Snow Paintings - Albert Drive Studios

Albert Drive Studios are hosting an exhibition of new works by David Caldwell. Caldwell was born in Helensburgh on the West Coast of Scotland. He studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art (1994-98) and has had several group shows in London and Glasgow, notably with The Royal Society of Portrait Painters and at the BP Portrait Award. His work relies on the intensity of painting in the presence of the subject, often outdoors, having been awarded residencies in France, Spain and Italy. 

The preview is taking place on Friday 5th November 2010 from 7-9pm. They'll be beverages and live music.

Albert Drive Studios
334 Albert Drive
Pollokshields
Glasgow
G41 5HH

This Weekend Halloween

It's Halloween weekend and there is plenty of spooky things going on in the Southside. Halloween is one of my favourite events of the year, it brings back memories of guising and turnip carving. Every year we put a bucket of sweets in our close for all our neighbours to share.

So this weekend the Science centre are hosting a spook-tacular Halloween family party on Friday night. Doors open at 6.30pm £4 per person. The glasshouses host a 'Night of Glam Rock' with Hot love and spider love, sounds scary to me tickets are £7 doors open at 7pm

On Saturday, the Battlefield Halloween Lantern Parade and Party starts at 6pm. There's a fancy dress and pumpkin carving competition so make sure you bring your pumpkins along. They'll be hot food and drinks but feel free to bring some more along to share. The lantern parade will be starting from Battlefield primary school, so make sure your there for 6pm , then you'll be parading to the Battlefield community garden.

La Roche Rumba's Halloween event is being held at the glasshouses in Queen's Park Tickets are £8

Farmer's Market Harvest Battle

The first Farmer's Market Battle was good fun the other week.

At the head of the market, near the steps, a large stall was set up with two cooking stations. One of these stations was the base for Southside restaurant Cookie and the other The Sisters restaurant all the way from the Wilds of Glasgow's Westend. (The two places and host played up the rivalry between the South and West as much as they could and the whole thing was done in a great spirit.)

As the host announced, the aim of the day was three cook offs - one every hour - in which a chef from each restaurant would run round the market purchasing ingredients and then return to their station and magically turn these into delicious culinary delights in a Ready Steady Cook ten minute style. These were then dished up to lucky onlookers and a vote was taken as to which was the best.

We only caught the middle of the three events with Cookie needing to play catch up after an earlier win to the Westend invaders. It was all very well put together with small webcams and giant screens set up to allow everyone to get a good look at the fine detail of the dishes being pulled together. I heard one lady say it was "just like something off the telly" which I think was meant as a glowing compliment. The two chefs were good fun with the chef from The Sisters very good on camera, making lots of little jokes to the audience and clearly loving being involved. She was also very gracious in the face of a very strong southside biases. The host was great, I'm not sure who he was but it was to his huge credit that the whole thing ran so smoothly and professionally. He linked all the cookoffs together, introduced the dishes and asked lots of interesting little questions of the chefs teasing out the hows and whys of what they were doing. The only downside was the judging session with lots of people crowding forward hoping to get a bite but only a dozen or so managing to get a bowl. It might be an idea to pick 12 folk ahead of the dish up and have them sitting somewhere that the audience can see their reactions and allow these 12 to try both dishes and then vote in the old green pepper/ red tomato system.

All in all though a great event and one it would be fun to see repeated at future Farmer's Markets. It added a nice extra dimension to the market and as you can see from the above photo the place was mobbed. Maybe they should have one market a month with additional events?

Common Thread @ Southside Studios

Common Thread is an event showcasing the work and facilities of multi-discipline designers working in the south side of Glasgow. A wide range of work will be exhibited including interior, furniture, product, web, graphic and sound design.There will be a chance to view the facilities (including the sound and web design studios and workshop) and chat with the designers.

There will also be light and sound installations and Southside Studios own radio station will be playing throughout the evening. Get down early for some of our famous pizza baked in our own oven!

Pecha Kucha 3 - Wednesday 27 October

The Tramway will be hosting it's third Pecha Kucha event, Measured Acts, on Wednesday 27 October. If you didn't make it along to the last one or have never heard of Pecha Kucha before here's an over view:

Artists and creative thinkers take the floor for just under seven minutes when they will share with us their passions, hopes and fears. Pecha Kucha Night was devised in Tokyo in 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for chitchat, it rests on a concise presentation format based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds.

Speakers this time will be Ruth Barker, Kate Davis, Ginny Hutchison, Craig Mulholland, Dierdre Nelson, Mick Peter, Alex Pollard & Ian Hetherington, David Sherry

The last one was  very interesting

Tickets £4.50 / £3.50

online at www.tramway.org

over the phone 0845 330 3501

or in person at the box office

For tickets contact the Tramway Box Office 0845 330 3501

Local Christmas Shopping Night - Friday 29 October

Shawlands Primary School Parent Council has organised a Christmas Shopping night to raise funds for some much needed new playground equipment for the school. 

It's being held in Shawlands primary school on Friday 29 October,  from 7-30 til 9-30. Many local shops and traders will have stalls there including Gusto and Relish, Ladies Drawers, Eve, Marie Brown, Regalia, Paper Plane, Thorntons, Candylicious and Bumble Kids. You can wander around browsing or buying gifts with a glass of wine (or juice) and nibbles. It's a great event supporting local businesses and raising money for a good cause. 

Tickets cost £2 and will be available at the door on the night.

Film Night 27 October 2010

On the last Wednesday of every month, a community film night is held in St Brides School, in Craigie street, Govanhill. This month 'Dirty Oil and De-centralised  Energy & Convenient Solution' is being shown. 

 Narrated by Canadian actress and environmentalist Neve Campbell, this beautifully photographed and much anticipated feature documentary from Academy Award Nominated director Leslie Iwerks goes deep behind-the-scenes into the strip-mined world of Northern Alberta, Canada. Here, vast and toxic oil sands supply the U.S. with the majority of its oil. Told through the eyes of scientists, "big oil" officials, politicians, doctors, environmentalists, and aboriginal citizens directly effected by "the largest industrial project on the planet today", the filmmakers journey to both sides of the border to uncover the emotional and irreversible toll this "black gold rush" is taking on our planet. The film is produced by Alberta born and Emmy Award winning producer Philip Alberstat, and co-produced by Canadians, Mark Cranwell and Randy Bradshaw.

The film starts at 7pm  at St Brides Primary School, Craigie Street, off Allison St, Govanhill/Strathbungo.

Facebook Account

Hmmm, Facebook has decided to close the Southside Happenings without giving any warning. Apparently Communities are not allowed to have their own account and must use the less interactive Fan Pages instead.

We've set one up here - http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=166967693328784#!/pages/Glasgow-United-Kingdom/Southside-Happenings/166967693328784

Facebook gave no warning about this and won't let us back into our account to tell people that it has happened so please LIKE our new page and spread the word so everyone knows where we have gone.

Queen's Park Farmers' Market - Harvest

The Queen's Park Farmer's Market this week is a special one. "A celebration of food grown from the land" its going to be a Harvest Festival and they invite you to come along to meet local Farmers and Producers as they celebrate this year's harvest.

There will be a wide variety of quality fresh Scottish produce,  free cart rides, highland cattle, face painting and music plus the chance to win a free prize draw hamper and a "Ready Steady Cook" style competition between Cookie (representing the South - Hooray) and The Sisters (representing the North - Boo). Go along, taste the food, cheer on the South and come away with lots of tasty treats to make for a lazy Sunday cooking, baking and eating.

It all sound like a fantastic idea and hopefully something that will grow in the future.

Saturday 16 October 10am-2pm
Queen's Park, Victoria Road Entrance.

 

Great Southside Give Away: Tickets for Jumping Mouse

We have four tickets to give away for the fantastic 'Jumping Mouse' show at Eastwood Theatre, on Friday 22nd October.

To enter you must be one of the following; our friend on Facebook, our follower on Twitter, signed up to our RSS email or signed up to our Mailing List. Then just leave your name and a comment below on the subject "Name a creative venue, place or person in the Southside" and you'll be entered into the draw. Please try to make sure it will be easy to identify you. If possible leave a link to your webpage, blog, Facebook or Twitter in the little URL option of the comments box.

The winner will be announced on 20 October 2010. For all the rules etc click here.

Jumping Mouse is set on a red double-decker and is a full-throttle adventure guaranteed to get you absolutely revved up.

Jump on the second bus, the driver’s saved you a seat. Come and meet a bullfrog blues band, a clapped-out bison, a forgetful wolf... and a most unusual little mouse, who’s about to have a very big adventure.

Unpacked use live music and songs, puppetry, high-octane physicality, and bits of a London bus to tell a magical story about growing up, adapted from a well-loved Native American folk tale.

“To put it simply, it was wonderful.” – Edinburgh Festivals Magazine

“All in all, Jumping Mouse is refreshing tonic that will leave you with a smile on yourface and hopefully give your kids a thirst for knowledge and adventure.” – Edinburgh Guide

Suitable for ages 4+

Eastwood Park Theatre

Friday 22 October

10.30am and 1.30pm

0141 577 4970

www.eastwoodparktheatre.co.uk

Eldan @ 988 Pollokshaws Road

The other week a friend of ours hoover started making a crazy whirring sound and billowing out black smoke. It kinda looked like an F1 car wheel-burning on the starting line. Rather than wait for it to drop its handbrake and shoot off round the room they switched it off and I then suggested just the place to get it fixed.

Eldan on Pollokshaws Road has always interested me. Its like a shop from a different time. I love its exterior all dark red wood with projecting yellow wooden lettering. There's a hand crafted care and pleasing aesthetic quality to this signage that is lost in the modern multi-colour laminated fascia signs that most shops have these days. The door is also rather lovely, with a bright yellow sunburst design that was popular in the 50's.

Inside the shop, it is also an experience and again shows its old school roots. The shop is atheistically bare, just simple wooden walls and floor but it is full of household equipment. The repair room through the back is stocked full with stacks of hoovers, many under repair but some for sale. Every wall is covered in methodically laid out spare parts/ hoover bags etc and by the window there are tons of washing machines and tumble dryers and old fridges, freezers and cookers all of which have been carefully repaired and are either awaiting collection by their owners or are peering out the window like little puppies trying to catch the eye of a passing someone who will take them home and look after them.

James who runs the shop also adds to the character of the shop. He is a huge and friendly man and he towers over you when you enter the shop with hands so big it looks like he could pick up a machine in either one like giant cranes.

I handed over the hoover and a week later, once the spare parts had arrived, it was back in full working order. Unfortunately, the parts were quite expensive as it required a whole new motor as someone had not been clearing it out properly and the air intakes were blocked and the old motor had burned out. The labour wasn't too much though and it was still a lot cheaper than going out and buying a new one so our pal was pretty pleased.

Eldan is definitely a store from another era, you can't imagine people opening shops like this anymore but I wish they would. For one thing as James says, the manufactures don't make it easy to get the spare parts anymore and they have cut their initial production methods down to the minimum in a drive to bring down prices so the machines themselves are not as well made as they once were and are not built to last. Gone are the days of our parents when a washing machine could last thirty, forty years, now if it makes it two years longer than its warranty we are impressed.

But in an age when "recycle" and "re-use" are key buzz words surely we should all be encouraging manufacturers to revert to the old ways when products were made to be handed down and "renewed". Until that happens though, you can keep your machines running for longer by taking them for a visit to Eldan.

Eldan Electrical‎

988 Pollokshaws Rd
Glasgow City G41 2HA
0141 649 5862‎

PS - Having the spoken to the current owner James, he advised that the shop is called Eldan because it was originally set up by a husband and wife ELla and DANiel. I'd always wondered.

Clothes Swapping Day

The Glad Cafe are hosting a clothes swapping party this month, to raise funds for their new arts and music venue, which is due to open in 2011.

So what you have to do is donate a minimum of one piece of clothing (a maximum of 10), make sure they are clean and wearable, then once you have chosen your items send the Glad Cafe an e-mail thegladcafe@gmail.com  and they'll come round and collect your goods.

Then all you need to do is go along to Polloksheilds church hall on the 23 October, between 11am  and 3pm and pick up a new outfit or two for yourself. They'll be live music and free make overs at the event.

Tickets are £5