In the 1950s, with the exception of Soho, the only place for any aspirational painter, poet, musician, bohemian or ‘bon viveur’ on a tight budget was Liverpool 8. The area was described by George Melly in The Observer as a ‘multi-racial slum waiting in raddled beauty for the planners' bulldozers’, and more positively in Adrian Henri's prose-poem ‘Liverpool 8’ as a place ‘where you play out after tea … Back doors and walls / with names, kisses scrawled or painted … A new cathedral at the end of Hope Street …Wind / blowing inland from Pierhead bringing the smell of breweries / and engine oil from ferry boats …’

In his introduction to The Liverpool Scene (published in 1967), Edward Lucie-Smith took a more expansive view:

Unlike Soho, Liverpool 8 in the 1950s was bereft of clip-joints and night-clubs such as the Mandrake, or pubs like the Fitzroy Tavern and the Golden Lion, with their blatant disregard for licensing laws, conventional sexuality and outwardly respectable behaviour. In Liverpool, closing time meant ten o'clock, so a place to make the most of one's allotted drinking time was essential.