We visit Common Ground Coffee in Glasgow’s Southside to find out why people love the neighbourhood.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00When we opened up the place I wanted it to be, I didn't want it to be a coffee shop that it was elitist or you know you had to have a degree in coffee to be able to order something like when you go into some shops.
00:12I wanted it to be an area that people, whether you were in with a push chair with a noisy child or a dog or you were meeting your mum or something that you felt quite comfortable in.
00:23So we get people who meet up who weren't known to each other and suddenly there's a group we call them the Avengers because one comes in and then they all just start to assemble.
00:32Before you know it there's like 80 of them all gathering round which is good and they're people that would have just maybe spoke to somebody or nodded to somebody in the street.
00:40Now they're friends and they share time and they do other things together which is great.
00:46And although I wouldn't take the credit for that I think having the facility where people can feel comfortable has definitely helped.
00:54I think because there's such a mixture, so a lot of areas tend to be maybe it's like a student-ish population or maybe an older population or whatever the demographic is.
01:04Where here I think it's such a mix of traditionally families would have had their children and then moved to the suburbs somewhere where actually the community's good, the flats are good, the schools are good, the connections into town are good.
01:21So all those things start to add up and people say well do I really want to move to that area or where I like it here.
01:28And then I think it's quite a fairly safe area for people so they feel quite comfortable and they don't want to then feel as though they have to move on.
01:37And I think you get slightly a bit more for your money so coming from the West End people were thinking oh I can get a bigger flat here so that sort of brings a different class of people in and then it starts to be quite a diverse community and that always helps in any part of the town.