knit one street purl one city

edinburgh trams + tesco linwood

This is a tale of two present-day powers in so-called Scotland – one political and one commercial.

Edinburgh’s other Disgrace – The Trams
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Enter stage left Council leader Jenny Dawe and “The Right Honourable” George Grubb, “Lord Lieutenant” and “Lord Provost” of Edinburgh. They may not have much to do with the day-to-day management of the project but as leaders they are ultimately responsible. If you are not a resident of Edinburgh, of course you’ll never have heard of them. Let’s just say… they’re not exactly full of intelligent ideas and nous, right up there arguing coherently with Norman Foster. Just worthies doing their best, but with zero vision or engagement, by all the evidence.

One example of this lazy thinking is the still to be installed gantrys that will carry the power lines for the new trams. These are big, tall, ugly objects and there’s going to be lots of them – and guess what, they will thoroughly pollute the view to the royal mile from Princes street. Thoughtless stewardship and care, when alternatives to a glaringly obvious and crucial issue should have been sought and sorted right from the start – Bordeaux, for instance, has the power in the ground. If any city should reduce its street furniture quota, it’s Edinburgh. The technical difficulties of this power system are minor when you relate it to the unreal amount of money being spent overall – they’re not employing NASA to launch the Scott Monument on a five-year mission to Venus after all – it’s just some trams.

You’ll know who your city’s sockpuppets are too. For Edinburgh, this ill-conceived and wholly unnecessary Tram project has been an utter logistical disaster (um… familiar… how quickly they’ve all forgotten the parliament messups) and will result in the city remaining in yet more serious debt for decades. The contractors Bilfinger Berger are not to blame – they’re the only professionals here – and must be appalled at the mess this over-politicised and underperforming world heritage site has got them into.

Previous post on Leith Waterfront and the Tram terminus at Newhaven here Also an article and googlemap on the Gogar hinterland I did last year.

TescoTown Linwood*
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In the west the rules are broken by Wendy Alexander; mouthy MSP to the beyond-rundown Paisley North constituency. I have to grudgingly say that she is one of the very few political individuals in Scotland (Margo Macdonald is the other) who seem to have a care… and so from trams to tesco.

Tesco Linwood, in Paisley North, is a proposed tescotown, close to Paisley (a once-proud victorian powerhouse south-west of Glasgow). Let’s set the parameters right from the start – there is a large Morrisons at Johnstone and a large Asda at Phoenix park both less than 5 mins away from Linwood – Tesco desperately want a piece of their competitors, not being content with their own supersized Tesco Extra at Port Glasgow, 15 minutes away, or their Paisley Love St fiasco 2 mins away, or their midsize at Kilbirnie 15 mins away (which has completely devastated the local retail community in that small town).

So, what’s a poor megaopoly to do…

Stage One: set up an untransparent Tesco front company – in this case, Balmore Properties – who act as mafia-style landlord to the dwindling retail businesses in the nasty mall you want to flatten and re-develop. Balmore act sluggardly and earn the ire of the business community as well as concerned locals.

Bingo – you have your fall guy.

Stage Two: Oh that’s terrible, we’ll utterly renew the crumbling graffiti-and-crime-infested-nastiness that is Linwood’s centre (Balmore – boo!) and make it all nice and cuddly again. Here’s a really naff website that has been designed to make us seem part of the solution… www.lovelinwood.com – yay, see those hillman imps, makes yer proud dun’t'it.

Stage Three: the public beg you to save them from, er, Balmore. You accept that challenge. Another crap store, a sprinkling of architecturally substandard “affordable flats” and a couple of football pitches should shut them up. Much more importantly – a black eye for asda and morrisons.

HEROES! GO TESCO!! — GO TESCO!!

And now for the bill (stupidity and corruption always costs)

1 Removal of local business economy (re-instatement of some like hairdressers – as Tesco tenants, naturally – trebles all round)
2 Wage-slave economy – x number of part-time shelfstacker jobs at minimum wage – woo hoo.
3 Planning acceptance must-haves – schools, houses, all to LCD standards and with zero morals – this is not a benevolent, semi-intelligent Bournville Village exercise.
4 Another peg down the national self-respect indicator board.
5 Several pegs down the distinctive local flavour indicator board.
6 More proof that Scotland PLC is run by aesthetics-and-morals-free politicos with big mouths and small brains.
7 Oh and the profits? They fly south.

Is this what you want? Because that’s what you’ll get.

*Source: Marcus Leroux : retail correspondent : The Times : 31 August 2010

Photo below taken from a bus on west maitland street Edinburgh – Copymade printshop. I think John H might approve of the paraphrase, subject to changing the colour of the additions and the font… not quite right but we get the emotion

Noise and smoky breath

The title above is the title of a poetry anthology on Glasgow published by the third eye centre in the late 80s. Naturally Edwin Morgan featured, and this well mindmapped book has become close to me again in the past month. So it is fitting that the deid poet in word and deed is good-worded and reminisced fondly along with UCS frontman and vocalist (he was a rock star to many) Jimmy Reid this week, well above and beyond the foolishly lame-minded diversionary tactics of the scottish government regarding the very-likely-innocent “bomber” chemo’d up to the gills in the very-likely-not-so-innocent green-flag Maghreb republic.

What be may – it doesn’t do to take things too seriously and Edwin Morgan was an individual I have always looked up to at the back of my mind both in words and in graphics; allowing the death of working class ecosse to soften into the imagination. As a poet of the urban experience in this northern land he always did the right thing by shifting the perspective playfully but truthfully to other worlds and languages.

60s concrete poetry was a sort of banksy-meets-the-ancestors kind of movement and one I’m very fond of. Find out more here.

Hello. I’m Mr Cutler. Nice to meet you Mr Morgan. Shall we sing? You go first as you’re new to all this. I’ll show you around later. You can take your glasses off now.

image from the edwin morgan archive at the scottish poetry library

ATYP in glasgow

A bit late, this : part of The Glasgow International Festival in May 2010, A Typical Route is a public art trail along the clyde walkway and central glasgow.

View Atypical Root – Public Art Trail (X) in a larger map

Ode to J. Smith : travis, dahl + birdsall

Taken last week on Wellington at West Regent in Glasgow, Travis’ Omnific eye billsticker is revealed again; probably first posted (and then covered over many times since) in summer 2008.

The eye design was taken off a 1980s Roald Dahl book cover. It’s classic late-old-school (i.e., just before macs came) graphic design, from the master of late-old-school british graphic design, Derek Birdsall.

If you’re interested in street typography, pop over to the excellent Letterpool who are preparing a new book on London.

BAFTA success! the devil’s plantation

Hearty congratulations are in order for May Miles Thomas, winner of a BAFTA for The Devil’s Plantation.

Well done May!

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The BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards 2010
19th March 2010
INTERACTIVE – WINNER
The Devil’s Plantation
Written, Directed And Produced By May Miles Thomas
Elemental Films
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This exceptional work is the newest addition to the longstanding lexicon of scottish psychogeographical practice. See our original review here.

The ripples begin. Respect due to May’s insights and lyricism (and Owen’s flash skills!). Harry Bell is now at peace.

PsyGeo Glasgow update

Aha you thought it had all gone quiet on PGG – see recent central glasgow image offcuts on the PsyGeo flickr site here – the wee 6×6 has been hard at work over the past 10 months.

So the 2014 commonwealth games in Glasgow have been launched, with the new identity revealed. Aside from the huge controversy and disappointment over the logos’ design (the beleagured glasgow/los angeles agency is ultra-well-respected and has most definately been hobbled by the clueless groupthink and crass marketingdrivel that surrounds many public-funded efforts these days) – crivvens-jings-help-ma-boab – what in heavens are the bonny toon cooncillors going to say to our so much more worldly commonwealth cousins when they ask “why is your main traffic artery over the Clyde called Kingston?”

Love to hear them explain their way out of that one – that dratted logo will shortly become the least of their PR problems as the past rapidly accelerates up their backsides.

harlem river to river clyde

As the last post on this month’s chosen city, New York, it seems fit to present an alternative viewpoint on the just-deceased J D Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye. Naturally this links perfectly with Burns’ night just past on the 25th. Apologies in advance for being so downbeat but it did seem pertinent.

I’m writing this less than 35 miles from Alloway, Robert Burns’ birthplace. This doesn’t help at all, even if it is the rural location near the metaphorical Rye fields. We need to go to Edinburgh to set the context for Salinger’s New York visitor, Holden Caulfield, and the beginnings of the beat generation; and also its end in 1980.

Holden’s effective role model, Burns, is a precocious, cautious young celebre who speaks his mind on the Edinburgh literary circuit in 1786 – but not mature. He’s driven by the sexual energies and moral abandon of youth which he finds completely natural – bawdy – despite the severe calvinist attitude of his contemporaries – the mirror of Holden’s “phony” all-american family values of the 1950s. And Burns, like Holden, is actually interested in relationship and intimacy – they verbalise it constantly; Robert in love and full of emotion for his muse via lovers; Holden in empathy and care for his siblings via the protectorate of the edge.

Both uncover fear and repression within themselves, horrified yet distant, telescoping their candour into the psyche of male teenage angsts everywhere – Caulfield in his people shooting hat, taking on those he feels have misled him (Mark Chapman). These are not allegories. They are constants in male sexual and power mentalities. This is Trocchi, McIlvanney, Vettriano – people despised and revered at the same time here in the west of scotland – a kind of tartan creative mafia, wannabe De Niros revelling in the underclasses / debauched upper classes as surely as any standard middle-class crimewriter that knows their audience.

As one of momus‘ anonymous commentators posits on momus’ Salinger post, the monologue by the conman Paul in the film Six Degrees of Separation correctly analyses the force majeure of the disaffected, juvenile male – a nice boy, always reading catcher in the rye…

glasgow’s secret geometry : the devil’s plantation

Made by the respected scottish filmmaker May Miles Thomas, this website of footage and flash, venn diagram and mappa mundi glaschu, centres on two parallel personalities – Harry Bell and his investigation into glasgow ley lines from the past: and the wanderer/robinsonner placed in the present, Mary Ross.

The narrative follows the true story of Mary (befriended by Thomas), on her excursions through a Glasgow hinterland that has, unknown to her, been carefully studied by Harry in his attempt to discover the nodes of confluence that link one part of glasgow to another. It’s clear that both are seeking meaning – and resolution – via the landscape.

Thomas’ approach on the one hand is a flash-based animation – appropriately, seeing that Bell’s work was all about the context of vectors – forming the starting point of the work, providing navigation and jommetry-maker. At once inscrutably unhelpful (which I quite liked), then door-like, it steps through a non-linear, chance-based journey that perfectly encompasses the serious-yet-fun nature of what I for one is pleased to call psychogeography. This alone would be a notable achievement.

But it is the sidestepping into the present via Mary Ross; mirroring her movements in beautifully-imaged, intense, mise-en-scènes (with a nod to Patrick Keiller); that makes this work remarkable. The 66 locations – all either gratifyingly obscure, like St Convals Chariot and Cochno, or frankly disturbing, like Crookston Castle and its neighbour Leverndale mental hospital (more of which later) – merge into a matrix of lines scribed into the air, unseen above our heads. Kudos to Thomas for filming in areas that most fearty people would run a mile from – some locations are the peacetime equivalent of war reporting, even for ugly burly men like me.

Underlying all this is a sense of loss. Mary’s search for her daughter and a happier future; Harry’s obsessive search in the fathoms of the past. The unasked and unthanked exiled as surely as siberian fisheye eaters, on the fringes; maybe a little-city-glasgow-lost, dismembered after WWII and the ongoing sickness of mackintosh’s rose, a city that lost its final battle at Silverburn…

Returning to Leverndale (Mary’s hospital), anyone who knew of the Milk Crate Gang would have come here, its water tower a lighthouse for naive urbexers like me. Hawkhead Asylum, as it was known originally, was typical of those built by well-intentioned public-spirited Victorians who were affected by the moralising of Dickens but totally unqualified to re-invent Bedlam. The 80s introduction of Care in the Community was the result of this failed institutionalism – not much of an improvement. Coincidentally today I was in the museum of the cumbraes and spotted the 6th earl of glasgow – the owner of the Hawkhead lands – who was bankrupted in 1879 by building too many episcopalian churches.

There are issues. The soundtrack, a bit new-age top-40 in places, only works when it underlines, rather than overstates, the significances of the scenes (the filmmaker has stated that at some point the soundtrack will be replaced with a properly scored final version, however). The graphically well designed flash-based site is sadly poorly optimised, resulting in much jigging about with cursor and constant web access, resulting in a frustratingly sluggish interface – although the movies played reasonably well, albeit not at full resolution. Hope Thomas gets the production agency to sort that out for her. The information given at the end of each scene is illuminating, but not readily accessible – a PDF would perhaps be useful for anyone looking to follow the lines themselves.

However, as a work of ambition, researched and realised with great depth and beauty, the devil’s plantation is the first fully-formed work, I believe, of proper psychogeography ever undertaken in Glasgow. May Miles Thomas has opened Harry Bell’s much-talked-about insights with exactly the right approach, giving life that I think Harry would be delighted in, yet in awe of. It is well worth the 4 hours I sat exploring the piece from beginning to end (how many films would you devote that much time to… you can save the journey at any point and pick up later if you want though).

artists’ statement
My intention was to show how Harry was driven by a quest but Mary had no quest, yet both rely on memory, the past and their own interpretation of it. Mary lives very much in the now, and Harry lives (or lived) with a fascination with the past. I got the sense out in the field that Harry didn’t really focus on the sites themselves, only where they led to, whereas Mary is curious about the most insignificant details of place.

Screenshots from the devil’s plantation

finnieston : margaret watkins : hidden lane

Margaret Watkins was a seminal figure in early 20c photography in the US. I’m not going to offer any insights here – her influence and place is well covered in many publications. But there are two nice things happening here, right now, in Glasgow I recommend –

1 An exhibition of her work at the excellent new gallery in the funky Hidden Lane, a creative enclave off the boho bit of argyle street (also near to some really good restaurants).

2 Margaret spent her last years in Hyndland, close by in the west end – so it’s a local homage to a world-renowned photographer-artist. The gallery is a great place to start walking up to the west end, via the triumverate argyle street / sauchiehall street and dumbarton road, followed by the incline up byres road and the western pull up past Cottier’s church.

Image from the rather good Robert Mann galleries

anderston : M8

Anderston is overrun by roads, inaccessible pedestrian walkways, a railway station buried under a bridge – and lost communities. Swept away by the motorway in the late 60s (masterplanned from the notorious Bruce Plan, a counterattack to the moguls in St Andrews House, Edinburgh, who attempted to stop Glasgow regaining economic power at the expense of Edinburgh after WWII), Anderston is a wasteland, a remnant… yet slowly being approached by the resurgent financial district. A new commonwealth games mural under the Kingston Bridge also suggests a softening of Anderston’s grim netherworld.

The entire area should be a case study in how planners, developers and councillors, in the absence of strong architectural guidance and sensitivity to context, will destroy citylife. Boston’s urban renewal experience is similar in many respects.

This is where Billy Connolly was from. All you need to know about the character of destroyed Anderston is shown in his attitude to life.