Forget London, Glasgow Is the UK's Best Party City

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Photo by Patrick D Bortz

Edinburgh might have the castle, the parliament, the Japanese tourists, the neo-classical architecture, and the advantageously low murder rate, but Glasgow has all the fun. Scotland’s largest city is pretty drunk, yes, but we also punch above our weight culturally, with a dynamic music scene, one of the world's most iconic art schools, and some of the best pubs and clubs in Britain. So taps aff ya dafties, 'cos here we fucking go.

Jump to sections by using the index below.

– WHERE TO PARTY
– WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH DRUGS?
– POLITICS, PROTESTS AND JUST HOW RACIST IS EVERYONE HERE?
   Self-Important Sectarian Bigots | Glaswegian Authority Issues | Immigration
– WHERE TO EAT
– WHAT DO LOCALS EAT?
– WHERE TO DRINK
– WHERE TO STAY
– LGBT GLASGOW
– WHERE TO HANG OUT WHEN YOU'RE SOBER
– HOW TO AVOID GETTING RIPPED OFF AND BEATEN UP
– HOW NOT TO BE A SHITTY TOURIST
– PEOPLE AND PLACES TO AVOID
– TIPPING AND HANDY PHRASES
– A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST OF QUESTIONABLE LOCAL MUSIC
– VICE CITY MAP

Photo by Patrick D Bortz

The beauty of Glasgow nightlife is that most clubs exist on the awkward Z-shape formed by Sauchiehall Street, Union Street, and the Clydeside, so you can roll between it all—the last, desperate gasps of indie, top 40 R&B, taps aff techno, eccie-fuelled happy hardcore and the welcoming thud of underground house—in less than 20 minutes. What it also means, though, is that any arsehole can pop his head in, so Glasgow tries to get round this by booking DJs to play the smallest, loudest spots possible.

One of the finer small, loud spots that people have been diving into in recent years is La Cheetah. They say the capacity's 200 (I swear I've seen nearly double), but you suffer the ceiling drips and disco-tarred shoes because it comes with Funktion 1 as standard and books heroes like Theo Parrish, Moodymann, and Legowelt. That, and you can get a drink for £2 ($3). And you wonder why we want independence.

Though not strictly in Glasgow, any house and techno fan worth their chip-in has been to Club 69: the notorious basement club under a curry house in Paisley. Seriously, if Paisley didn’t have a cathedral and a university, it would probably put 69 on the tourist brochure, it's that fucking good. Punters are bussed out from the center for low-key parties that, since the 90s, have been the old guard’s bragging rights and the newcomers' initiation ritual. Basically, you haven’t seen acid house played live until you’ve seen dozens of kids with eccie masalas in their guts sweating aggressively at a DJ shoved inside a chicken cage.

Glasgow’s licensing laws mean that alcohol is only served in shops until 10PM, in bars till midnight and clubs till 3AM. What this means, other than Dial-A-Booze making a killing on £30 ($50) bottles of Morgan Spiced rum, is that afterparty culture reigns supreme in Glasgow. One of the few illegal club spots to have gone legit is the Unit. It’s better now as well—honest. No more dogs, corrugated iron, and police shutdowns. It’s got lights and everything. One night, make the trip over the motorway. It’s a feat of communal endeavor to keep-the-fuck-going that Glasgow relishes in.

Because of the quirks of our subway system—it's one line that circles through the city center, South Side, and West End—subcrawls have become pretty popular, particularly among students. The rules of the subcrawl are simple: buy an all-day ticket for £4 ($7), get off at every stop (there are 15), and have a drink at the first pub you see. Things usually get interesting once you arrive in the less-than-salubrious environs of Ibrox, Govan, and Kinning Park, and by the time you get to the later stops, you'll be doing well to make it past the bouncers, but if you've got ten hours and a liver to kill, it's pretty fun.

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Photo by Patrick D Bortz

Although it may not be the case for much longer, Glasgow is still a part of the UK, and so our drug laws are the same as everywhere else in Britain. Weed is still technically illegal, but the only people who give a shit are passing police officers. There’s not a huge amount within town, though, and unlike many cities, being offered drugs on the street is very rare in Glasgow.

Doormen here are notoriously strict, and anyone caught—or even just suspected of—taking drugs in a pub or club will be thrown out. The Arches club came close to losing its license back in February, when a 17-year-old schoolgirl collapsed and died after taking a bad pill on the premises. This came in the wake of a similar scare last summer, when green "Rolex" pills killed six people around Glasgow in the space of a couple of months, so people should exercise real caution when putting stuff in their body.

Crack and meth are rare, but Glasgow was once renowned—if that’s the right word—for being the heroin capital of the UK. That title always had more to do with the quantity of addicts than the quality of product, though—one dead user tested positive for anthrax a few years ago. In any case, most Glaswegians are under no illusions about the "glamour" of heroin, and it’s certainly not regarded as socially acceptable, so don't do it, basically. And frankly, how awful a cunt must you be if you want to spend your holiday on smack?

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SELF-IMPORTANT SECTARIAN BIGOTS

Religion has been in decline in Scotland for years—just 54 percent of the population identify as Christian, down from 65 percent in 2001—but because it’s become so entangled with football and politics, we seem unable to rid ourselves of its sectarian trappings, even though many on both sides of the Protestant-Catholic divide will only ever enter a church to be married or buried.

The most obvious manifestation of this occurs every summer, when, for a host of arcane and impossible-to-defend reasons, a certain stripe of Glasgow's Protestant community takes it upon themselves to dust off their woodwind instruments, dress up like dicks, and parade through the city to commemorate William of Orange's victory over the Catholic King James II in a battle that took place (in Ireland) so long ago, you'd struggle to believe they can count so high using only their fingers. These parades are known as Orange walks, and not only are they offensive and inflammatory to Catholics (particularly when their route passes through traditionally Catholic areas), but they’re an embarrassment to everyone else who lives here: Traffic slows to a crawl to accommodate these lamentable conga lines of self-important bigots, while hangovers citywide are exacerbated by their flute-based hymns of hatred wafting through open windows.

Rangers and Celtic, the local football teams whose rivalry has become symbolic of—and symbiotic with—the tension between Protestants and Catholics, have both made efforts to curb the singing of sectarian songs on matchdays, but progress is slow. You’ll still hear Rangers fans going on about being “up to our knees in Fenian blood," for example, while members of Celtic’s "Green Brigade" of ultras still sing pro-IRA songs. Sometimes, of course, we are able to laugh at the pettiness of it all: A few years ago, in the Rangers-supporting stronghold of Larkhall, the local branch of Subway was forced to repaint its storefront black, because locals interpreted the original color—green—as a tacit expression of support for Irish republicanism (no, seriously).

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Photo by Liam Turbett

GLASWEGIAN AUTHORITY ISSUES

Glasgow has always been highly politicized: Russian communists once believed that the British revolution would begin on the streets of Glasgow, and it almost did during the battle of George Square in 1919, when the army was called in to deal with 60,000 Red Clydeside workers who briefly managed to raise the red flag over the city chambers. Seventy years later, similar numbers took to the streets in protest against the poll tax and were ultimately victorious in repealing it (to the surprise of absolutely no one, Glasgow was one of the first cities in the UK to host a Margaret Thatcher "death party" last year).

For years, the relationship between protesters and police remained cordial, but with the gradual erosion of civil liberties in the UK, that’s changed: Anti-austerity activists at the University of Glasgow were forcibly evicted from (and then allowed back into) the building they were peacefully occupying, and a few weeks later, a royal wedding street party in Kelvingrove park (less a celebration of Will and Kate’s nuptials than a collective thumbing-of-the-nose at the city’s stringent new legislation regarding public assembly) was ruined by violence. The most common protests these days are against austerity cuts, fascist political organizations, and sexism.

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Photo by Chris O'Neil

IMMIGRATION

Immigration is on the rise here, but it's hardly a new phenomenon: During the potato famine of the mid 19th century, the arrival of thousands of Irish Catholics into a city that was overwhelmingly Protestant became a source of huge civil unrest, and even today, tensions linger between the knuckle-headed on both sides. The truth, of course, is that Glasgow's history and culture was tremendously enriched by that influx—we've got them to thank for Arthur Conan Doyle, Billy Connolly, Frankie Boyle, and Celtic's 1967 European Cup win—and while only about 2 percent of Glaswegians self-identify as "ethnically Irish" today, that figure doesn't come close to telling the true story of their impact.

There are loads of people of Pakistani origin, many of whom can trace their roots back to the first wave of arrivals in the 1950s, after Pakistan won its independence from the British Empire. Those early generations faced the same problems here—suspicion, discrimination, and lack of employment—as they did in the rest of the UK, but today, Pakistanis play an increasingly important role in business and local politics—many, in fact, have become ardent supporters of Scottish independence.

We also have around 10,000 Chinese, who arrived after the collapse of the agricultural economy under Mao and settled in the Garnethill area, where our very own Chinatown is located (don't get your hopes up: It's literally just a supermarket with a Paifang facade) and similar numbers of Polish and African immigrants. The question of Scottish independence will have a huge impact on Glasgow's future demography: If we vote in favor of it, the SNP plans to introduce a far more liberal and open immigration policy.

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Sarti
42 Renfield Street, 121 Bath Street, and 133 Wellington Street
There’s little to choose between these three family-run Italian restaurants, which all offer great food, friendly service, and some Italian shit strewn around the place.

The Squid & The Whale
372 Great Western Road
OK, so it takes its name from a minor mumblecore “classic” and calls itself a "cantina," but honestly, it’s really not that annoying. The food (a mix of Mexican, American, and Creole), the extensive selection of beers, and the decent DJs make it pretty fucking real, actually.

Stereo
22 Renfield Lane
Glasgow has three dedicated vegan restaurants—the 78 and Stereo’s sister establishment, Mono, are the others—but this place gets the nod for its tapas menu.

The Ubiquitous Chip
12 Ashton Lane
Traditional Scottish fare that's well worth the expense. Like every other establishment on Ashton Lane, however, it crowds up quickly.

Hanoi Bike Shop
8 Ruthven Lane
This West End Vietnamese joint is becoming insanely popular—it's relatively cheap, a bit weird, and somehow it made its way onto Beyonce's Instagram recently. Which, frankly, is probably the sexiest thing to ever happen in Scotland.

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Photo by John Beck

Chippies
Sadly, Glasgow is no longer the heart-disease capital of the UK, but we’ll still deep-fry anything with molecules. Old-fashioned fish-and-chip shops are growing scarce these days, having been edged out by the inexorable rise of "street food," but places like the Blue Lagoon and the Philadelphia still do suppers so greasy they’ll turn your guts translucent.

Buckfast
Commotion Lotion. Wreck the Hoose Juice. Coatbridge Table Wine. Like Beelzebub, whose viscous micturition it tastes like, it’s been distilled from, Buckfast goes by many names. This highly-caffeinated tonic wine, brewed by monks in Devonshire and blamed by politicians for most of Scotland’s societal ills, has an awful reputation, yet we stubbornly go on consuming it, without irony or apology. Why? Because Buckfast gets you fucked fast.

Square Sausage
For some reason, non-Scots always seem to regard square sausage—or Lorne sausage, to give it its proper name—as some kind of outrageous affront to the principles of meat geometry. The appeal for us, however, has always been quite simple: Stick a slice in a buttered roll, add a fried egg, slather some ketchup on top, and hey, presto—you've got a burger you can eat for breakfast.

Munchy Box
Ever find yourself standing in a takeaway thinking, Chips or naan? Onion rings or pakora? Kebab meat or chicken tikka? Glaswegians don't. For us, where fast food is concerned, there is no "or," there is only "and," which is how the munchy box—a cardboard pizza box stuffed to the gills with all of the above, and containing as many as 3,000 calories—came into being. It usually includes a desultory scraping of salad, but it's bad form to eat that decorative shit.

Irn-Bru
OK, there are a few hard-and-fast rules to stick by when it comes to consuming Scotland's national soft drink. Cans (chilled, obviously) are acceptable if you've no other option, but never drink it from plastic bottles—it just doesn't taste right. A 75cl glass bottle—known as a "ginger boatil"—is always the optimum delivery method, and if you're hungover, it's a near-guaranteed cure.

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Photo by Patrick D Bortz

The West End isn’t great for clubbing: The Queen Margaret Union is a ball ache to get into unless you’re with a member, ditto for the Glasgow University Union—which is historically populated by rugby-playing misogynists anyway—and Viper is pretty much the last-chance saloon. It does, however, have some great pubs.

The Halt Bar (160 Woodlands Road) is a traditional Glasgow local, where old soaks and young folks commingle happily, and which hosts a range of popular open-mic nights. The Stravaigin (28 Gibson Street) is a little younger, hipper, and—crucially—open until 1AM, which gives you an extra hour of binging time, should you need it.

The Oran Mor, a converted church at the top of Byres Road, is pricey and often overcrowded, but you should try and make it to one of their "A Play, a Pie, and a Pint" events, where, for the reasonable sum of £11 ($20), you will get exactly what's advertized.

Over on the other side of Kelvingrove Park, the Finnieston area has undergone a remarkable gentrification process. Ten years ago it was all slumlords and understocked 24-hour shops; today, it boasts boutiques, bistros and cool little bars like Big Slope (36 Kelvingrove Street) and Lebowskis (1008 Argyle Street).

And so to the city center. You’re going to end up on Sauchiehall Street at some point, so you may as well familiarize yourself with the place. Firstly, it’s pronounced Saw-kee-hall, and the eastern end is basically a shopping precinct, but as you head west towards Charing Cross, the bars, clubs, and venues take over. The best of these are probably Nice 'n' Sleazy’s (421 Sauchiehall Street)—a Glaswegian institution renowned for its well-curated jukebox, preponderance of local indie luminaries, and selling Buckfast by the glass—and Broadcast, which is literally next door and caters to much the same crowd (there are more than enough indie kids to go around in Glasgow). Sleazy’s is open till 3AM every night while Broadcast only opens late from Thursday to Saturday, but both offer live music, DJs, and serve great food.

Finally, if you’re looking for something a little more different, try the The Grand Ole Opry (2 Govan Road). It’s a country and western club, but there’s no dress code, and the booze is criminally cheap—always a perk of partying with the senior citizenry. On Gun Club nights, the septuagenarian alphas will assert dominance over their rivals by demonstrating their prowess with a six-shooter, and once this bizarre ritual is over, everyone stands in a circle and sings "Dixie" while solemnly folding a confederate flag. It’s profoundly fucking weird.

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Photo by Jonathan Tollan

The usual chain hotels are all present in Glasgow city center, but if you’re looking for somewhere affordable and well located and a bed that doesn’t feel like several salarymen have topped themselves in it, your best bet is to look elsewhere. The citizenM (60 Renfrew Street) is great and rooms are sometimes as little as £55 ($95) a night. If you’re looking to go cheaper still, the Euro Hostel (318 Clyde Street) is basic, but at £10 ($17) a night for a dorm or £20 ($34) for a private (en-suite) room, basic is more than you deserve.

The Art House (129 Bath Street), The Grand Central Hotel (99 Gordon Street), and the Blythswood Square Hotel (11 Blythswood Square) are good options for those with a fatter wallet, and anyone looking to base themselves in the West End could do worse than the Hilton Grosvenor (1 Grosvenor Terrace), which looks onto the botanic gardens and is handy for Byres Road and Great Western Road. If your money-to-sense equilibrium is really out of whack, Hotel Du Vin (1 Devonshire Gardens) is the city’s swankiest destination.

One thing to bear in mind about all these places, of course, is that Glasgow is hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and during that two-week period every local hotelier and Airbnb hustler with an empty broom cupboard or spare coffin will be out to bleed you dry.

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Photo by Flickr user Spider.Dog

Back in January, UKIP's Scottish chairman fumed that Glasgow was "for gays, Catholics, and communists," an endorsement so ringing we should have put it in letters 20ft high on a billboard over the Kingston Bridge. Yet while we’ve come a long way in a short space of time—homosexuality was only decriminalized in Scotland in 1980—the gay scene here is still relatively small and concentrated around a few long-running local institutions.

The Polo Lounge and AXM (formerly Bennets) are the biggest and best-known of these, and handily, they’re just around the corner from each other, a few streets south of George Square. Wednesdays are student nights, and they’re generally the most popular.  The Polo is perhaps the more upmarket of the two, and it also operates the Riding Room, which hosts live music, burlesque shows, and magicians. Delmonica’s is another stalwart, though it’s more of a bar than a club, and is famous for its karaoke nights.

With the addition of Speakeasy and FHQ, the city’s first (and so far only) female-only club, as well as Lock Up Your Daughters, a local collective who publish queer zines, host filmmaking workshops and stage a club night at the Flying Duck, the scene is growing, although gay clubs in Glasgow are more about camp, easygoing fun than bacchanalian debauchery. There was an infamous night at the Arches (it’s always the Arches) a few years ago when Glasgow briefly turned into a Police Academy movie and two policemen on a routine inspection walked in on a 30-strong orgy and were mistaken for strippers, but that sort of thing is pretty rare. Homophobia, however, isn’t much of a problem: gay bars have been a fixture of Glaswegian nightlife for more than 30 years—some, like the Waterloo, have been serving the community for even longer than that—and even the most yokel-minded ned generally knows better than to start any trouble.

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Photo by Patrick D Bortz

Kelvingrove Park
In summer (not that we get much of one), Glaswegians often gather here to eat, drink, and make merry. The police tend to be officious pricks about the drinking part—it’s been illegal in public places since 1996—but if you can find an out-of-the-way spot, there’s no better way to spend a sunny day.

The West End
Glasgow's bohemian enclave is really a second, more chilled-out city centre, its skyline dominated not by shopping malls and nine-story Cineworlds but the gothic spires of the university and Kelvingrove art gallery. Despite the continual presence of pissed students and Waitrose mums, the West End never loses its charm.

The South Side
You'll probably spend most of your time in the West End and city center by default, but it's worth heading South to check out the Burrell art collection, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's House for an Art Lover, and the Shawlands area, which contains plenty of good bars and restaurants.

Glasgow School of Art
Glasgow's art and music scenes are what attract all those North American students (and their parents' money) to the city, and despite the recent fire at the School of Art, things are more vibrant and exciting on those fronts than they have been in years. You'll encounter all sorts there: geniuses, weirdos, Marxists, crustafarians, conspiracy theorists, even the occasional normal. You don't even have to be studying there to hang out: unlike other student unions in Glasgow, the Vic is open to anyone, and many people who've never even taken a class end up becoming weirdly attached to the place.

The Barras
"Hang out" might be a bit strong, but it's certainly worth paying a visit to this East End fleamarket, if only because it's one of the last authentic "Old Glasgow" landmarks. It's gone downhill in recent years, but you can still find a bargain or two, and the adjacent Barrowland Ballroom is the best live music venue in Scotland.

Mono
A bar that’s also a venue, that’s also a vegan restaurant, that’s also one of Glasgow’s best record shops, Mono is beloved by local artists and musicians. The staff can be a bit up themselves, but if you pulled pints in a place like this, you probably would be, too.

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Glasgow has the highest homicide and violent-crime rate in the UK, but that statistic is slightly misleading: knife crime, which was once widespread enough to qualify as a civic pastime, has dropped by 67 percent since 2007, and homicides are also decreasing at a rate faster than the national average. Are there parts of the city that would make your eyes pop out on stalks? Sure, but the chances of you accidentally wandering into places like Govan, Possilpark, or Castlemilk are pretty slim.

The city center can be rowdy, but it’s rarely unsafe: Sauchiehall Street, for example, has a bad reputation, but even at weekends, the only real danger you’re likely to encounter is a pissed hen party squawking at you from the window of a passing fire-engine limo. More troubling is the recent spate of sex attacks on women, most of them occurring on the South Side, which prompted thousands of residents to march through the area in protest. The attacks aren’t related, but some of the suspects are still at large, so obviously don’t stumble around pissed on your own.

Finally, Glasgow has a longstanding problem with poverty, and if you’re in the city center, you will almost certainly be panhandled by beggars, alcoholics, and drug addicts. Whether or not you want to give them money is entirely up to you, but don't feel threatened by them. If you sense anyone getting pushy or aggressive, just walk away.

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Photo by Jonathan Tollan

In the same year that Glasgow was ranked as the UK’s most violent city, we were also voted its friendliest, and we do tend to be quite welcoming of tourists, even if we secretly question the wisdom of going on holiday to somewhere world-renowned for its terrible weather. Life is literally too short (North Korea has a higher life expectancy than certain parts of the city) for us to get too worked up about the behavior of outsiders, but we do find some stereotypes more offensive than others. As a general rule, therefore, try not to make a big deal about the following: deep-fried Mars bars; how much prettier Edinburgh is; your own nation’s superiority at football; how creepy the Krankies are; the length of time since our last fix… you know, the basic stuff.

There isn’t space to get into the finer points of "Glesga patter" (the local dialect) here, but it's always worth remembering that the word "cunt"—whilst verboten everywhere else in the English-speaking world—can actually be a term of familiarity, even endearment, in Glasgow. Should someone refer to you as such (e.g. "Here mate, ken the way tae tha Necropolis? This cunt's askin''), don't be offended, just go with it.

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Photo by Patrick D Bortz

Jakeys
Whereas junkies will simply sidle up to you, ask for a weirdly specific amount of change, and be on their way, jakeys—older, drunker, and more persistent—want to be your friend. They'll tell bad jokes, bum your cigarettes, regale you with boring tales of their night's exploits, make some well-intentioned-but-kinda-lecherous comment about the female members of your group… and then ask for a weirdly-specific amount of change. Basically, if a pissed old man taps you on the shoulder and says, "Knock knock" just shout something like, "ICH KANST NICHT SPRECHEN SIE ENGLISCH!" and run away.

Neds
Neds are the classic Glaswegian archetype, and you'll find them pretty much everywhere: aimlessly roaming the streets in packs, pissing in your garden, cruising around town blasting Avicii with the windows down, giddily writing "FANNY" on your windshield the morning after a snowfall, you name it. However, city center and West End neds, having been exposed to art students and gay people, tend to be worldlier and more tolerant than their provincial kin, and if they do decide to engage you, it’ll almost always be in a mockingly verbal, rather than physical, manner. Don’t rise to the bait and you’ll be fine. The trade-off is Guy Fawkes Night—it belongs to them, like The Purge with Roman candles.

Rangers and Celtic Fans
The Tartan Army (supporters of the Scottish national team) are awesome, and fans of Partick Thistle—the city's "third" team—are chill too. Old Firm fans, however, are a fucking nightmare. It was bad enough when Rangers and Celtic were half-decent footballing forces, but in these bleak days of Scottish football, their rivalry boils down to a bald man and a severed head bickering over a broken comb, and each set of supporters have only their hatred of each other to define them. Owing to Rangers’ recent financial turmoil and subsequent relegation, they haven't played each other for more than two years now, but when they do, the city center will inevitably become a warzone.

The North Side
The similarly poverty-stricken East End has improved in recent years, but despite pockets of regeneration in places like Ruchill, vast swathes of North Glasgow remain post-industrial, post-employment, and, in many cases, post-hope shitholes.

The Merchant City
The Merchant City was built on the profits of slavery, but these days, it turns a profit by overcharging aspirational drinkers and diners, whose main requirement for a good night out is being able to boast about spotting minor Scottish showbiz entities. If you're not going for the gay clubs, avoid.

The Savoy Centre
Here’s the thing: As a Glaswegian, I’m glad that the Savoy still exists, because by rights, our oldest, shabbiest shopping center ought to be a multi-story Westfield Shopping Thingy by now. Its persistence is a tribute to the purchasing power of the city’s pensioners, who stubbornly haunt its tawdry tat stalls, beauty salons, and Chinese-medicine centers like ghosts of a bygone age. But let's face it: Unless you've got an urban renewal photography Tumblr, you don't want to go anywhere near it.

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Photo by Jonathan Tollan

Tipping
Much the same as in London and the rest of the UK—10 percent in restaurants and taxis—except we tend to give homeless people money more often because we're not yet as frigid and as heartless as the English.

Handy Phrases
Hello: Hawl
Goodbye: Catch ye after
Please: Gies it, fuck sake
Thank you: Sound
Idiot: Dafty
Yes, I was very drunk: Aye, I were mad wae it
A good person: Goodcunt
Someone: Somecunt
Everyone: Everycunt

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This playlist should be enough to persuade you to sack off Edinburgh for Glasgow.

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So there you go. When you get here, don't blame me if you have a shitty time—we've done our best.

Love,

VICE Glasgow

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