Former public toilets, St Vincent Street

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 22 Apr 2023

Glasgow, in common with a lot of other large British cities, has a drugs problem. However, the fact that the death rate from drug use in Scotland is over three times the rate for the rest of the UK, indicates how much bigger the problem becomes North of the border. This seems to lie behind the decisions made to close various public toilets in the city over recent years. This one has closed down and reopened a few times in this period and regular use of the toilets for injecting drugs is often cited in the media as the reason for the closures. The latest one is permanent and there are vague plans for turning it into a bar and an AIDS museum (on account of the nearby and long-closed underground toilets which this block replaced having been used as a meeting point for gay men in less tolerant times) mentioned on local online news sites. Its design is obviously meant to be in keeping with those of the grand buildings in the vicinity but frankly it looks rather odd, and very forbidding. The holes in the wall are not urinals, as it may appear at first glance, but where you had to pay your 20p entrance charge.

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