Glasgow's Union Street Blaze: A Nostalgic Loss and a Vape Shop Warning
The outbreak of a fire on one of Glasgow's busiest streets on a Sunday afternoon was, sadly, not an unexpected event. Residents of the city have grown all too familiar with such disasters, blazes that have marred its landscape and claimed some of its most magnificent architectural treasures. However, while the sight of flames engulfing a vape shop on Union Street over the weekend carried a grim sense of predictability, the rapid spread of the inferno was both shocking and terrifying.
A Rapid and Destructive Inferno
Twelve hours after the initial reports emerged, firefighters were still battling to contain a blaze that obliterated not just a building and the businesses within it but also erased a piece of Glasgow's rich history. It was painful to witness footage from the scene as flames consumed the Victorian structure at the top of Union Street, adjacent to Central Station. The aftermath was equally heartbreaking, with images showing piles of smouldering rubble where a historic edifice once stood.
I doubt I am alone in finding this scene particularly difficult to view. For many of us raised in and around Glasgow, Union Street holds immense significance. Throughout much of the 1980s, it was the centre of my universe. If life in the suburbs felt like a dull monochrome existence, a trip to Union Street, with its record shops and bustling fashion boutiques, was a vibrant, technicolor experience.
Union Street: A Gateway to Adulthood
This brash thoroughfare, Glasgow's closest equivalent to London's swinging Carnaby Street, was populated by members of various teenage tribes. If Central Station served as the wardrobe through which a curious child passed, then Union Street was Narnia. Near the top of the road, on the ground floor of the now-destroyed building, was a men's clothing store specialising in mod-revivalist styles dominant in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was there that my mother bought 11-year-old me my first pair of baby blue Sta-Prest trousers and a matching Fred Perry polo shirt.
By 1982, I was trusted to venture into the city without parental supervision. For the next five years, barely a week passed without me setting foot on Union Street, which represented the first frontier of the adult world. Early solo trips would begin and end there, just yards from Central Station. The buildings were stained black from diesel smoke belched by buses, the street reeked of fuel and chip fat, and there was just enough danger in the air to make us feel we had left childhood behind, if only for a few hours.
Memories Etched in Time
Decades later, I recall these trips with precision. There was the almost immediately regretted purchase, at age 12, of a blue double-breasted shirt that, in my mind, would make me appear flamboyant like Adam Ant but, in reality, made me look like an adolescent dental nurse. Weekly visits to HMV and Virgin Records involved ferreting through back catalogues to pick up old punk and ska records for a quid. In late 1983, I bunked off school one Monday afternoon to buy two singles: White Lines by Grandmaster and Melle Mel and Song to the Siren by This Mortal Coil. I still remember the smell of a wet blazer filling the train carriage on the return to the suburbs.
A year later, feeling quite the sophisticate, I picked up a compilation of Erik Satie's piano music, which I had never heard before, simply because the sleeve reminded me of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album. I still play those records today, and dropping the needle on them transports me back to the Union Street of my teens. For the best part of five years, if I listened to it or wore it, I acquired it on Union Street.
A Hub for Romance and Decline
This great road, little more than 150 metres long, did not just cater to pop-culture-obsessed youth; it was also a key location in the pre-internet world of dating. The intersection of Union and Argyle Streets, then known as Boots corner due to its tenants, was the meeting place for romantic hopefuls. Early on Saturday evenings, young men and women in their finest attire would gather to await new partners, with at least one inevitably being stood up and shuffling off alone.
By age 17, armed with a fake ID, I began to more fully explore Glasgow, frequenting pubs on Hope and Sauchiehall Streets and even daring to take the odd subway trip to the West End. Yet, Union Street remained the gateway from the rules and regulations of home to freedom. In 1987, the Ca d'Oro building on Union Street, opposite the site of Sunday's blaze, was torn apart by fire. At the time, I felt a profound sense of loss—my street had been scarred. I experienced that same anguish on Sunday as I watched the latest blaze take hold.
Lessons Unlearned and a Call to Action
After the Ca d'Oro fire, a huge restoration project was accompanied by predictable promises from the city council that lessons would be learned. These old buildings were vulnerable, and more would be done to protect them. Almost four decades later, it is clear that new lessons must be learned. Glasgow city centre is in perpetual decline. The death of high street shopping has seen major retailers and boutiques shutter, replaced by cash-only barbers and a seemingly infinite number of brightly lit vape shops.
The lithium-ion batteries used in vapes easily overheat and are now known to be a major cause of fires in homes and bin lorries. Combined with gallons of flammable e-liquids, vape shops become potentially very dangerous. The city of my youth, preserved in nostalgic memory, is long gone. Glasgow has changed, and necessarily so—if teenagers still wished to buy vinyl records and awful double-breasted shirts, the shops I frequented would still be there.
In the absence of those retailers, the city council has allowed Glasgow's streets to be overrun with vape shops, each of which could be the source of yet another disaster. Much as I instinctively recoil against the prospect of further government meddling in our lives, the time has come for ministers to intervene and legislate on this matter, ensuring those who sell vapes follow the strictest rules on safety. Otherwise, what happened on Union Street on Sunday may happen, again and again, all over Scotland.
