I imagine Marketing Manchester posting out THANK YOU letters to every single one of the rioters who destroyed the city centre two weeks ago. Finally, someone actually buys those ugly I heart NY knock-off t-shirts that have been sitting on the shelf of the visitors centre for years. Call me bitter, but how is wearing a t-shirt (and yes, the profits do go to Manchester-based charities) and ‘showing your pride’ going to change the problems we have here?
Update: Looks like I’m not the only one who isn’t too keen on the I Heart MCR campaign. Richard Goulding over at Manchester Mule has written an article on the campaign, Marketing Manchester, and social issues in Manchester: I heart Coportate MCR.
I don’t quite get Ancoats. On the outskirts of the city centre, separated from the hipsters of the Northern Quarter by the moat that is Great Ancoats Street, lies an area full of old mills, tall, modern apartment buildings and… wastelands. The things that I consider characteristic for Ancoats are building sites, unused properties, grass, gravel, soil. After the ‘Gelato in July’ festival which celebrated Ancoat’s Italian heritage (oh what a disappointing event. The queue in front of the only decent looking stall, Ginger’s Comfort Emporium, seemed neverending and the only other ice cream stalls were selling 99ers… there wasn’t a single ‘real Italian ice cream’ stall… I mean… what kind of Italian ice cream festival is that? I was part shocked, part reaffirmed that people here have no idea of Italian food, and part longing for the ice cream parlours and pizza restaurants of my hometown, where family-run Italian business have been priding themselves on having the best home-made gelato in town for generations. I should add ‘sounding like a food snob’ to my list of skills.)… now, where was I? The ice cream festival, right. We made an attempt to explore Ancoats along the canal, which was yet another disappointment, as the footpath along the canal is currently under construction. Following the signs to the canal, we passed said old converted mills, car parks, wastelands, a row of terraced houses that looked like gingerbread houses (Urban Splash? Was that you again? Of course it was!), finally arriving on Old Mill Street.
To me, Old Mill Street has always been one of the weirdest places in Manchester, showing all signs of an ambitious regeneration project gone terribly wrong. The street is lined with rusty street lamps, benches, completely out of place looking bus stop shelters covered in bright black and pink/green flowers – it all seems to be waiting to be turned into a shop-lined boulevard, the centre of a new community where residents go for a little stroll sunny Sunday afternoon. But there is one thing missing: people. In the many times I drove down Old Mill Street, literally since the very first time I visited Manchester (which is exactly 4 years ago on the 31st August, hip hip!), and even on this exceptionally friendly Saturday afternoon, the only sign of life was the odd car on the road.
Developers Urban Splash have a vision in mind of turning Ancoats into ‘New Islington’ (which is the name of a very small street in the area and, according to unknown sources, used to be the name for Ancoats in the olden days), a crazy, colourful community of crazy, colourful buildings, with crazy, colourful and, most importantly, exceptionally rich residents who can afford to buy flats in those crazy, colourful buildings. Only recently, Urban Splash attracted some criticism that went beyond the actual occasion when the company announced they were going to demolish the old hospital building on Old Mill Street, with comments such as “Urban Trash. Some buildings are beautiful, yours are not.” and “It is money-men greed. They have no care or concern for our community.”
I have some ideas on how these urban regeneration experiments with fancy new ultra-futuristic buildings can end, the ‘Plattenbauten’ in East Germany (this is a lovely picture of Grünau, a residential area in my old dwelling place Leipzig) or, more locally, Hulme Crescent being some good examples. I wouldn’t be very surprised to see Ancoats, or New Islington, turn from wastelands into what is considered modern housing in this decade, followed by a decline into yet another slummy problem area, and, 30 years from now, people shaking their heads in disbelief: “Why the hell would anyone even consider putting human beings in anything like that?”
Giant bird hotel on Old Mill Street.
Not quite Ancoats, but Castlefield-feel on Ducie Street. Didn’t know that was there!
Linda’s Pantry. I call it Linda’s panty and think it’s funny.
We don’t know yet whether it’s over or not. Manchester seemed pretty quiet today (I have seen the odd tweet about people witnessing arrests) and I know we all hope that it stays like that. The torrential rainfalls might help.
Matt has posted a short report along with a set of rather shocking photos from yesterday over on www.hipstr.co.uk, showing young kids bragging with their loot, laughing as they’re running away with stolen goods, and the police tackling rioters on top of bin bags.
Due to external circumstances, I wasn’t able to post day 2 and 3 of project Minimize Me earlier – apologies.
I have been eating almost exclusively mini-foods in the past few days, but I am nowhere near starving. The great thing about eating tiny things from tiny plates and tiny bowls is: you can always have seconds. And thirds. And fourths. The other day I ate FIVE CUPCAKES. Okay, they were about the size of my thumbnail each, but hey – five cupcakes! I’m wallowing in mini-gluttony! Also, I can eat so many different things in one meal, which is simply fantastic for someone like me who can’t make any decisions (I am overwhelmed by large supermarkets and could easily spend several hours trying to decide which yogurt I want to buy – too much choice really isn’t good for me).
I have been looking for something to put in the pictures to show the scale of my foods – and finally found The Bear. The Bear – the heraldic animal of Berlin – is about the size of a finger, as you can see in the pictures (modelled by my very own pink sausage hands). It usually resides next to our TV, but it will go on tour with me this week to pose with my meals – dream job.
The Bear.
Day 2 started with a healthy meal of mini-cornflakes (from the Kellog’s variety pack) and mini-chocolate soya milk, followed by a tiny apple. The apples were labelled ‘family apples’, which doesn’t really make any sense to me.
The lunch pictures didn’t turn out too well, so we’re skipping straight to dinner – mini casserole with mini dumplings (mini dumplings!!) and tiny beans lovingly cooked by the boyfriend, served on a saucer. His flatmate must have thought I was mental when she saw me eating from it. I have also noticed that it is extremely hard getting the right level of dilution for cordial if you drink it from a shotglass.
Brekkie time again – more super-strength cordial (it was vile.), coco pops (oooh!), mini strawberries and a tiny pot of fromage frais (The Bear decided to crash at the boyfriend’s last night and didn’t turn up again until lunch). Seriously, those pots of Petit Filous are so tiny, they only give the RDA values for TWO pots, as if no one was ever meant to eat only a single pot. Hint: making them twice the size might solve that problem.
Lunch for champions. A mini-breadroll with jumbo fake ham which makes it look like a flying saucer, cherry tomatoes, mini cheese from the mini cheese selection, a tiny little can of coke, an even smaller box of raisins for pudding, and the ironic star of the show – a quorn sausage roll.*
So here’s the deal with the sausage roll. The pack says: 12 mini sausage rolls*. I counted them – there were only 6. But it didn’t seem like anyway had taken any sausage rolls from the pack (hey, everything is possible at the Sainsbury’s in Fallowfield). The solution: the explanation to the * tells you that there are “12 sausage rolls when cut in half”. Excellent marketing!
I just received an email with the above text and a link to a video of Carlos Tevez moaning about Manchester. It is pretty hilarious – the highlights are: “There’s nothing to do in Manchester […] it rains all the time, you can’t go anywhere!” and “I will not return to Manchester, not for vacation, not for anything.”
Bless.
Video clip is on the BBC website, clicketyclick the image to watch.
FYI, the caption says ‘I speak very bad English’. Tehehe.
Due to my being in possession of a Unirider, some people with, GASP, jobs, believe I am an unworthy creature whose life consists of staying up all night partying, destroying my house and annoying my neighbours*. Unfortunately, I’ve never had the pleasure of being an undergraduate student in this country and therefore cannot live up to these expectations – being a student is a much less excessive affair in Germany than it seems to be here. I usually try to get past the smelly boozers and dirty takeaways of Fallowfield as quickly as possible, since even shopping at the Sainsbury’s on my way home can be painful at times (Now repeat after me: pyjamas were never meant to be worn anywhere outside my house. A supermarket is not my house.).
But hey, this wouldn’t be mightaswell if I was just accepting the facts and avoiding Fallowfield by all means. Why not just go and live the student lifestyle myself – with a particularly classy night out in Fallowfield. The task: drink only the most fluorescent or silliest sounding drinks, eat stuff that doesn’t usually classify as edible in your life, stumble around in heels, make use of cheap booze offers, and spend not more than £20.
Having invested a considerate amount of time on my make-up and hair (you gotta do what you gotta do) I even decided to wear heels, which happens about twice a year and makes me regret every time that I wasn’t wearing ‘shoes for people with flat feet’, as I was told to. The night started with a romantic three course meal at McDonalds, yet another place which, as a vegetarian / part time vegan, secret hippie and general chain-refusenik, I have probably visited as many times as I have been seen wearing heels in my life. After some difficulties identifying the one vegetarian option on the menu, I settled for a ‘spicy veggie deli sandwich’ with fries and a banana milkshake. That’s three courses, right? (To anticipate the result, my night ended with a cup of peppermint tea and a hot water bottle on my belly.)
Feeling a little dirty and very disappointed with the semi-cold fries, we made our way into Fallowfieldia, the first stop being the local Wetherspoons. The pub was fairly unspectacular even for Wetherspoons standards, and after a pitcher of Woo Woo (silly name: tick!) which is basically just cranberry juice++, we moved on to Baa Bar. Here’s a confession: I don’t actually mind Baa Bar when it’s not busy. The drinks prices are fair, they’ve got German beer in bottles (makes me feel like home…), the insane shooter menu is fun, and the music is generally very quiet. I even suggested they could advertise with something like “Baa Bar – not shit until 9pm!”, but I’m not sure that was convincing enough. In the style of Baa Bar, I went for a bright green apple flavoured fizzy alcopop (fluorescent drink: tick!) and a few shooters with names like ‘Sassy Bitch’, ‘Dave’ (eh?), ‘Twilight’ and ‘Pinky Winky’ (silly names: tick! tick! tick! tick!). Our visit to the rather quiet Baa Bar was followed by a quick stop at the Tesco’s next door to buy a box of Rennie. You gotta do etc.
Moving further up Wilmslow Road, we headed for a quick drink and a game of pool at the Cheshire Cat, where we encountered a person sleeping on the sofa, the bar staff playing ‘catch the peanut with your mouth’, drinks smashing on the floor, and someone being sick all over the sinks in the gents toilets. (I’ve got pictures of the toilet incident, but I think posting these would be one step too far, even for me.) It was also the first time I heard Bjork’s ‘I miss you’ in a bar. Lovely place.
A fairly recent but very clever addition to the watering holes in Fallowfield is the second branch of the beloved cheap as chips cocktail (””cocktail””) bar Font. Sticky tables and unnecessarily loud music are as much a part of Font, as are huge queues at the bar and toilets that were obviously bought from the hellhole store (ok, I stole that one from Das Racist). Nonetheless, we decided to savour some of their delicacies on the cocktail (””cocktail””) menu and ended up bumping into someone we least expected there: people my age. My mates were probably as surprised as I was to meet them there, but the instant ‘we’re in this together now’ feeling convinced us to stay, despite the painfully loud music that reduced my vocal chords to shrivelled up parcel twine.
After only two cocktails (””cocktails””) however, the accumulation of fluorescent drinks, greasy junk food and shooters with silly names cut a hole in my stomach and therefore the evening fairly short. All my plans to end the night with a little dance at Robinskis or the Revolution’s UV party of the year were annihilated. I admitted defeat and went home.
So, how was it? Well. Fallowfield was rather quiet due to it being the end of term time, and therefore rather uninteresting. I got away spending a minimum on drinks, I saw some appalling toilets and got stuck on dirty tables a few times. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected, but hey, I’ll be back in Fresher’s Week to get the full Fallowfield experience.
Did I just write a 900 word blog post about going out for drinks? Hell yes I did.
* Hint: Having a 9-5 job doesn’t make you a better person.
I usually don’t post news here, as there are many other sites that do it so much better, but this one got me quite upset. Only today it was reported that Wythenshawe Park, which I wrote about last year, was the target of some shockingly sick vandalism. Some time on Sunday evening / Sunday night, they broke into the aviary located in the park, beheaded 18 birds (seriously, what the fuck?), threw them around, poisoned a carp in a pond with fertiliser, chopped down trees and smashed windows, causing more than £10,000 of damage, according to the BBC.
One way to spend your bank holiday weekend, I suppose.
Okay, here’s the deal: I run 10 kilometres, you give me loads of money for that, which I then give to a charity of my choice. That makes sense, right? Wait, what do you mean, what’s the point of me running at all? Well, it’s… you know… oh just give me the money already, will you!
Sponsored charity runs are a completely alien concept to Germans. I had to explain the idea to my family several times, mumbling something about ‘challenge’ (“Why? You run all the time anyway don’t you? What’s the challenge in that? And why should we give you our money?”) until I finally resorted to the ‘give me your money and you’ll be on my wall of fame’ trick.
I signed up for the Manchester 10k run in January and started training quite enthusiastically…for about a week. Then I realised that 10k wouldn’t be a big deal anyway and went back to doing my usual runs round the block and in the park. I forgot about it completely for a while until about a week ago when I was planning the upcoming weekend and started to panic: I won’t be able to make it. I’ll get really ill before the run. We’ll be late. I’ll oversleep. I’ll have to go to the loo every five minutes. There will be torrential rainfalls. We won’t be able to park anywhere. I’ll pass out for no reason.
Fortunately, the mighty Jogger Swan King took me under his wings, and the whole ‘I’m going to run 10k as fast as I can’ affair turned into ‘we’ll run 10k with a guy in a 7 ft swan costume and have fun’. Our team partner Dr Maha was suffering from an ankle injury, so we decided to take it easy on the day. Dressed up as the Swan King’s hipster bodyguards (think Bjorn Borg ca 1975 meets Michael Cera in Juno meets the 118 118 guys), sporting hot pants, white socks and co-ordinated ponytails (mine left, Dr Maha’s right), we rolled up to the great event in the loveliest Manchester weather: freezing cold, drizzly rain, icy wind.
After the much needed warm-up with Mr Motivator*, the guns went off and we embarked on a leisurely jog joining 40.000 other runners, down Portland Street, then Chester Street, to the Man United ground, and back up along Deansgate, to the finish right in front of the Hilton. Here’s the highlights of the day:
At km 1 I realised I needed the loo.
At km 2 we whooped for at a runner wearing a giant giraffe costume and the Swan King high-fived loads of kids.
At km 3 we had our first ankle-pain-induced walking break.
At km 4 we went past a band playing ‘Chariots of Fire’ by Vangelis (click the link and you know the song!), pretending we were running in slow motion.
At km 5 we started swearing at people on the side who were eating chips.
At km 6 we stopped for a little dance to the Stone Roses in front of Clint Boon’s stage.
At km 8 the Jogger Swan King had a little jig with the dixie band. I also finally found the loos.
At km 9 I got utterly confused because people were shouting my name at me, until I realised that it was written on the race number on my chest.
At the finishing line the announcer praised the Swan King, mentioned my name, we high-fived and collected our medals and goodie bags from the army.
Oh, what fun we had. If you see someone walking round Manchester with a medal round their neck, that would be me.
I raised an okayish £333, Mr Swan King managed around £500, both for the Red Cross, who welcomed us in the Charity Village with bananas, crisps, iced tea, mini mars bars and custard creams worthy of a children’s birthday party. (THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO DONATED, YOU’RE SUPER AWESOME!)
Due to tiredness I’m actually lacking sarcasm, so here’s my completely honest and filthy cliche conclusion: despite the weather, the atmosphere at the run was great, the other runners were nice, and we really enjoyed it. And OHMYGODIWANTTODOITAGAIN.NOW!
Next year. Next year. And I’ll up the fancy dress. Oh yes.
* It wasn’t Mr Motivator, but I really wished it was.
Have I actually mentioned my bike? I’ve got a bike. The best bike in the world, to be precise. I got it from one of my favourite people, almost a year ago, and the first time I was riding it down a quiet and leafy street in Didsbury I started to cry, which was followed by a celebratory bottle or two glass of wine. A glorious day.
Anythatwasthemotherofallhangoversway, last week marked the beginning of my favourite time of the year in Manchester – the 6 months of “oh it’s getting warm…nope, not quite yet…but now!! No… no, still not warm enough to wear short sleeves. OH there it is, that must be it, Summer! No, no…false alarm. Whoops, it’s November again. Well that was that then, I guess. Better luck next year.” Highly determined to make the best of the few hours of sunshine I can get here every year, I put on a floral print dress – my official summer uniform – got on my bike and cycled down to Levy for some food at POD and a visit to the superawesome Laurie Pink, but more about that later.
The excitement had me as soon as I had caught a glimpse of the magnificent trees blooming on Fog Lane that stood bright and colourful in the Sunday sun. I cycled faster. We crossed Kingsway into Burnage. I gasped: My first visit to Burnage. BURN. AGE. Famous for being the home of the Gallagher brothers, Dave Rowbotham of the Durutti Column being murdered in his flat, and… uhm… yeah. That record shop, I guess. I excpected tumbleweeds, gunmen and saloon doors, but I only saw a wide tree lined road, a country pub-ish looking pub with the poetic name ‘The Sun in September‘ and several parks, including the rather vast Cringle Park, luring us in with the promise of seeing an ‘Indian Bean Tree’ that couldn’t be spotted – if anyone has managed to find the location of the ‘Indian Bean Tree’, please do let me know. The bike ride, the greens, the country pub-ish pub and the sun had made me so enthusiastic however, I even came up with a marketing slogan for letting agents who would like to advertise properties in the area: “Burnage – it could be worse.”
Having crossed Cringle park, we suddenly found ourselves in the heart of Levenshulme, only two minutes away from POD, which, once again, didn’t fail to amaze me with the tastiness of its food as well as the slowness of the ordering and food preparing process. But to be completely honest, I actually prefer anticipation up to the point of self-torture to the finished product – this is exactly the right place for me.
On the way back, we paid a visit to the wonderful Laurie Pink who I had met on my first trip to Levenshulme last year. The crazy lady had put herself through a 24 hour drawing marathon to create dozens of drawings for everyone who donated for Comic Relief – raising over £1300 pounds in one day. I had commissioned a royal portrait for my cycling companion, the mighty Robot Swan King (yeah… don’t ask), which we had come to pick up that afternoon. We were welcomed by Arthur and Smith, two incredibly lovely whippets, a pouting cat, actor/singer/comedian Mitch Benn, who was sat in the kitchen watching roller derby videos, and a room with walls covered in drawings as a proof of Laurie’s hard work*. Having swapped cake for drawings, we hopped onto our bikes and cycled back down south – not without stopping by at the ‘Sun in September’ for a cheeky half of fizzy apple juice. I’m living life on the edge.
Forget Manchester’s buzzing Digital Media scene. What do all these creative people know about life in this city? The real talent lies with the students, the drunks, the angry people, the crazies. If you search a little on youtube, you come across all sorts of videos from Mancunians, capturing some of the most bizarre aspects of life in Manchester.
Gaff’s off license is a popular booze vendor in Fallowfield – just across the road from Owens Park, the biggest student halls of residence in town – that’s famous for… pandemonium (both the halls and the off license to be honest). This video features a tribute to the shop:
Speaking of Owens Park, the ‘Owens Park Tower Challenge’ seems to be a popular past time with students. The challenge comprises of downing a shot on every single one of the 18 floors of Owens Park Tower – and not being sick. Hint: the gentleman in the video fails this last part.
Aaah, crazy bus lady. Good old CBL. While I often find her amusing, I sometimes find myself silently swearing at her when she’s holding up the bus, arguing with the driver whether he’ll let her on, while I’m running late for yet another meeting. Here she is, talking about… not quite sure what.
Manchester isn’t exactly known for it’s marvelous weather, quaint little streets, lovely parks or its cleanliness. This video, most likely brought to you by a angry non-Mancunian, captures the situation quite well:
And finally, here’s a comment on the crime rate in Manchester. I watched it several times and couldn’t stop lauging: Robbery at Manchester International Festival
Sam Bail 
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