Hub in decline: Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. Credit:Angela Wylie One reads: "Some years ago there was a prosperous, apparently busy little bookshop here. For some reason the owners employed a ... real estate agent ... who effectively destroyed part of Fitzroy Street's amenity by raising the rent unrealistically. An execrable punk Yo-Go shop was installed. It lasted about six weeks. No customers." Mr Danby's signs were quickly torn down by incensed landlords, but he stands by his views, telling Fairfax Media: "hubris leads to nemesis". "Fitzroy Street's recent decline can almost be chronicled to the demise of Chronicles Bookshop five years ago. The greed of some owners has meant that the shop has been unoccupied for all but six weeks of the last five years. Cutting out the cultural heart of Fitzroy Street has had a cascading effect on surrounding premises, such as restaurants. The section of the street between Grey Street and Jackson Street has gone downmarket, as has the supermarket, catering more for the increasing number of backpackers." Mr Danby is furious, and wants the local council to intervene. Others aren't so sure local government can do that much.

Everybody has a different theory for what's gone wrong. Credit:Simon Schluter Ashley Gunn and Zoe Mannix banter warmly with regulars in their cramped pharmacy. While Mannix puts together prescriptions, Gunn chats in between serving customers. She says the block in which the pharmacy sits appears to be doing particularly badly. "Up the top it's good, and this block over down the bottom is not too bad, but this block, whatever it is, it's not good. "I'm guessing it's across the road that's putting customers off from the area – Gatwick."

That word comes up a lot talking to the street's shopkeepers. "Gatwick", the Gatwick Private Hotel, is a rooming house for society's most vulnerable, owned and run by two local sisters. The sisters have won praise from government and police for their attempts to help their residents, many of whom are troubled by alcohol and other drug problems, but the shop workers trying to earn a living are less forgiving. "Most of the times we have them in the middle of the street, they start fighting, swearing," Christini Karatasos says. She's been working at Leo's Spaghetti Bar for 21 years, and has seen the street change a lot. Like many others, she thinks it's as bad as it's ever been. "The rent is too high, or there's no business. From the year's I've been here, I've seen it go down. "It's changed a lot. More competition, more restaurants. Still we have the people for Gatwick."

Jonathan Sherren runs three bars on the street and is the president of the Fitzroy Street Business Association. He rubbishes the claims of locals like Karatasos. "It's going OK," he says. "Things are looking good at the moment. Trade in general has lifted. "It's down compared to 11 years ago, but I think you would say the way people go out at night has changed a lot as well." And the real estate agents with their names up behind the glass of the vacant shop fronts are positive as well – but, then again, you'd expect them to be.

"We got a few issues with the street," admits Alan Almeida, who's trying to find tenants for a closed-down food business. "But as you know, St Kilda and Fitzroy Street has been up and down in the last 100 years or so. "At the moment we're going on a little bit of a downer, but it'll pass. There is a lot of people in a huff and a puff about it. [Council] are doing their best." Back at the pharmacy, Mannix and Gunn are recalling all the businesses they have seen come and go, like Danby's "execrable punk Yo-Go shop". "Yeah, it closed pretty quickly," says Mannix.

"And there's a bakery just a few doors down from us here just past 7-Eleven, and that's closed now." Gunn: "there's been a couple of takeaway places, and they last a couple of months..." Mannix: "...and then they end up closing." At St Kilda Cellars, Fiddler remains positive. "It's not as rough as everyone says it does," he says.

"I'd rather walk down here than the city." One of his regulars snorts. "P--- off!"