Tea Time

Pollokshaws Road 1920's

Back at the end of the 19th Century, mini cafes, tea shops and coffee houses were big business and nearly every Glasgow street corner had a Lyons or a Liptons store where people could meet, chat, drink tea and, most importantly of all, be seen. But by the end of WW2, 90% of these had closed and the rest soon followed, so that by the time the 1980's came round and Starbucks, Costa etc began to appear, they were heralded as some kind of new unknown concept.

If you look around the streets of the Southside you can see that our cafe culture is continuing to grow. While the big name brands continue to dominate, (joined now by the nicer Scottish mini brand version Beanscene), there are also more and more individual places popping up as well, for example Tchai Ovna, on Deanston Drive, - where you can have a cup of tea from a massive selection, and then sit around on cushions for a couple of hours playing Scrabble or listening to someone playing guitar. (I recommend a tea called Yogi Yogi Tchai.) There is also a huge increase in the number of deli-style eateries in the South. In Shawlands alone there has been recent additions of a Polish Deli (See photo below) and a Persian style cafe selling what sound like very tasty fruit milkshakes.

I'm all for these places and hope they get the support they need to survive. They bring an additional night time use to our streets and help give the place a bit more of a buzz. They help get us out of our homes to meet up with friends to hang out, chat and just experience other fellow humans behaving and interacting. Much better than sitting at home and watching a DVD. (Though in saying that I've just got the boxset of the US police drama "The Wire" and its supposed to be very good . . . and well, it is rather cold today . . . hmm maybe I'll not go out tonight after all.)

Little Krakow 2007