We explore Southside after our readers voted it the friendliest area in Glasgow

National World - LocalTV

Glasgow World readers recently voted the southside the friendliest area in the city.

Transcript

00:00So we're standing in Glasgow's south side. We've taken a trip up here to

00:04Battlefield. We're outside Church on the Hill. We're just about to go in to have a

00:09wee chat here. This bar is a really popular spot with Scotland fans heading

00:13down the hill to Hamden to games down there. It's also busy when there's

00:17concerts or other matches on, cup matches at Hamden Park. We're going to take a

00:21walk around the area around Queen's Park and be in some neighbourhoods like

00:24Battlefield, Straff Bongo and Shorelands to find out why our voters at

00:28Glasgow World have called it the friendliest neighbourhood to live in

00:32Glasgow in 2024. I think in this area there are a lot of families and

00:39obviously you have the Queen's Park which is a major family spot with the

00:45kids, with the dogs and for a nice walk obviously, if the weather is nice, but

00:52everyone in this area has been nice. I've been living in this area for seven

00:57years now and I can say it's probably one of the best friendly spots to live in Glasgow.

01:04So we're standing in Battlefield. I know the sign behind me might seem a bit

01:08recognisable. We're not in the east end of Glasgow. We're in the heart of the south

01:12side. We want to find out a wee bit about how this mural came about so we're

01:16going to head into Common Ground Coffee which has established itself as a great

01:19neighbourhood hotspot for people in Battlefield and the south side and

01:23further places alike. Obviously this area is part of the area in Queen's Park

01:28which our readers voted as the friendliest place to live in Glasgow in

01:322024. So come on inside and we're going to talk to the owner, Neil, to find out a

01:37bit about how this mural behind me came about and a bit about Common Ground's

01:41place in the neighbourhood. It came about mainly by accident really. It was

01:46just a blank wall and one of our local artists had decided just to do a nothing

01:54tag on it, just a bit of useless graffiti. So I thought I'm going to have to

02:00paint it at some point and then there was a few murals popping up on the

02:04south side and we thought that might be quite a good wall to do something on. So we

02:09contacted one of the local graffiti artists, Scottish Graffiti Murals, and he

02:16showed them some pictures of the wall and he said that'd be great, what do you fancy

02:19doing? I'm like not really sure, something to do with Southside, something to do with coffee,

02:25something to do with us, you know, the kind of usual things. So anyway we went through a

02:29whole load of what it could be and things never really looked that good and

02:35we decided maybe we should just kind of leave it and come back to it. So we were

02:41doing the local walk which was the window wonderland to do in the area. So

02:45it's quite a community area so there was lots of windows all decorated and we were out with the

02:51dog. My wife seen one of the windows was flashing Barrowland and she said that

02:57would work for Battlefield. So quickly emailed him, said look what do you think?

03:01He said excellent, leave it with me. Came back to us, he managed to get the

03:08font and the colours and stuff so quickly it kind of evolved and he put it up on the

03:14wall and even before it was finished so he had started doing outlines of this

03:21and you couldn't tell what it was but it was like this old lady kind of stopped

03:26and she looked at it and then she went that's like the Barrowlands son and so we

03:30thought excellent that's what we wanted. So it just kind of captured that community

03:35you know people use it on their Facebook page, people start to point it as a

03:40destination as well so and rather than just a graffiti mess that you see on

03:45shutters and walls it actually kind of means something to the area so it's

03:50certainly worked for us and it's, it becomes a destination so right at the

03:56very beginning people were, kids were all around getting their picture taken

03:59beside it and it was like people come in from all over the world and like

04:04their friends or their family has tagged them into this and they've done a

04:07graffiti mural walk at the Southside and came and seen it so that's good as well.

04:11So just across from Queen's Park is Blairhill Avenue which you can see here

04:15and it's a bit kind of Balamore-ish probably people would say this is all the

04:20different coloured houses here. We can assure you we are still in Glasgow's

04:24Southside which is of course voted the friendliest place to live in Glasgow by

04:30our readers so it's just a short walk across from Queen's Park and as you can

04:33see all nice colourful houses down here it might be one of Glasgow's most

04:36picturesque and scenic streets.

04:39It was interesting last week we found out that I think more people are now coming to the Southside

04:44but what was at the heart of speaking to people on Battlefield today was family

04:48that people aren't really moving away from this neighbourhood, they're staying

04:51content here and local businesses obviously benefiting from that.

04:55No definitely and I think because people are dedicated to the Southside there's a

05:01lot of businesses that have such loyalty from their customers and

05:07generations of family members will visit so I think that definitely benefits it.

05:12So we've been around the Southside this is our last stop we're in Govan Hill

05:16we're at the top of Victoria Road, Queen's Park is behind us we're outside

05:20the Queen's Park Cafe which is a popular neighbourhood spot both as a

05:25neighbourhood pub and also with football fans when there's games on doing at

05:29Hampden you'll find the Tartan Army congregating in here and in my opinion

05:33it's one of the best places to head to for a pint of Guinness in Glasgow so

05:37cheers or sláinte!

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