Glasgow man on a quest to run every street

Michael Shanks began tackling the city’s 6110 streets in March 2020 as a way of making it feel like his limited exercise hours in the first lockdown felt worthwhile.

“It does sound a bit ridiculous when other people say it out loud,” he said.

“Because last year we were only allowed out for an hour at a time, there was a feeling of being purposeful with the time but the idea actually came from Rickey Gates, who ran every street in San Francisco.”

Rickey had an easier ride in the Californian coastal city, boasting only 2237 streets, in total.

While out and about, Michael has been speaking to the people he meets in the different corners of the city, of which he has covered 76.7% already.

“There are some who have just came to Glasgow, so you hear their stories about arriving in the city,” said Michael.

“But on the other hand, I spoke to a guy in Drumchapel who has lived in the same bit of land in four different houses for the past 70 years.

“I’ve also arranged to go back and speak with the people who now live in the tenement Mary Barbour, who organised the 1915 rent strikes, lived in at the time.”

Covering every inch of Glasgow has taught Michael plenty about the place he calls home.

He said: “Even in your own neighbourhood you realise you don’t actually know it as well as you think you did.

“But the question most folk ask me is, what was it like running through the rough bits of the city, did you run faster?

“The truth is there is only one bit of the city I did want to get out of pretty quickly.”

And what was Glasgow’s worst no-go area?

“Where the M74 goes over the viaduct at Tradeston, there are a lot of abandoned warehouses. Mainly because no one lives there, it’s a lot of abandoned buildings.”

The hardest part of covering the Dear Green Place hasn’t been the steep hills but Glasgow’s long thoroughfares such as Duke Street and Great Western Road, which have taken Michael days to cover and the cul-de-sacs in newer housing schemes like Robroyston.

Michael, who teaches Modern Studies at Park Mains High School in Erskine, is planning to write a book about his experiences covering the length and breadth of Glasgow.

“Most histories of Glasgow are written about the good and the great of the city, the tobacco merchants and the shipbuilders and so on,” he added. “But there isn’t much about the normal people in the street so it’s more about those stories.”

He has been photographing as he goes and posting the pictures to social media.

“I’m not trying to make everywhere look nice, because there are real challenges in our city but I am trying to photograph the best of so-called rough areas because they are really interesting places to go.”

The places that have proven this the most to Michael are Barmulloch and Balornock, which he recently completed covering.

“That has been one of the big revelations,” he said.

“There are places you think you know and there was brand-new housing in there that was really nice and I was speaking to people relaxing in their gardens. That is an area that has been synonymous with crime and deprivation for years but now is really a flourishing community.

“I plan to go back and speak with a lot of people I met and tell the stories of their lives that segue into the broader history of Glasgow. The running is taking up most of the time at the moment.”

He said he often gets caught coming back up dead ends and people ask: “Are you lost? Then you strike up a conversation, and when you tell people you’re trying to run every street you inevitably get loads of stories.”

You can view Michael's progress and see more pictures from his travels here.