Glasgow
For once, a city lives up to its slogan
Sometimes, you have to go where the story leads you.
A few years ago, I discovered a platform where people let you stay in their homes in exchange for taking care of their pets. For me, this was the very definition of a win-win situation, and ever since, I’ve used the site periodically to create my own little DIY writing retreats. I did it again in July, when I stayed in a lovely Georgian pile that came lavishly furnished with an Aga, two Labradors, and a very opinionated Basset Hound.
Located in a village just west of Edinburgh, the house was situated along the Union Canal, a tremendous feat of engineering designed to ease the transport of coal from Glasgow to the Scottish capital. The canal opened in 1822, but was displaced just 20 years later by a new railway, and eventually was closed altogether. A couple of decades ago, however, the canal was re-opened, and the 31-mile trail that runs alongside it turned into a popular path for walking and biking. I longed to walk its entire length, but my three unruly charges made that impossible.
Still, my housesitting stint left me with a lingering desire to see the canal’s source, and so, a few weeks after it ended, I returned to Scotland, this time to Glasgow. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived, and I quickly ran headlong into one of those situations that was bound to happen on one of my unplugged trips: I couldn’t find a place to stay.
As part of this newsletter’s internet-free approach to travel, I don’t do any hotel research or make any hotel reservations before I arrive at my destination, which means that, once in situ, finding accommodation is usually my first order of business. My criterion for lodging is pretty relaxed: nice but not so nice that I can’t afford it. There is one requirement, however, that I try to uphold: the place needs to be independently owned, not part of a chain.
That’s partly because I want to support local businesses. Seventy-seven percent of hotels in Europe are independently owned, and many of them are family businesses stretching back generations. But investment in hotels–in the new ones being built or the old ones being taken over to house the growing herds of international tourists–is almost entirely in the hands of large, global brands (in fact, just four companies are building half of Europe’s new hotels). Unable to match their financial resources and the marketing department they buy, independent hotels are struggling to hang on.
I also prefer independent hotels because they tend to have more personality. Corporate brands may toss a few locally-made throw pillows onto their beds or pour a locally brewed craft beer in their bars, but there is usually a base level of uniformity across their properties. Which makes sense, since many people choose chain hotels precisely because they want to know what they’re getting, whether they’re in Chicago or Chiang Mai. But I’m not one of those people. I like it when a hotel has photos of its owner’s family stretching back a few generations on its walls, or the furniture doesn’t quite match, or when, as there was at an inn where I stayed this past weekend, there’s a free bottle of sloe gin (?!) on the nightstand and all the rooms are named after dragons.
So that’s what I was looking for in Glasgow. Leaving the bus station, I was immediately charmed by the city, which is filled with the kind of Victorian industrial architecture I associate with Dickens, and emanates a kind of bustling friendliness that makes it feel like everyone is always just getting off work and heading to the pub. I entered one hotel that looked promising, only to be told it was fully booked all weekend. Since the other accommodations in the immediate area seemed to be big chains, I decided to head away from downtown, and see if I couldn’t find a nice neighborhood place somewhere.
My dear Scottish friend Roddie had recently explained Edinburgh’s cultural geography to me (“East is posh, west is Socialist,”) and although I had absolutely no evidence to support this supposition, I decided the same must apply to Glasgow. Heading west (was that a real question?) I eventually came to a neighborhood with a statue of Charles Rennie McIntosh, a massive Hindu temple, and a lot of lively-looking restaurants and cafés. This, I learned, was Finnieston, which looked even more perfect when I came across a street of appealing rowhouses and several small hotels, all of which—with the exception of a Best Western—were independent.
I chose one with baskets of hanging flowers over the entryway, and a friendly woman behind the desk. She apologetically informed me she had nothing available for either night, but she could offer me the sole remaining room in the guesthouse across the way for tonight only. With a cockiness that would prove to be entirely misplaced, I told her I preferred to find a place for both nights, and would keep trying. She leaned in to whisper about the guesthouse a few doors down. “You’ll not be wanting that one,” she whispered. “Bedbugs.”
Indeed I would not. Instead, I tried a classic-looking place with tartan carpeting across the street. Nothing available. Another, further on, where I waited so long for the receptionist to return that other guests started leaving their keys with me. But that place had no availability either. I tried two more, also full. With my choices quickly dwindling to bedbugs or corporate overlords, I chose the latter, a place whose strange disco lighting in the lobby set the white shirts of the young men behind reception glowing purple. They did have a room available, but–and here one of the young men actually winced–the price would be 340 pounds–about 450 dollars. Per night. For a Best Western.
When I asked why the rates were so high, he told me there was a convention taking place nearby –something to do with music, he thought. “And there are a lot of geks this weekend.” I was back out on the street before I realized he meant gigs.
I returned to the first place and took the remaining room across the way, figuring chances were good that there would be a cancellation and I’d be able to stay another day. The room was fine: if the bathroom put me in mind of a 1960s mental institution for girls, it was at least clean, and there were cheerful floral spreads on the beds and packets of Biscoff cookies tucked near the kettle.
That evening, I strolled around the neighborhood, poking into the studios of the brightly-painted Hidden Lane, listening to a bit of traditional Scottish music at a pub, and having an excellent dinner (fried artichokes with yogurt and Aleppo pepper; gnocchi with pea puree and pistachio pesto) at a lively restaurant where I may have fallen a little in love with the server when he asked me if I wouldn’t like a wee pudding.
The next morning, I learned from a different but equally apologetic receptionist that there had been no cancellations at my hotel. I re-traced the previous evening’s route (minus the bedbugs and the Best Western) and tried again. The first two places were still fully booked, but at one, the receptionist paused. “I do have one,” she said from behind thick glasses. “But it’s not worth what they’re asking.”
Amy was, as the great John Jeremiah Sullivan might put it, a lot to love. A wheat-colored sweatsuit hugged her curves, and her long, blond hair was pulled tight into a ponytail that accentuated her dark roots. The lenses of her glasses pressed against her spidery false eyelashes, flattening them slightly, and the dirigibles of her inflated lips pointed alarmingly in opposite directions. She clarified why I was having so much trouble. “There’s a wee conference down at the SEC,” she said, gesturing to the convention center down the hill. “Comics, I think.”
Amy was an angel. Before I knew what was happening, she was on hold with another hotel, trying to get me a room. After about 10 minutes of waiting, I tried to let her (and myself) off the hook by saying I would keep looking. but she wouldn’t hear of it. She dialed another number, and was again put on hold. Guests came and went; Amy handed them their keys and kindly told them where to find breakfast, the phone firmly pressed to her ear all the while. Still no answer. I told her I would walk over to some of the alternatives she had mentioned. “Nae,” she practically shouted, in a voice that brooked no opposition. “I’ll not have ye rambling all over town.”
I stayed put. Finally, she got through to a place, and took it upon herself to book a room for me at 157 pounds. Which is how I, fervent champion of the independent and idiosyncratic, came to spend the night at the Ibis Glasgow City Centre.
With a room waiting for me, I was free to wander the city. I meandered around the lush lawns of Kelvingrove Park and learned that Glasgow is proud enough of its former professor that they named big chunks of the city after him. Desperate for coffee, I entered the first café I came across, which in addition to serving a truly execrable cup, taught me that a potato scone is not, as one might think, a scone made from potatoes, but a rectangle of fried mashed potatoes, which can then be stuffed unpleasantly into a squishy white roll. I was traumatized enough by this breakfast that when, a little further on, I came to a Nordic-looking bakery with cinnamon buns and proper filter coffee, I pretended the previous one hadn’t happened.
I visited the botanical gardens, with its elegant glass houses, and strolled around the thrumming West End, where even the hair salons were self-deprecating. I stopped into the Kelvingrove Art museum for a quick Charles Rennie fix, and lingered on the edges a small memorial service being held outside for veterans of a long-ago war.
Everywhere I went, I saw these pink signs that read ‘People Make Glasgow.’ I later learned that this was a decade-old, crowd-sourced advertising campaign that had identified Glaswegians themselves as the city’s most distinctive element. For once, the branding seemed accurate. Almost everyone I came across, from the ceramicist coaxing dogs to leave their pawprints in wet clay to the unbreakable Amy, was profoundly friendly. Not in the superficial, have-a-nice-day way that you sometimes find in the US, but in a way that felt real: curious, comfortable in their own skin, with a wicked sense of humor and an expansive acceptance of human foible. And everyone, always, seemed up for a good chat.
Finally, I made my way back downtown to my new accommodation. The Ibis was a concrete block of a generic hotel, but it was clean and comfortable and the guy at reception—sincerely friendly like everyone else I met in Glasgow—let me check in early. There was no minibar in my room, however, so I soon headed back to the lobby to get something to drink. When the elevator door opened, I found myself face to face with two futuristic-looking stormtroopers, both dressed in blue jumpsuits trimmed with gold, their hair rising into matching yellow mohawks.
Something told me they must be part of the convention that had made it so hard for me to find a room. I asked if it was Comic Con they were attending, and an awkward silence settled over the elevator cabin–I couldn’t tell if I had offended them, or if they just pitied my ignorance. But Bryan and Mette–he from California, she from Denmark, both living in Sweden—recovered quickly, and patiently explained that the event they were in town for was World, not Comic, Con, and that it dealt in literature, not comics. Science fiction literature to be exact, with a ceremony for the genre’s most prestigious awards, the Hugos.
Despite the fact that they had various weapons strapped across their jumpsuits, Bryan and Mette were lovely people, and they quickly deduced from my questions that I needed to attend World Con myself. Mette started scrolling through the convention website for information on how I might secure a day pass, and Bryan told me about Masquerade, a costume competition occurring that very evening that was one of the conference’s highlights. I nodded politely.
After they left, I approached the lobby bar and ordered a bottle of water. The receptionist/bartender who brought it to me had seen me talking to Bryan and Mette.
“Nice to have a hobby, innit?” he said with a wink.
“I take it, it’s not yours?” I asked.
“Nae, he said, “But funnily enough, it’s my favorite game.” Ian then proceeded to tell me how Fallout was a video game set after a nuclear accident but with an America-in-the-1950s aesthetic. He also told me that Bryan and Mette were not stormtroopers at all but rather Vault Boy and Vault Girl, corporate mascots for a defense company that, in the game, built the vault that allowed some of humanity to survive the accident. I must have looked skeptical. “No, really, it’s cool,” Ian said.
Sometimes, you have to go where the story leads you.
I headed toward the convention center. I hadn’t gone more than a block or two from the hotel, however, when I came across a scruffy-looking bar called King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut. This was confusing to me. A boy I had known in high school, who had moved from Atlanta to New York to pursue his musician dreams, had worked in a bar of the same name. But the place where he had worked was definitely in the East Village, and I was definitely in downtown Glasgow. Was King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut some kind of international chain? Was it the Ibis Hotels of dive bars?
“Nae,” said the bartender. “I’m pretty sure we just stole the name.”
There’s more to this part of the story, including a tie-in to that recent bit of news out of Manchester that has so many of my friends excitedly re-mortgaging their houses in the hopes of getting their hands on tickets. But I’m going to leave the rest of my account of my time at King Tut’s for the next issue and tell you about World Con instead.
Organized by the World Science Fiction Association, the event has taken place every year, I learned, since 1939 (which is kind of amazing when you think about it). The previous edition, held in Chengdu, had sparked a lot of controversy for apparently allowing the Chinese authorities to censor some of the award winners. But that hadn’t dissuaded the estimated 9000 people expected to attend the 2024 edition.
It was held in the massive silver armadillo that is Glasgow’s convention center. A Batmobile and another vehicle that looked like some kind of moon buggy guarded the entrance to the sprawling hall where the book dealers displayed their offerings. There was an actual drum-playing robot, and a lot of people dressed as robots. The costumes, in fact, were one of the highlights, even if I wasn’t getting most of the references. There were monsters and wizards and all manner of elfin creatures. I saw one woman made up to look as though she were a witch riding an inflatable unicorn, and another, in a red velvet cloak and long silver braid, who kept a book titled Beyond Monogamy prominently at her side.
I was surprised by the age of many convention-goers: there were a lot of bald-in-front, grey ponytail in the back combinations. But there were also a lot of gender-fluid twenty-somethings, and dyed-hair cosplayers, and plain old geeks. It was apparently WorldCon practice to collect ribbons from people or groups and attach them to your badge, and the ensuing rainbow-colored streamers adorning most attendees contributed to the event’s happy, invigorated air of people finding their tribes.
There was a lot going on—nearly 1000 official events in total. I had missed the Plushies and Mascots Meetup and the presentation on Fighting Fungi in Space. But I was in time for an interesting discussion on whether superhero movies were over, where the panelists debated the larger implications for the genre of Madame Web.
When I came out of the session, a many hundreds-long line of people, stretching the entire length of the convention center, was waiting to gain entry to the evening’s Masquerade. I was debating whether to join them when I ran into Vault Boy and Vault Girl. Bryan looked at my badge, unadorned by any ribbons, and must have felt sorry for me, because he fished into his bag to pull out a lavender one with the words “A Time Machine I Finally Invent.” I had no idea what it meant, but I attached it to my badge, and for a moment, felt I belonged.
As I left World Con, I walked through the covered bridge, colored red and ribbed like a Slinky, that connected the convention area with the rest of Finnieston. Ahead of me were two young convention-goers in costume, and when a middle-aged cyclist passing the other way spotted them, she slowed to ask what was going on. Something in her voice made me fear there was something ugly coming, a what-are-you-weirdos-doing-in-my-city exchange. But I had underestimated Glaswegians. As one of the pair explained they were coming from a science fiction conference, the woman smiled, and raised her hand in the Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper,” she said as she pedaled away.
The younger of the two World Conners turned to the other, bewildered. “What the hell was that?” she asked.
What it was, was the perfect ending. The sold-out hotels that had led me to Amy, who had sent me to the Ibis, where I ran into the cosplaying Vault Kids who had insisted I go to the convention that was the very reason why all the hotel rooms were sold out in the first place: one thing kept leading to another. This is the beauty of all travel, I think, but especially travel without any preconceived plans. The way a story reveals itself to you, even when you hadn’t realized you were looking for one.
Or the way it reveals a different story than the one you went searching for. It was only the next day, when I was on the bus that would take me to the airport in Edinburgh and from there, back to Copenhagen, that I realized: I had forgotten to look for the Union Canal.
The Addresses
Below, paid subscribers will find a list of the places where I ate, drank, and stayed in Glasgow. But, a gentle reminder: wouldn’t it be more fun to find your own?