Was that the Regal or the Rex?
As cities change, memories and important moments end up in the skip
Leaving the house in my teens, I’d shout over my shoulder that I was off out to the pictures.
What cinema, my long-suffering mother would want to know. But telling her it was the Odeon was no use. The follow-up question was, invariably: was that the Regal or the Rex?
Mum navigated Glasgow using a map that was long out of date. Thirty years after her own film-watching years, many of the picture houses that survived had already become bingo halls and carpet warehouses. The ones that still showed movies had changed their names and been bought by chains with unfamiliar names.
With no idea of how discombobulating it is to have your psychogeography bulldozed behind your back, I replied in the universal language of teenager: rolled my eyes, shrugged my shoulders and said I would be back “later”.
For me this question was nearly as tiresome as ones about old money. Glasgow in the 1970s was not changing fast enough for me. It was still a grimy, depleted city struggling to find its post-industrial identity. Anyone who wanted to rip the dirty old carpets out of the Rex was welcome to them.
The ABC, on Sauchiehall Street, was not on my regular rotation. (That would be the Rio at the end of Acre Road, now demolished; the Grosvenor in Ashton Lane where it is still possible to see a film; and the Salon on Vinicombe Street, now the Hillhead Book Club.)
So the newly-released Grease at the ABC, with two friends from school, stays in my mind. It was 1978 and I was 13. The bus into town. Meeting at the bottom of Pitt Street, going in to the huge, shabby foyer, watching a load of adults pretend to be American versions of us from 20-odd years ago.
Now there are plans to turn the ABC, latterly a music venue and badly damaged in the Glasgow School of Art fire in 2014, into student flats with a food court at pavement level.
This is what guts me about important buildings being flattened and turned into student bloody flats, or car parks, or 85-storey branches of Starbucks or any of the other things that suck the soul out of our cities.
Of course we lose the structure and its history. The distinctive arch-fronted ABC was a dance hall, an ice-skating rink and a circus as well as a cinema and then mid-size music venue with night clubs upstairs.
The live music venue is a particular loss. But more than that, we also lose the visual reminder of all the important moments that took place there. When 286-326 Sauchiehall Street becomes a food court, I will be a step further back from the night I saw Grease. Eventually the memory will fade so much that, when I walk down east towards the GFT, I will won’t be able to remember exactly where the ABC used to be.
Refits are part of the life of entertainment venues, they need to move with the times. I know all this but the speed at which it sometimes happens can leave me dizzy.
I was restaurant critic at the Daily Record for seven years. When I was writing about new places, especially in city centres, it would be with one eye on the skip that would, at some point, be filled with their neon signs and walls of plastic flowers.
Some opened and closed too quickly for me to pin them down. There was one particularly dreadful pre-theatre dinner at a Glasgow steak restaurant. It was obvious that the staff were struggling and could see that the end was nigh. The red wine was cellar cold, the music chest-thuddingly loud in an unsuccessful attempt to create atmosphere.
When we inquired about dessert, the waiter just said no. And shrugged, as if I, his mother, had asked what cinema he was visiting.
The picture desk rang up the next day, to arrange to send a photographer. They were told that it was shutting up shop.
Some others were so terrible, or so plangent, or just so hopeless, that they clearly had no future. It felt like writing history instead of a review.
There was a Mexican place in Merchant City that opened to feverish excitement among the foodies of instagram. The next Friday tea time, there was one other person eating beside his huge suitcase. We were seated right beside him, in the centre of the restaurant.
Cosy, but not in a good way.
When we declined to order drinks, the four staff lost interest and returned to chatting among themselves. There are sound economic reasons for this - restaurants’ business model is to break even on food and make money on booze, coffee and soft drinks. But guys. There was, for about 15 minutes, no one else in the place. It would not have killed you to pretend to look after us.
Our dinner, when it arrived, was spectacularly indifferent. Whoever was cooking hadn’t read their cheat sheet properly and some of the tacos had the wrong bits in them.
It closed within months.
In itself, no great loss. But what if you went on your first date there? And returned for your anniversary only to see the doors closed and the To Let board above the door? Or did a double take because it’s now Korean street food den or Nigerian tapas bar.
Central Edinburgh has lower turnover and a higher concentration of fancy chains with the deep pockets to see out the tumbleweed months. To my joy, I recently passed the doorway to a nightclub where I worked more than 40 years ago. It was open. Had I not been in a tearing hurry, I could have gone down the sticky stairs to see a comedy show in the basement where I once played Bauhaus records.
That Proustian experience will need to wait for next year. If it has not become a branch of Franco Manco.
Please enjoy reviews of a couple of Glasgow restaurants that have gone to the great secondhand fixtures warehouse in the sky.
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