the Net to buy certain products: ‘People are now using the Internet to buy things like books and trainers from America where they can get them for half the price.
“‘So I don’t think it will affect many retailers in Bristol apart from perhaps booksellers and electrical shops.'” By the following year, the shift was already beginning to show.
One mum quoted in the Post said she uses an internet cafe instead of trailing round the shops, with the reporter noting: “Pauline, of Clifton, has bought, books, CDs and rail tickets on-line and even used the internet to buy the family car”.
A few years later by the mid noughties, more people were accessing the web and the internet cafe boom was on a downward spiral, as the technology arrived in homes not just the high street. Many had closed before the next decade arrived, including City NetGates.
The space, next to Hort’s Townhouse, went on to become another cafe called me:me, then Wild At Heart, then Ironworks Supply Co. cafe, which utilised the space until its closure in 2020.