The Oaks com­plex some­times seems like a hos­pit­al­ity Ber­muda Tri­angle: fast-food joints and dodgy con­veni­ence stores jostle with bars of almost unre­lent­ing crap­ness. But something’s about to land that looks much more prom­ising: Mem­ph­is Belle Cof­fee House.

Memphis Belle Coffee Shop - Dixon St

With a barista who just came second in the region­al champs, a ser­i­ous-look­ing range of Flight beans from their Napi­er home base and glimpses of an interi­or that looks vastly more soph­ist­ic­ated than its pre­de­cessor (not that that’s say­ing much), Mem­ph­is Belle might just put the Oaks curse behind it. It should be open­ing this week, and def­in­itely seems worth check­ing out.

On the oth­er hand, it looks like it might be lights out for a bar that was nev­er exactly this fly’s favour­ite place: Elec­tric Aven­ue. There was a skip out­side this week­end, gradu­ally filling with neon-painted MDF as the gaudy interi­ors were ripped out. It’s quite pos­sible that it’s just a par­tic­u­larly viol­ent renov­a­tion, but it all seems rather sud­den, and their Face­book group has been silent for a month. Is there any­one out there who will admit to being a reg­u­lar and can con­firm or refute its demise? And what are the chances of get­ting a decent bar to replace it? Giv­en the loc­a­tion in Munter Cent­ral, I guess the most we could hope for is a bar that can at least spell its street address on its web­site.