SIX years clean, only Jim's teeth – or, rather, the lack of them – betray his old habit. The thirty-something former addict is outside a supermarket in his native Gorbals, pointing out where he used to buy his heroin.
"It's a dying trade," he says, a single blackened lower tooth revealed by a big healthy smile. "You used to be able to score in half a dozen places on Crown Street. But they've mostly gone."
Jim – not his real name – doesn't just mean the dealers.
Their buildings are also history.
The Gorbals is close to completing its second transformation in three decades.
Most of the old tenements were bulldozed in the 70s. Now the tower blocks that replaced them are coming down too.
Yet the neighbourhood has kept its unwanted reputation – its international image – for violence and drugs.
It is a reputation, The Evening Times can reveal today, it simply no longer deserves.
There were 776 crimes recorded in the Gorbals police beat in 2011, down from 907 the year before. A drop of nearly 15%.
But more importantly, the neighbourhood doesn't get near the top of Glasgow's unofficial crime hotspots league.
It ranked 41st out of 200 Glasgow beats, coming well behind, for example, affluent Newlands and relatively well-off Shawlands.
Across the Clyde, Calton, had twice as much offending.
There is still crime in the Gorbals, of course.
Hang around in Crown Street long enough and you'll see 'Drongos', guys in hoodies looking to buy or sell.
Some of them didn't want to talk to the Evening Times.
But they still give a wee knowing nod to one of Jim's pals.
Last year drugs cops recorded 53 cases of possession and 23 of supply.
And there is violence too. Four muggings and six serious assaults last year. There were 21 and 17 such attacks respectively in nearby Govanhill, Glasgow's most violent beat.
Stay-at-home dad William Leadbetter, 45, knows where he feels safer. "There are no gangsters in Gorbals any more, 'cos this is the New Gorbals.
"All the 'heavy' people have moved out and new people have moved in."
His pal Paul Mann chips in. "Aye, they have moved in to bought flats - penthouses in the Gorbals? Who would have thought?"
Paul is 43 and out of work. He blames a scar running across his cheek for his problems getting a job. He has, he admits, been in the jail and on heroin, but not for a decade.
"Gorbals has got a name that has stuck because it was a very hard place. It isn't any more.
"Most of that generation – most of my generation – are either in the jail or deid."
This, in the place most associated with the razor gangs of No Mean City. This, in a beat where just six people were found in possession of a knife during a stop-and-search campaign.
The Gorbals isn't the only Glasgow neighbourhood which could lose its image.
Take Easterhouse, known UK-wide for its gangs and violence after singer Frankie Vaughan's efforts to solve its youth problems in the 60s.
Until last year either Easterhouse or neighbouring Barlanark and Springboig had the highest levels of vandalism in Glasgow.
Not any more. The two beats are now joint 10th. And neither can claim to be high crime areas overall.
Total reported crime in Easterhouse was down 20% in 2010-11, to 835.
Like Gorbals, there is less offending in Easterhouse than in Newlands.
None of this surprises Chief Inspector Stephen McAllister, area commander for Golf Echo, or GE, subdivision, including both Gorbals and Govanhill. Mr McAllister used to live here and knows it well. So is it a crime blackspot? "Not any more," he says.
"I can remember what is was like even before they put the high flats up," he said. "I remember wandering aboutt the place as a wee boy and now it has a very different vibe to it. It has a new feel.
"I think there is a lot of evidence that the physical environment has a huge impact on people and they way they behave.
"If you have dark alleys and dark corners and bad lighting then people don't feel so safe. But if you have nice wide well-lit streets, like now, it's a different story.
"We also got an influx of people – can we still call these guys yuppies? – who moved in to the area during during regeneration.
"So we have aspirational individuals who have moved in to what was a failing community - it had been failing because of policy-makers."
The Gorbals still has its problems, not least what Mr McAllister calls "street-level dealing".
But lower levels overall crime means that the police, and allies such as New Gorbals Housing Association, can focus on such issues, even evicting tenants who refuse to behave.
NGHA's chairman, Bill Sharkey, 78, has lived in the Gorbals all his days.
Some of the stigma suffered by the Gorbals bugs him, but he said "We have done a pretty good job down here.
"We now have a mixed community, not a deprived one, even if we do get the odd desperado."
