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