Saturday 26 November 2011

FACES LAND - 1986

Here's a nice gritty urban scene looking along North Ellen Street towards a rather intimidating Jamaica Tower.
This place, as most of you will know, is called "Faces Land", with the housing on the left having gargoyle-like structures of human heads protruding from the window frames.
I also spotted a "Pola Cola" advert on the empty shop above a tag by Kinzie of the Hulltoon Huns.
Then there are the 2 black cars in the foreground - a cool Capri on the left and a lame Lada on the right.
Not forgetting the coal lorry making a delivery.
All this screams "1970's" to me, but in actual fact the photo was taken on 15th April 1986!
Click onto the image for a closer look.
Photo by Neale Elder.

10 comments:

  1. Theres also graffiti by Petso (scored out) and shug , :) and a heavy laden coal lorry ready to do the roonds i think, not saw one of them for a while !

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  2. Well that's a new one on me - I didn't know about the faces - great pic too.
    Thanks Neale.

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  3. Walked down there many many times going to or coming from the "Sallies" it was very eerie on a dark night, used to remind me of Hammer House of Horror. Mind you, i had just had a pot of magic mushrooms :-)~

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  4. I bet that lada is probably still going back in Russia somewhere (with the help of a Mr Coots)and the capri is just a wet dream for some auld guy after being scrapped

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  5. anybody know why the faces were put on the building ? it wasnt anything to do with the Maxwell family was it? family members trusted but hideous servants, the area was called Maxwelltown after all.

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  6. Davy Coutts was the SNP coonsillur wha went to Estonia to run a taxi firm.
    I remember him at my door in the Trottick multis in the eighties, asking me to vote for him and Sean Connerys "SH-N-P".
    Eh telt him tae bugger aff, and voted for Charlie Farquar.
    More the fool me!

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  7. Was Dave Coutts not the boy who was caught stealing cheese as a kid and this came back to haunt him as he tried to pursue a career in politics? Loved Scotland so much he pissed off to the baltic. At least Sean Connery had the sense to piss off somewhere warm :-) !

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  8. A TV programme on mediaeval cathedrals suggested many of their gargoyles were caricatures of local people, some of them even paying for being immortalised, or sometimes of the stonemasons themselves. Looking at the faces on StreetView (where Google hasn't blurred them for privacy reasons!), it could well have been faces of the masons who built the tenement.

    The pub seems to have the same colour of paint in modern times.

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  9. Just spotted my auld jps Capri ALS 190r. Was working round the corner at the servite sheltered housing with dh.morris,ah the memories

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