Travel Vibe

Tactile Cents Transforming Cultural Billings

Hi, my name is Pinky — writer and photographer.

This blog focuses on sensing a place, a people, a moment. Exploration pulls us into the magic of childhood.  It reveals the beauty and luck of being an alien on a living, breathing planet.

As global personas jostle with one another, it is up to us to continue distinguishing the nuances that make us one because our future depends on secure interdependence.

Beyond that cuddly comfort zone, the exploration begins, the aperture widens, and epiphanies connect.  

Cheers!

The city’s independent music scene flaunts raw talent that demands notice on the streets and on stage.  In August 2008, Glasgow was designated UNESCO City of Music – making it the 3rd city in the world to covet the distinction after Seville and Bologna.

Walk into a reputable venue and experience what the buzz is about.

I decide to visit King Tut’s  Wah Wah Hut – where the band Oasis was discovered – on a Saturday night. The stage rests on the pub’s second floor in a cozy, dim-lit, space with a standing-room capacity of a few hundred people.

 In 2006, New York Magazine touted King Tut’s as the 7^th best way to “Follow Your Bliss,” in its Top 50 places to visit worldwide.  And as it is Scotland music mogul Craig McGee’s first progeny, the going-concern continues heralding quality performances.

Talent reps screen and audition bands prior to green-lighting shows, and playing a gig here lends musicians a certain amount of legitimacy. 

 “The whole ethos of this place is that this is how [live music] venues should be run,” says Laura Rooney, the on sight rep.

On Stage, a trio of boys, The Ghosties, play for an audience of 150.  Reminiscent of The Killers, the band coalesces electric and acoustic sounds that set the mood for strong vocals and pithy lyrics rendered by an animated frontman. As the lads close the set and exiting stage left, the crowd chants, “We want more!  We want more…” 

 Not bad for an unsigned band or a pub-side concert.

Bar Fly (barflyclub.com) and 13^th Note (13thnote.co.uk) also book quality talent.  Pick up The List, Glasgow’s weekly entertainment guide, for performance information.

Culture, globalization, and music:  What is the connection?

“We at UNESCO believe that culture not only makes an economic contribution, it provides meaning and a sense of identity and continuity that is integral to the life of all societies,” said the Director-General during the ceremony. “An understanding of culture helps communities grapple with the challenges of globalization, by preserving the values and practices that define their way of life, and by promoting respect for other cultural traditions and ways of life. It represents a way of engaging with cultural differences and building social harmony, of making people of all ages and origins feel involved,” Mr Matsuura added. 

Source:  Unesco Press Release

The People

My quasi Type A persona continues to thaw, and it may have something to do with Murphy’s Law, which states, “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

Around here, Murphy is considered an optimist. Not following?

Maybe a page from a life-long Glaswegian who was honored last year with the MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) medal – the first stage to knighthood, will clarify.

As we sit in his Strathclyde University office, just off of George Square – the heart of the city, Jim Wilson shares with me his encounter with a short, silver haired, homeless woman one evening on his way to the train station.

“‘Do you have any change to spare, son?’” said Wilson, relaying her words. Wilson answered, “no” and met her stare for what seemed like 10 minutes, he recalls.

With eyes dancing he continues: Then, she started to laugh and then circled around me and exclaimed, ‘No?! Neither do I!’

“You see life in all its fullness,” Wilson says. “It’s got the good, the bad, and the ugly, and that is the strength of Glasgow. Whatever your condition you will be accepted.”

Glasgow: Fashionista Heaven

Glasgow, Scotland imbues the culture and mystique of old-world Europe with a hip and unpretentious panache and serves the concoction against a backdrop of rustic and gold sandstone buildings and green space (translation: 70 city-parks, golf, and mountainside views) on an uptown happy-hour budget.

The people are friendly, unassuming and wickedly funny.  And while exploring the city in the brisk March air, conversations with friends and some interesting natives, offer up the inside-scoop on Glaswegians, speakeasies, and hot, in-the-moment music and fashion scenes that seem to be a European secret.   

The cosmopolitan’s official badges of honor include winning last year’s bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games and a designation as “European City of Culture” by the European Union in 1990.  But on the streets, in the pubs, and in international headlines, it is Glasgow’s music scene – launching bands like Franz Ferdinand and Snow Patrol – and fashion districts – ranking 2^nd only to London in the U.K. – that steal the spotlight.

And since it continues to be less expensive than neighbors Edinburgh, Dublin, and London, visiting Europe this summer is doable, even with an anemic dollar.

First settled in 6^th century AD, Glasgow has reinvented itself more times than Madonna.  America’s independence phased out the city’s tobacco trade and signaled a more than century-long industrial revolution prospering in textiles, cotton, steel and shipbuilding – reaching its economic zenith in 1900.

Today’s Glasgow has dusted off its industrial image and Victorian architecture and is under-going another transformation – this time as the U.K.’s down-to-earth yet urbane star.