St Marks Road

St Marks Road is a small thriving street in Easton, and offers a more respectable and peaceful alternative to the noisy Stapleton Road of the same district. Where Stapleton Road offers take-​aways, St Marks Road offers restaurant’s and cafes. You will find a reasonably quiet pub frequented by locals (The Sugar Loaf) on St Marks, and the seething Black Swan, which hosts underground nights at the weekend, bringing ravers together to party hard way into the morning on Stapleton Road. The latter (particularly the portion of the road closest to town), is always frantic, with blaring car stereos emanating from pimped flash rides, and are parked up the curbs and pavements at inconceivable angles to the road. Some don’t always offer this level of courtesy, parking in the middle of the road whilst the drivers chat to their mates on the street. Instead, St Marks Road is frequented by a less vocal and more sedate section of the local community. Families come here from every walk of life and culture, mainly to shop during the day, or eat out at night.
Conveniently served by rail (there’s a station on Henrietta Street, adjoining St Marks Rd), and with free on-​street parking, it’s easy to get to and enjoy.
Restaurants include the award winning Café Maitreya, Eastern Taste, La Casbah and the ever popular Thali Café, with its outside seating. There’s a couple of really quirky pound shops and the super-​successful Bristol Sweet Mart, the latter being the main reason why people flock here in their numbers.
St Marks has not always been such a safe haven, and occasionally sees some anti-​social behaviour. A few years ago someone was stabbed at the station, and the founding father of the Bristol Sweet Mart was tragically stabbed whilst serving behind his counter. Theses days, if you visit the place on a sunny spring day, it’s hard to imagine the place being anything but urbane. There doesn’t appear to be any inter-​racial tension, with Afro-​Caribbeans, Asians and Whites all making good use of the street. There’s a church and a mosque almost opposite each other, and it’s the home of the Bangladeshi Centre.