The Barras - Glasgow

[Flimbo]

I used to go to the Barras whenever I stayed with my Glasgow family as a kid. I have some vague memory of a gaming store. Great reading these old anecdotes.

[pmckean]

It's the first time I've visited this forum and these stories have put a big smile on the face of an almost 50-year-old man.

A couple of Saturdays a month in the late 80s and early 90s, I and a friend would head up on the bus to Glasgow, walk from Buchanan Street Bus Station to The Barras and tread the ramshackle boards of the upstairs market to buy the latest pirated Amiga titles.

The upstairs market was a bustling, makeshift, pungent, byzantine maze of enticing stalls, and I loved it. Definitely a fire risk. They catered for both Amiga and ST, and we'd all crowd around, choosing titles from a hastily printed menu. I remember bagging F/A-18 Interceptor, Defender of the Crown, Psygnosis Barbarian and Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, amongst many gems. After I regretfully moved on from the Amiga and jumped ship to a 486SX 25Mhz PC in December 1992 (DTP was just too slow on the Amiga and I had an honours thesis to finish), I bagged Alone in the Dark, Links, Comanche, Simon the Sorceror, Windows 3.1 and Ami Pro on my first trip back, for about a fiver each. What a Christmas that was. I should feel bad about not buying the originals, but those were the titles that got me hooked and I've probably spent tens of thousands on genuine software since, no longer a penniless schoolkid or skint student, so it's a massive net gain. Wonky justification, I know.

More than once those stalls were raided (reputedly there were lookouts keeping an eye open for the local constabulary), and we all tumbled out as fast as we could, but it never shut them down for more than a few hours.

After collecting our disks, we'd visit one of the nearby greasy fast food stalls and gorge on a hot dog with fried onions in a bun before heading home to spend the rest of the evening playing our new games.

I haven't thought about The Barras in years. I forgot how much it meant to me. Great days.

It's been around 28 years since I owned an Amiga, but with the pressures of the COVID lockdown taking a bit of a toll, I keep thinking how much fun it would be to pick up a classic A1200 or A500, refurbish it, and try some of those old games again, just to take my mind off things.

[dvdripped]

Was born in Drumchapel and went to the Barras regularly :-D

£3 a disk, and like you say, sometimes they didnt work, although i`ll say this, being 13 years old and trying to locate these elusive Stag disks, being passed around the sellers until I found it - copied it so so much and sold them for £1 each - disks didnt cost me anything - took them from the computing departments room xcopy running full tilt ;-)

The Barras the barras - the only place where your car radio gets half inched on the wednesday, and you can buy it back from the barras on the saturday cheaper than what you bought it for, hehehehehehe.

Does anyone remember the Sweeney disks for the pc - got Tomb Raider, Grand theft auto on the same disk :-D

Brilliant days and even better memories :-)

[cynix]

This old classic finally back on youtube :

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[slipstream]

Thanks man appreciated that.

[vbgd]

I`ve been there first in the late 80`s during a youth exchange and later I came back a few times. We had a funny time there. As I went into the the Gibson street stores there I was a little bit irritated. There must be millions of copied disks inside and Police didn't give a fuck. Barrowland was simply inconceivably for a German in this times. I still have a few menu-disks from the Medway Boys from there for my Atari. Price was about 2 or 3 pounds each.

[sneeker]

I can honestly say I never actually paid for a single copied disk when I owned my amiga, even going to computer club it was a couple of pounds for the room hire and that was it, even the floppy discs they sold there where basically at cost I think as Im sure it was about a tenner a box of 50. Interesting seeing them selling them on the market, nearest Ive seen was chipping of playstation 2s at bowlers, there was a few places doing them at the time.