Glasgow Subcrawl

I have always wanted to do the Subcrawl so the Unilocal Festival of Firsts seemed to be a good opportunity to drag some other Unilocalers along on the boozy adventure.
I won’t go into the details of every pub as you can read all my individual reviews on my pub crawl list. The main thing you need to keep in mind is you have to be willing to go out of your comfort zone. There will be visits to pubs you only imagined seeing on Still Game on the TV. However keep an open mind and some of these places will surprise you in terms of the welcome the locals give you and also the good selection of beers you find on your journey. Some will also DELIGHT you in terms of the cheapness of round!
Some key points —
1) Eat before, after and during. (Screw the rules)
2) Do a kitty to make the rounds easier to manage.
3) Find a group of people up for a laugh and ready to step into the unknown with you.
4) Make sure somebody tube surfs at some point. It is hilarious watching them land on a fellow unsuspecting tube passenger when the surfing inevitably fails.
5) Take lots of photos. This will increase as the night goes on. Selfies seem to start to become an essential requirement at every stop as the night goes on.
6) Don’t start with a Jaegermeister at the first bar. You could end up like Rocco with a two week hangover.
Follow all these rules and you will have an amazing day out like we did. I started off thinking what have I got myself into and I ended up singing along to people doing karaōke in a pub I can’t remember the name off in town and then heading off to a club!
Good times. Roll on the Unilocal 2015 Subcrawl!

«Urgh» was my first reaction when I heard about the subcrawl when I first moved to Glasgow. I actually used to be scared of the subway so that was probably a factor. I’m not a big drinker (don’t laugh) and normally two glasses of wine is all I can handle, so a day of drinking at pubs along the subway line didn’t really seem like something I’d enjoy.
But there is that part of me that loves exploring Glasgow, and going into all those weird and wonderful pubs you’ve seen but never had the guts to go into. So when Austen M suggested we do the subcrawl, I was all «hell yeh!» with the full expectation I would go to three pubs and then get a taxi home to go to bed.
As Tony C said, there’s rules. Sure, there’s rules but rules are no fun whatsoever, and I suggest you go with open minded people who play free and loose with the rules. How much should you drink at each stop? Who cares! Can you skip stops? Sure! Do you need to stand on the subway? No way! Is eating allowed? Hell yes! That pretty much sums up how we did it anyway, and it was all the more fun for it being relaxed and a good laugh rather than some kind of military-​planned operation with lots of rules and someone being the subcrawl police.
Another point I should add is that not being from Glasgow originally, I am totally oblivious to all things football related, which is probably a good thing when it comes to the subcrawl. While others might feel the dark stares of regular-​pub goers, I am like a happy puppy who cares not for whether you think I should be allowed in your pub. No one was outright rude to us along the way — although our subcrawl crew did panic when I tried to put PJ & Duncan on the jukebox — I’m not sure whether they were scared of the regulars, or just my dancing.
I would definitely do the subcrawl again — it was a super fun experience, and I got to see lots of pubs I’d never been to before (I think of the 15 pubs we’d been to, I’d only ever visited two of them. TWO!)
So, get a cool squad of people together and get your smartcard/​all day ticket and jump on for a shoogle. It’s a lot more fun than you’ll expect. Also — for the record, not only did I finish the subcrawl, but then we also went out dancing afterwards. I’d like to thank the espresso martinis at Booly Mardy’s for helping me get to the finish line.

Even though some of the places you may go are one star, the experience gets a five star review; let me explain why.
Glasgow is more than just the fancy restaurants that serve foods from round the world, and style bars that serve fancy cocktails. There’s a whole other side to this wonderous city, and while it’s not something that might grab your attention, or make you sit up and say «YEAH!» it is something you have to experience.
As for the Subcrawl, it takes in one of the best things about Glasgow, in my opinion — the underground. It’s clean, it’s fast, and it’s regular. Get yourself a free smartcard online, and you can travel all day for under three quid! You can also register and get discount vouchers to use at local businesses — always a good thing!
In any case — the fabled Subcrawl. The rules vary from person to person (you can split into teams, you’re not allowed to sit down on the trains, you have to have a different drink, you have to go certain ways… all negotiable!) but the the basic concept is always this: A drink at the nearest pub to every Underground stop. That’s it.
Some stops are problematic — I believe the bar at Ibrox only opens on matchdays, and Shields Road is a long walk for the uninitiated or inebriated. Allowing for this, you simply have two drinks in different pubs at other stops. It might technically be cheating, but the principle of seeing more of Glasgow is still the same.
Some advice from a semi experience subcrawler AND pub drinker (*hic*) is to start in the city centre, at St Enoch or Buchanan Street — head south on the Outer Circle, thus hitting the Southside and the… shall we be generous and say… less salubrious haunts on the tour.
There are some hidden gems south of the river — the Laurieston is a prime example, one of the finest pubs in Glasgow for my money — to balance out the other places. By the time you reach The People’s Republic of Govan, you’ll have seen the other side of Glasgow and be ready for the stylishness of the West End-​to-​City Centre crawl.
The best thing about the Subcrawl though, is the people. The people you see in the pubs you don’t usually visit, the people you see on the Subway but more importantly, the people you do it with.
I’d only briefly met one person on the Unilocal Subcrawl recently organised by Austen — yet by the end of it, I felt I’d made a whole ton of new friends. Simply by chatting and having a right good laugh — I don’t think I’ve ever had a day where I’ve laughed as much in a long, long time — and that for me, is the essence of both the Subcrawl and Glasgow.
So, I would sum this up as one the essential things to do for anyone who has time to kill in Glasgow. It’s definitely a Summer thing, as the extended hours of daylight and warm (ha!) weather are a must. Eat before you start, eat somewhere along the journey, and take your time. Most importantly — enjoy yourself and your surroundings.
And don’t run up the down escalator at Kelvinbridge. It’s not big, it’s not clever, and you WILL look stupid. I speak from personal experience!
I put together a list with some pub suggestions here: