Jobs and Flats in Glasgow

You should be able to get a one bedroom place on the south side for £400.

Good luck!

I've just moved to the Southside, Shawlands to be precise. It's lovely and pretty handy for town.

those websites, yeah

don't know abt jobs

good luck!

You don't have an english accent or vote tory then?

it's nice, to have it, somedays, though

I love the west end, though. the south side/east end are not even on my internal map of glasgow.

good luck, Ward F!

Er, NO.

when I bumped into you, that time, I thought "hip old t hand, strollin thru the cosmopolitan west end of glasgow, on this fine day" and imagined it was your usual practice

I hardly ever go to the west end. it can be v nice, on sunny days, though!!! but mostly in the botanics/by the kelvin & byres rd is more than a bit of a traffic nightmare

cookie says he loves it but he won't tell me why

OTM!

i wish i knew tracer hand.

The area is poshing up lightning fast. We have an organic bakery, a directional hairdresser, several coffee shops, a brand new deli/cafe and an art gallery these days. The decent chippies are still in situ too.

don't think I'd want to live there though

does franz ferdinand live there?

stet lives there too. 'nuff said.

a colleague currently has a room in a flat in partick, which can just about pass as not really being the awful hillhead/dowanhill west end. she's trying to fill it quite quickly, though. dunno if you'd want to share, mind.

as for subediting jobs ... o christ. newspaper and magazine shifts are down to pretty much 0 at the moment - even for experienced old hands who've been knocking around glasgow for thousands of years. hopefully things will turn around a little, but ... straitened times. staff jobs are at a premium too: our place (the her4ld group) is only appointing internally, and has been doing so for an age now.

i'm not sure about specialist/educational stuff, though. i know fuck all about non-press publishing. if you have any contacts, now's the time to start calling in all the favours imaginable.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/rental
and
http://www.s1rental.com

have most of the letting agents on their site, and could help. If you're looking for even cheaper, I'll send you the shh-shh secret-secret glasgow uni letting lists. But they'll be dives

i might finally be bailing out after 20 years of being a westender.

S1 do a jobs site, too, I suppose, but I have never looked for a job

Grimly has depressed me. Perhaps I will leave Glasgow.

as far as I remember, the west end is full of students, greenery, delicatessens and very pretty girls.

ashton lane is well rubbish though. the west end is much much better in the daytime than at night.

?

not for the first time, RJG, i seem to be incurring your opprobrium for reasons i cannot explain. could you possibly elucidate?

the west end is full of students, greenery, delicatessens and very pretty girls

students: yes, because the university's there. sadly, with every passing year, fewer students can afford to live in byres road and its environs, because it's full of thirtysomething arseholes spending money they can't afford to live in an area they're ruining. all the character and joy of the "old" west end is slowly being sucked out as the property prices rise and the 4x4s roll.

greenery: give the 4x4s ten years.

delicatessens: roots and fruits is still there (i think) which is a joy. apart from that: overpriced polenta shops.

pretty girls: students.

i know a lot of older west-enders - people who've lived there 20 or 30 years - and all of them will admit, in their darkest hours, that the place is a shadow of its former self. it's like marchmont in edinburgh: overpaid graduates refusing to let go, and stifling whatever character there used to be.

If anything, there are probably more of them, what with wankers buying flats, cramming them full of students and using their rent payments to buy 4x4s.

Some of the pretty girls are posh schoolgirls in very flattering uniforms who look older than they must actually be.

xpost the buildings are nice

grimly fiendish, your rants sometimes make me feel the same way that markelby's rants sometimes do, sorry : /

hmm. i'm not sure about your first point. but the shameless-exploitation thing is also worth mentioning. "oh, darling, we've got our stupidly expensive townhouse conversion and our 4x4 and our 2.4 kids. why don't we get ourselves another flat as an investment ..." AAAAARGH! KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!

strip out 30 to 50% of the people who live there and the west end is wonderful. unfortunately, i can't see past those people. in the past ten years alone, it's changed more than i can explain.

01:02:03 04/05/06

quick, start a thread!

grimly fiendish, your rants sometimes make me feel the same way that markelby's rants sometimes do, sorry

i don't understand what you mean by this either. sorry.

I have never met any of these 4x4 people. I don't even know what that means. It's a car of some kind?

you're lucky, cathy: you're untouched by a) cynicism and b) the misery of watching your peers do all the things i describe above. long may that continue! perhaps i take these things too personally, but ... i dunno.

my 40-something WE-dwelling friends talk about the community and bohemian spirit and how wonderful it all used to be. i believe them. now we've got oran bloody mor - and what a despicable facsimile of a facsimile that is - and people talking about house prices.

(nb: i'm aware that i'm also talking about house prices. but you know what i mean.)

x-post: RJG, every time anyone so much as mentions imposing new parking restrictions in the west end, the residents explode with self-righteous fury. "but i paid a million pounds for this flat. i have a god-given right to park right outside the door." etc. personally, i think they should be forced to park in hell.

I can't believe you're not cynical enough to stop yourself saying anything that ends in "How wonderful it all used to be".

not saying your friends have forgotten or are imagining things or anything but this onion story always made me smile:

BOTHELL, WA—Eric Bagley, 32, a Seattle-area freelance photographer and part-time graphic designer, is perpetually nostalgic for the life he led four years earlier.

"The summer of 1998 was a pretty sweet time for me," Bagley said Monday. "I'd just moved to Seattle from Ohio. I had a bunch of money saved up and was just living off that, looking for jobs, meeting new people. You know, figuring out my life. It seemed like anything was possible then."

Bagley said his life four years ago was "miles better" than it is now.

"The first year or so I was here was the best," Bagley said. "I had this great group of friends I met through Keith [Aurilia], my roommate at the time. Our apartment had this amazing terrace, and that first summer, we'd all just hang out there every night, just drinking and shooting the shit until, like, 4 a.m."

"But then Keith moved to Portland, and this other guy Chris left for medical school at UCLA, and the whole scene just kinda broke up," Bagley continued. "Man, I miss those days."

Bagley's friends recall the summer of 1998 differently.

"Every other night, he was calling me and telling me how much he hated Seattle," said Katie Gorn, a friend of Bagley's from his years in Columbus, OH. "He was always complaining about not having a job, how he just watched a lot of TV and pissed away all the money he'd taken years to save up. For him now to say he misses that time in his life is a total joke."

Aurilia said Bagley spent much of that supposedly halcyon summer of 1998 waxing nostalgic for 1994.

"God, I remember how Eric would go on and on about how great things were back in Ohio. He was cleaning pools with his friend Mark [Tanner], and all they did, according to Eric, was drive around from job to job, listening to the Melvins and talking about girls. Then, they'd get off from work and drink at this biker bar down the road from 3 in the afternoon until closing."

Adding yet another layer to Bagley's revisionism, Tanner said he remembers 1994 differently.

"Back then, Eric was so depressed," Tanner said. "He felt trapped in Ohio, and he hated cleaning all those snobs' pools, so he got drunk every day to forget how much his life sucked. He was always talking about how great things were in college, back around '89, '90, when he had a band called The Trials and this hot redheaded girlfriend named Trish. Christ, if I'd had to listen to the Melvins or his Trials demo tape one more time, I would've strangled him. But he said it was the only thing that cheered him up, so I let it be."

According to childhood friend Glenn Lande, even as a boy, Bagley was nostalgic for four years earlier.

"In the fifth grade, Eric was always like, 'Didn't first grade rule?'" Lande said. "He'd go on and on about how easy it was and how we got two recesses instead of one. I'm sure in 2006, he'll be talking about how great his freelance-photography gig was and how much his new job and life sucks. It's kind of pathetic."

These 4x4s do sound unpleasant, though.

I am always being nostlagic for 2001.

Never, ever go to Oran Mor after the sun has set. *shudder*

positive changes in recent years - the demise of bar oz, parking restrictions, proliferation of 24 hour shops, marks and spencer's food opening.

negative changes - the demise of nearly all the record shops, lack of a decent supermarket, the post office on gwr closing, ashton lane, the rise of oran mor.

apart from that, really it is the same old same old.

the west end is rubbish if you actually need to buy anything other than second hand books or vegetables. unless the thing you need to buy is an expensive trendy kitchen utensil, maybe.

but it's actually quite nice to live in a place that only has stupid shops when you don't have any money and shouldn't be looking in shops anyway.

It could do with a proper 24-hour shop though, the west end could.

the co op is kind of a proper (crap) 24 hour shop.

The co-op is practically in the city centre, though.

it's the latter!

no, seriously: it's entirely about yr surroundings, insofar as they're made up of people not places. i can't speak for you, cathy, but i can sort-of speak for stet: for him, the west end involves living in a nice wee flat and meeting people in the pub and going to the university, and this is all good.

a few years ago, however, i found myself stuck in a horrific cycle of going to awful west-end parties/dinner parties with all manner of appalling friends of friends, all of whom would witter on about their house price/their children's schools/etc and would spend most of their time making snide and disparaging comments about people who lived in any part of glasgow that was outwith their beloved neighbourhood. this has bred in me a deep and hateful cynicism; these are the west end's new bohemians. and, tragically, i fear they're slowly taking the place over.

yes, such people exist everywhere. but they gravitate to the west end because they think it's cool. and you know what? it used to be, until they got there and fucked it up.

wrt waitrose: it's a fucking supermarket. an expensive one, i imagine, but i don't know for sure. what's the big deal?

hahahah, i missed this comment before. but no: that's exactly the kind of thing they didn't do. i'm talking about yr p3nn13 tylrs and the old dude with the dog ... people who actually had some life about them, and weren't just interested in the pursuit of property.

I have spent a lot of time on the south side lately too

I too have unresolved complaints about the west end

after a v. short stay in the east

1. shit, expensive flats
2. yuppification

To deal with the first issue, I've just spent a year in a potentially great but rather rundown flat in Gardiner St, Partick. This is possibly the steepest street in Glasgow outwith Garnethill and the views from the top are fantastic. The living room was nice enough, but the kitchen and bog were dilapidated and dreich, while my room had boggin' lilac wallpaper and dark green carpet. And recently the bathroom pipes leaked, causing poo and pee to soak the bathroom carpet and leak downstairs into the flat below. The lack of decent heating won't have helped the pipes much. Crappy wee electric heaters - expensive and totally inadequate. Walking into that flat during the winter was like going into a fridge. Depressing, distressing and unhealthy.
All I can say is avoid Aerial Properties of Paisley. Not so much actively dodgy, just incompetent and unsympathetic.
Man am I glad to be out of there. Now I'm paying the same rent for a far nicer, properly appointed flat with gch in Shawlands. And it's band c as opposed to d. Huzzah!
There are still nice flats to be found in the west, but they're getting increasingly expensive and hard to find.

Second point: Ashton Lane represents everything that's gone wrong with the west end. Once it had the old Grosvenor Cafe where you could get steaming mugs of cocoa and cheap and cheerful grub. Now it's fucking Vodka Wodka.
The record shops are all but gone. Losing the great Missing on GWR was a real blow.
Bloody 4x4s clogging up Gardiner St for the school run. Grr.

In the west end's defence, it's a wonderful place to wander around. Dowanhill is brilliant for a summer evening's stroll, getting lost in the maze like streets and crescents, coming across what must be Alisdair Gray's flat (paint brushes on the windowsill?) and catching a glimpse of the opulent interior of the Orthodox church.
Summer days spent drinking and smoking on the big hill in Kelvingrove.
The Uni Cafe.
The Bay Tree Cafe
Otago Lane with Tchai Ovna, Second Sound and the brilliant mess that is Voltaire & Rosseau, the finest second hand bookshop in town.
Going to the botanics and stumbling across the disused subway station.
Pizza from Little Italy.

It's not like I'll be leaving this all behind however.

And I've got a whole south side to discover.

So, where's good to eat and drink around Pollockshaws Rd/Kilmarnock Rd (apart from the legendary Kurdish place - I've been there)?

my favourite shop in glasgow (?) is on the south side... super asia!!!

they do a fine lime pickle

will reply with southside recommendations later (am at work) ...

xpost

probably won't actually, given I'm lazy

x-post

I agree

Bella Napoli is two minutes round the corner. It looks nice. Brass fittings, glass etc. Kinda like a big Little Italy. Seems to be open reasonably late, which is nice to know.

As I was saying to Ailsa at the B&S gig on Sunday a Glasgow FAP is long overdue.

So city centre, west end, south, east? Whaddya reckon? That new brewhouse place beside the Green sounds interesting, its potential yuppiness counter-balanced by the bratwurst...

When we made our tea-time escape from B&S to go and find eateries, I went raving on about the cheapness and greatness and relative veggie-friendliness and BYOB policy of Koshkemeer. Then we went and it was shut and we ended up eating a bad pub meal in a crappy pub in Nithsdale Road.

Pollokshaws Road & surrounding areas are crap for bank machines that don't charge you £1.50 for withdrawing money.

I will bump the behemoth that is tgm once I have cooked dinner.

(xpost. perhaps this sort of banter is needed to encourage people to come to Glasgow)

When is Glasgow trying Dublin more?

I would like to compare for myself--what it the best time of year for trying Glasgow?

so is this thread the new TGM, then? we've obviously frightened ward off, anyway. (warded him off, even ... oh, please yourselves.)

anyway:

So, where's good to eat and drink around Pollockshaws Rd/Kilmarnock Rd (apart from the legendary Kurdish place - I've been there

bella napoli is okay, but the pizzas are hit-and-miss. good coffee, though. there's a MAGNIFICENT little deli on skirving street, next to beanscene ... can't remember what it's called, but it's got a few tables and does lunches and ... oh, it's joyous. one of my favourite places in the city.

there's the brooklyn cafe on minard road, which is a good place to eat snowballs and drink tea. and eat pizza too, actually. buongiorno (subs pls chk) round the corner is a nifty old-school italian bistro, devoid of pretensions and remarkably well priced.

if you head up towards my 'hood you've got the battlefield rest, which is a scottish/italian restaurant of sheer unadulterated joy. the ivory is a passable pub/restaurant, as is agenda. the granary is okay but a bit soulless; if you can be arsed with the walk, clockwork in mount florida is the bomb. heraghty's (subs pls chk also) is over-rated. i hear syxties is very good, though ;)

mrs fiendish adds: urban grill on kilmarnock road is very fine too, and not too poncily priced. jam, she says, is a bit tacky and thinks it's more stylish than it is.

so Polenta outlets are ok on the south side but not in the west end?

stalks and stems, for fruit and veg

langside cafe, for atmosphere and coffee

the little greek place, only open at night, in battlefield

taverna

baccha (? little italian place at the top of shawlands)

tho it was never my intention to 'usurp' Try Glasgow

Thanks for all the tips folks.

I passed Koshkeemer and although it's boarded up it has a sign saying it's closed for refurbishment. So fingers crossed it'll be back soon.

Pollockshaws Rd may be rubbish for non-rip-off ATMs, but Kilmarnock Rd has loads of banks and free ATMs.

The deli on Skirling St - is that Bags of Style, the bag shop come tea room? What an odd idea for a shop. I like it.

Calamari in Bella Napoli sounds good.

I know the little greek place from when my dad lived in Battlefield. I didn't eat there, but my 13 year old self was most impressed with the photos of famous people who'd eaten there like Richard Wilson!

Clockwork? Home brews? Oh yeah!

And I've always wanted to visit the Brooklyn Cafe.

Yay, go southside!

A further request: I want to do a bit of chazzing, so where's best for records, clothes, bric a brac?

nooo ... it's got a number in its name. that's all i can remember. (and no, it's not that linen place near tusk.)

well i have a sweet deal on a flat in dennistoun from the start of august, and enough cash to play for a few months rent

but i still need to find a job: thanks again to anyone posting useful links, etc

Really, that just about covers everything.

My job situation isn't too great. I was supposed to start at Yell on Friday but the guy who was supposed to be leaving to go travelling hasn't buggered off yet, and we have no idea when he will eventually go. If I'd know that two weeks ago...

I am finally applying for a real job though - media relations assistant at Glasgow Cultural Enterprises. They've got a few marketing and new media positions as well, if that's of any interest.

and thanks the tip, stew - i don't think i can be too choosy abt work, at least to begin w/, so i shall check the GCE out - so far the only poss work i have lined up in Glasgow is being an extra on Taggart (I know the editor)!

Good luck though!

(when I sent for the application form, they put in a wee covering note saying how weird that I was applying, since they had someone with exactly the same name as me working there already! So you can *pretend* I'm working there...)

I live on roslea dr. but am moving soon; it's fine, actually

not the nicest place I've lived in glasgow but

are you staying local (to roslea dr), cozen?

marching = orange parades, one of the worst things about glasgow.

will be at instal, I guess

i think le weekend has been + gone

: )