I ♥ MCR (part 1)

Many of my friends have scoffed at my zeal on this subject, but I don’t really care;  I love Manchester.  I really do love this city and the feeling I get from being there.  I fit in here, I feel like this city has a place for me.  I find it endlessly interesting, and I’m constantly learning new reasons to love it.  I could spend years here and not know all the things I want to know.  In my few months, however, I have learned about a few pretty cool things, so hopefully by sharing them in this post, you’ll start to see why I love this city so much.   

Okay, where to begin?  The Font, obviously.  The Font is one of my favourite places for food and drinks in Manchester.  It’s on Oxford Road, which is probably my favourite street in the city, and it’s conveniently located right next to the train station.  They serve delicious £2 cocktails, most of which I’ve tasted, the food is cheap and good, and the atmosphere is awesome.  The walls are covered with art from local artists, and much of it changes regularly, ranging from paintings to sculptures to experimental films.  It was first introduced to my by my friend David, who is a Manc and has been going to The Font for years, but I liked it so well I began introducing it to all of my exchange friends at Castle Irwell.  I’ve been more times than I can count.  Because it’s awesome.

Cornerhouse

David also introduced me to an indie cinema (theater) called Cornerhouse.  It is located on a corner, fittingly, and it’s on Oxford Road.  It shows foreign and non-mainstream films, and it’s the kind of place that attracts a lot of pretentious people that laugh too loudly at things in films just to prove to other viewers that they’re clever enough to have gotten the reference.  But that’s part of its charm.  Cornerhouse also sells books and has a cafe, so if you’re the nerdy artist type, you could easily spend a good bit of time there.

Very early on in the semester, my second week actually, another Manc introduced me to Affleck’s Palace, which is a four-story retail warehouse full of edgy and transgressive shops and vendors selling everything an artist-type could possibly want, from jewelry to art to vintage clothing and paraphernalia.  They do piercings and tattoos of any kind and even have a cafe on the top floor.  The place has just about anything you might be looking for, and if you can’t find it in one shop, the staff can probably direct you to which part of the labyrinthine building will have it.  Even if it’s not your style, it’s worth checking out just to see how cool it is.  

Affleck’s Palace is located in a really cool part of the city called Northern Quarter, which is full of art and music, hole-in-the-wall places, and shops dedicated to helping the Northern Quarter type stand out and be different.  As one Northern Qurater frequenter puts it, the crowd there is 'a hodge-podge, a mish mash of all the subcultures you could possibly imagine, from goth to mod to comic book geeks all forced together trying to make a loud enough noise for themselves.'  Compare it to Bricklane in London, but without the pompous attitude and snobbishness.  Northern Quarter has a number of vinyl record stores, namely Piccadilly Records, which has nearly anything you can think of.  It also has a lot of vintage and boutique clothes shops and many little cafes and tearooms, such as Nexus, a really cool one that I visited recently.  Like The Font, Nexus has local art displayed on its walls, but it also has a stage and small-scale theatre productions run a few nights a week.  Plus it’s great because the decor is so colorful and eccentric.   (Click to zoom on any photo)

Canal Street (in Manchester's Gay Village)  The View
(pink sign) is the bar I visited most often.

Manchester is the place to be for going out.  It has tons of clubs and bars, so it’s really easy to find somewhere to have a good time.  The Printworks is a building full of just restaurants, bars, and clubs, so you can go from one place to another without ever stepping outside.  My favourite place, however, is Canal Street, the main street for bars and clubs in Manchester’s gay village.  We tried pub-crawling the first night we went here, but once we found a bar we liked, we stayed there until it closed and just kept coming back to the same place every other time we went.  Canal Street is also great because there are tons of late night chippys open until 5 or 6am, so after a great night of wild dancing, food is only just around the corner.  Perfection.  

Manchester is known for being the best music scene in the whole UK, so of course it has a lot of great music venues, like The Academy (described in the music post), which is on Oxford Road, and The Apollo, which is where I saw Sufjan Stevens* live.  It also has some really cool museums, like the Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Gallery, also on Oxford Road (are you starting to see why I like it so well?).  Manchester Art Gallery has paintings and crafts from a the past few centuries up to current day, and it contains many pieces that are by Mancunian artists and focus and Mancunian subject matter.  The Whitworth Gallery displays a variety of exhibitions, one of which is a display of historical textiles, explaining Manchester’s role in the global textile market.  History and art in one, yes?

Manchester Art Gallery

And there’s more to come on the history of Manchester in the next post.  I’ll try to keep it interesting for all readers, not just the ones that are obsessed with the city (which means really just me).

*Sufjan Stevens is a folk/electronic artist from Michigan.  And yes, he really wore giant angel wings during his concert.