The Scottish Exodus

My Neighborhood

10 October 2000
Merchant City, Glasgow

Andrea and I live in a one bedroom furnished flat within the Canada Court residential complex. The flat is spartan, blue, and wholly British in its peculiarities. The bedroom and living room each have their own space heaters, doors, and heavy blue curtains while the kitchen is mainly a closet off the living room with a pair of wooden slat doors (much like a door to a changing cubicle on the beach back in the good ole days™). The floor in the kitchen isn’t laid correctly, and therefore, according to Andrea, it always looks dirty in the corners (and the universal male response would be ‘so what?’). The furniture armrests need significant cleaning, the bathroom light isn’t coming on right now, to use any plug you have to first turn on the fuse, you can ‘boost’ the hot water should you need more than the local Planning Authority stipulates, the miniature washer doesn’t actually dry your clothes in a conventional sense, and there is no fucking television. Other than that, the place is wonderful.

To leave the complex, you first must walk through at least four fire doors and the main security door. Then you find yourself in an alcove off Miller Street, with a sidewalk out front big enough for two dwarves to squeeze down (medieval Europeans must have been tiny people). Across the street is the China Blossom restaurant (somewhat pricey) and the Telfer House (don’t ask me, I don’t know). Miller Street itself (if street is the appropriate term for what is really a narrow drive way) isn’t very long—perhaps only one thousand feet from Ingram Street in the north to Argyle Street in the south.

If you were to head south on Miller, you would pass, within about fifty feet, Stirling’s Library, one of many local library branches, and, within roughly three hundred feet, Tesco’s, our supermarket (perhaps the size of the frozen food and produce sections of your average Kroger’s).

Tesco’s sits on the corner of Miller and Argyle, which is smack dab in the middle of the Argyle Street Shopping Megaopolis®. It’s pedestrianized, teeming with people (a pickpocket’s dream), and anchored by the massive St. Enoch Centre, the largest glass-covered mall in Europe. The stores on Argyle and in St. Enoch—the Gap, the Virgin Mega store, and literally a ton of upscale clothing shops and mobile phone stores—reflects an obvious orgy of money and wealth, as if Europe felt insecure about America’s full-blown materialism and was trying to make up for it (malls are to America what ziggurats were to Mesopotamia). To conflict matters, every weekend Argyle Street becomes one massive flea market. If you enjoy hundreds of Europeans rubbing against you, then this is the place to be.

One block up Argyle to the east is the heart of medieval Glasgow, the Mercat Cross, which marks the spot of Glasgow’s first medieval market. Two blocks down Argyle to the west is Central Station, serving eastern, western, and southern Scotland, as well as the rest of Britain with relatively on time train service.

Enough of Argyle Street. I try to avoid it whenever I can. Heading north on Miller from my complex checkpoint, passing a French Bistro and a designer jeans store, you come to Ingram Street. Ingram Street to the west dead-ends on Queen Street and the Gallery of Modern Art. Built in the 18th century to be a private residence, this is a wonderful classical building sitting in Royal Exchange Square (in front of a Borders colonizing an old Victorian building no less) that’s been dirtied by contemporary art. The building’s frieze, normally a location for pastoral carvings of the gods fucking and killing and drinking, instead has a bright, multi-colored mosaic of cartoon people and the Lady Liberty (?). It’s the sort of thing one would see on the bulletin board of a Catholic Youth Ministries office. To complete the desecration, the horse-bound statue of Wellington in front usually has an orange and yellow traffic cone on his head.

Ingram Street to the east cuts through the heart of Merchant City, which, until about seven years ago, was a slum of empty and decrepit warehouses. Significant money has flowed into the area since then, and it is now considered a trendy and upscale part of Glasgow to live in and work. Just imagine three to five storied buildings reminiscent of old Victorian merchant complexes (as opposed to Victorian terrace housing) looming over you at all times, some still in the early stages of ‘urban renewal’ and others the homes and businesses of unmarried professional couples and university students. One particular building just around the corner from Miller Street houses the Corinthian Restaurant (rather pricey); the building is absolutely beautiful, with all the hallmarks of Victorian architecture and then some. That’s Merchant City, oppressive and oddly comforting all the same.

Crossing Miller Street and heading north, you are suddenly assailed by the concept that you are no longer on Miller Street, but rather Hanover. And yet, if you turn around, Miller Street is just over Ingram. It’s the European equivalent of the Twilight Zone, roads and streets changing for no rhyme or reason. How postmodern. Hanover is nothing but construction scaffolding and union workers on break for the two hundred or so feet that it runs. That’s okay because the road only serves as an important egress to the heart of modern Glasgow: George Square.

George Square is not nearly as impressive as Trafalgar Square in London, but who cares? Paved with what appears to be red cobblestone, the square is a patchwork collection of grass and marble statues all proclaiming the glory that is Glasgow and Scotland. Some statues are easily recognizable (Sir Robert Peel, Gladstone, Robert Burns) while others are more obscurely Scottish (Thomas Campbell and some local military commanders). Sir Walter Scott’s statue dominates the square, much like Nelson’s column does at Trafalgar, but also amusingly enough serves as a perch for a resident seagull. I often find myself chuckling at the thought that the seagull is spending most of his day shitting on the back of Walter Scott’s head.

What makes George Square better than Trafalgar in the long run is what surrounds the square. In London, Trafalgar has some old buildings with names like Canada House, Zimbabwe House, and ‘Some other country we conquered and defiled’ House, the National Gallery (which is more interesting on the inside), and a fairly nice view down Whitehall toward the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, if you are in the right area and the pigeons aren’t swarming. George Square has Queen Street station, an ugly hotel named the Copthorne/Millennium, Merchant’s House, a decent Victorian building, and several cool pubs (the Counting House and Hogshead are just two). The kicker is the Glasgow City Chambers. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the Glasgow City Chambers, ostentatiously Victorian with an interior modeled after Italian Renaissance I believe. The building is covered in geometrics, carved friezes, and carved gods and personifications reaching to the sky. At night, the building is lit up and looks exactly like it was meant to be: a monument to the wealth and power of the British Empire. It dominates the square. Who cares what else there is; let’s just look at this for a while.

From George Square, you can walk anywhere. To the east along George Street (the northern road of the square) after about five minutes, you’ll walk into the campus of the University of Strathclyde, built up over time on a damn big hill (and, of course, McCabe’s self-catering flat is on the very top of the fucking hill). The university is rather new by British standards, only enfranchised in the later 1700s or so, but most of the buildings appear to have been built in the 1960s and 1970s. That should give you a fairly accurate mental picture of the architectural style (as in none).

To the west along George Street or St Vincent Street (the southern road of the square), after about a block, you will hit Buchanan Street. Buchanan Street, which dead ends in the south on Argyle and in the north on Sauchiehall Street, is another major shopping trail. It, however, has more class than Argyle. There are pubs and shops and supermarkets and comic book stores and Borders and Fraser’s (the Glasgow equivalent of Harrods) and more pubs. I love Buchanan Street, if only for the comic book store and the wide pedestrianized streets so I can somewhat avoid the crush.

That is my neighborhood. Jealous yet?

---drew, maybe I’ll draw you a map...

Copyright ©Andrew D. Devenney, 2009, all rights reserved.