AT first glance you might think this is folk queueing at a rickety old cinema. But the truth is sweeter than that.
This is Oran Street Day Centre in Maryhill. Do not be fooled by the sign stating that tickets were two shillings – or a florin as these senior citizens would have called it when they were younger. This picture was taken in 1990, long after LSD was abolished.
Just to write the word florin brings back happy memories, which is probably the same idea the day care managers were going for here.
So two nights a week the centre for the elderly would show old movies, and to give the feel of the traditional cinema-going experience, this temporary ticket office in the style of the old cinema houses was built.
All they had to pay was 10p, the equivalent of the old florin.
Like all parts of Glasgow going to the cinema was big business in the old Maryhill, with some seven cinemas in the area at one time, including The Star, the Roxy, the Blythswood and The Seamore.
I’m assuming that the Seamore was perhaps just a play on words, but I could be wrong. Most have now gone, the buildings demolished and replaced by flats and supermarkets.
The film that night was the classic Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Everyone surely has at one time stood in a bar and said: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
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