ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.
A recent solo walk in Glasgow City Centre saw me get off at Anderston Train Station, as usual, then head over the nearby pedestrian bridge to Glasgow's banking and financial district.
One of the reasons I like this approach so much is that on foot, from this direction, this western edge of Glasgow City Centre feels and looks like a very modern metropolis. Like the emerald city of Oz in fact. Brand new buildings springing up every couple of years to add to the ones already there.
It's also neat, quiet and tidy here.
On a bright sunny day this elevated pedestrian walkway into the heart of the financial district always makes me feel sunny and bright inside as well. Probably because I don't have to work there. I'm just a casual visitor. Yippee! New bank just completed with running track on the roof.
Just like the emerald city of Oz all that glass and steel requires maintenance. There they presumably have flying monkeys to polish all the buildings... as I know for a fact that the Wicked Witch Esmeralda hires them out on contract when they are not harassing Dorothy.
Here we have similar creatures, skilled at working in high places.
I thought the Moda Living Complex nearby would have been finished by now but they are still working on it, as you can see here...
Likewise the new building on Argyle Street, seen here, which is nearing completion.
I then popped down to the River Clyde Waterfront to see the other, (Kingston Street) side of the Barclays Bank Complex. Some of the buildings here are brand new...
Others are old buildings they have managed to save and repurpose. Note the red metal balcony at the rear of this property...
This is the back elevation of the same building. Although it is fairly colourful now it does look unfinished somehow to my eyes and for a few bucks more and a few cans of paint it could look eye-catching and outstanding... from even half a mile away.
My own idea for it.... to jazz it up a little. Just a thought.... Can you spot a dog and a hippopotamus?
They are still working on some of it... this may be a multi storey car park at a guess?
The front profile along the River Clyde Waterfront. They now have the flower borders in place.
Walkway/cycle-track along the front elevation of Barclays Bank Complex.
Decorative border display.
Although I was not really collecting murals I just happened to stumble across a few I hadn't captured before. This is by Mack Colours, the same guy(s) that put murals up in the abandoned
Shawbridge Arcade featured a few posts ago on here. Canary in a coal mine?
Both of these are found along the waterfront beside Clyde Street and the suspension bridge.
Virus mural?
Suspended Female.
Railway Mural.
Glasgow Subway Mural. Nicknamed decades ago as 'The Clockwork Orange.'
All five murals found on Osborne Street near this pet shop and the Saltmarket. When I was a child I'm sure I bought my yellow budgie/ canary, my terrapin, tortoise, and hamster here.
Retro red bus.
Retro 1970s colours. I went to school in this type of bus and this particular colour scheme for many years. Number 48 and number 49 Nitshill or Priesthill. I could get either, the latter involved a 15 minute walk. Didn't think anything of it at the time but looking at it now it might only please one half of Glasgow :o)
St Andrews Parish Church. Built 1756.
Amazing to think this was built only ten years after the famous battle at Culloden 1n 1746 when the Highlands were finally crushed and subdued a year after Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland to kick-start the Jacobite Rebellion. 1756 was also the year when the Black Hole of Calcutta incident occurred. Poet Robert Burns was born a few years later in Ayrshire.
The adjacent St Andrew's Square. It's a beautiful restored development here but it always feels empty and desolate somehow... probably because you never see any residents coming and going or children playing outside. It usually looks like this. Very quiet.
Does have some lovely stone carving details though in this vicinity. Glasgow's coat of arms and motto.
The bird that never rang.. the tree that never flew... the bell that never swam.. the fish that never grew.... something like that anyway....
A study of a women in black mural....
A series of black and white portraits in this district by a well known street artist. This is just two of them.
Collegelands District.
Avenues and alleyways in Collegelands.
Collegelands and the University District.
Which brought me out at the Ingram Street murals of the four seasons. Autumn.
Summer. Photographed these murals around eight to ten years ago on the blog so I was very surprised how well the colours have held up. Hardly faded at all and still one of the real highlights of Glasgow's mural trail.
Winter.
Bee in meadow. A mural detail.
Indigenous peoples mural. Merchant city. Painted for the recent Cop 26 and climate change but could also stand for the original populations of North and South America during first contact with Europeans which within a few hundred years of exploration and exploitation managed to wipe out more than 130 million citizens or around 90 percent of the original inhabitants of each country there through disease, slavery, neglect, and torture than most of dead of the various European Wars we celebrate every year and remember to this day. It is what it is.
Same mural. A close up detail.
And across the street... high up on a nearby building... two passionate dancers are entwined.
And a cracking tasty meal when I got home. Broad beans, sausage, baby spuds with butter, salad cream, fried cherry tomatoes, fried onions, boiled egg. Yum yum.
8 comments:
I hope the Covid mural guy didn't really think we've 'kicked Covid into touch' - more the other way around. People are just sticking their head in the sand! They want to believe it's gone so they're pretending it has! :-(
Why does someone want to run round and round on a rooftop in their dinnerhour - I'd sit in a nice green space up there on warmer days and eat mine but I couldn't run round and round in circles...
As to the mural with the native North/South American - they did as much wiping out of each other and torture. I know that's not an excuse for 'WEsterners' to go over and do all that... We have some Bolivian Native Americans come over for each summer and play, dance and sing in all their regalia in places like Keswick (Fridays), Whitby, York, Blackpool etc. They used to be right outside our shop and were really good - I really enjoyed them. They made me laugh when they took all the regalia off though as they'd then be in jeans and t-shirt and on 'smart' phones - it seemed really incongruous!
Hi Carol. Three questions answered. As it says round four I would assume it's an ongoing battle mural.
Cos they always want highly motivated driven people in these jobs.... able to work long unsocial hours... have very little free time away from the job...be flexible as to whatever the task is or wherever you are sent in the world... highly competitive ... etc etc... all boxes I've spent my life going... no... no... no.... no... instead of ticking :o)
Infectious disease is always the largest, often unreported, killer... greater by far than any war.
You can tell smart phones must be a universal addictive drug as practically every race and culture has them, even people in mud huts in remote deserts or deepest jungles....and they are all shopping with them using the worlds biggest (cardboard) river. Amazon com. is well named.
Some amazing shots there, Bob. You always capture so much - and I love the comparison with the Wizard of Oz. Glasow's a fascinating, vibrant, city, with some amazing buildings. We're often there, visiting family - but I do declare there is more rubbish on the streets each time. Buchanan Street, the last time I saw it a couple of weeks back, was very dirty and full of people drinking at temporary bars in the middle of the street. Shame.
You are spot on there Mike. I didn't mention it on this post as I had enough to cover but the area around Clyde Street, Argyle Street, Central Station, Union Street area always looks seedy and fairly rough nowadays with numerous homeless, cheap shops, and high crime rates despite several new tower blocks going up in that district. Which is why I prefer the financial district end as it has a very different clean, upmarket vibe to it. Yet the area around the Clydeside waterfront, always covered in graffiti nowadays, the Argyle Street, Union Street, Buchanan Street ( the so called 'Style Mile' for tourists visiting Glasgow is a shadow of its former glory. Part of the reason is online shopping or big retail parks in the suburbs as it's been decades since I went shopping in the city centre. I'd suspect it's mainly students living nearby, ethnic minorities, or 'the left behind' that make up the main customers nowadays in actual footfall sales. Smartphones/laptops are good in some ways but really bad in others. They are changing society in so many ways and not always for the better.
Not seen those Osborne Street ones so will need to have a hunt!
Hi Anabel,
It's not a street I go down usually and the main reason I did this time was because the new but now shelved Batgirl movie was filmed around there. I remember that pet shop as a kid and also The Fish Plaice just across the road as my parents used to take me there as well as Paddy's Market and the Barras. Amazing they are still there. Live Crabs, Cockles, Mussels, and clappy-doo's sitting in brine buckets were a fascination back then. Wilson's Zoo was another memory not far away on or near Argyle Street. A collection of assorted animals including a large vulture and a lion kept inside a city centre building, including a dark basement in small cramped cages, boxes and windowless rooms you would never, ever dream of putting animals in today. A very different era.
I can see that you had some fun jazzing up that building a bit more - the dog and the caterpillar are more obvious on your edition.
I recall those yellow and green buses in Glasgow too - I suspect that you are referring to the Celts football team colours.
Hi Rosemary,
yes, I think it looks OK like that and you can see it from a good distance away. I think locals and tourists might like it. When I first spotted it from afar I did think it was a recent mural of a sheep going down the red metal stairs and was slightly disappointed when I got closer to find out it wasn't- hence the mural idea to make up for that. You would not need a scaffolding to put the dots on just a harness and short safety line. Two guys. One or two days at most. Easy to do.
Yep, green, white and sometimes gold for Celtic F.C. and also the Irish Republic Flag which is green, white and orange. Rangers F.C. have the clockwork orange subway though so it balances out. Not sure if the colours are deliberately team related though.
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