Manchester is one of my very favourite cities - up there with Cork and Oslo. There's the musical heritage that Morrissey is single-handedly trying to ruin, the swagger about the place, the fine architecture and the sense that the city centre hasn't become a no-go zone for the poor and the interesting. While Birmingham has many fine features, the city centre is increasingly bland – it's development history and cultural past has rendered it pretty monotonous. Manchester has escaped this - because the industrial areas are right at the heart of the place, cheap space is always available for new artists, musicians, shops and businesses in the seemingly endless supply of Victorian warehouses and mills, many built to highlight their owners' prosperity and confidence in the future (sometimes misplaced). You only have to go a street or two away from the main concourses to find yourself in one of the amazing record shops, tea emporia or artists' studios. It's not all hipsters though - Manchester is a perfect record of vicious deprivation, gentrification, failed utopian schemes, booms and busts.
So whenever I find myself there with a bit of time on my hands, I wander around the back streets. These are from 2010.
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| Manchester occasionally stands in for 19th/early-20th century New York for films - I once came across a 1920 street scene: American shops, cars, posters - all for Captain America |
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| I can never resist a good door |
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| The abandoned Smithfield market |
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| There are ghost signs everywhere |
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| An installation at the Whitworth Gallery |
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| At the Whitworth |
1 comment:
Gentrification is rapidly reaching the point where there isn't any of that lovely dereliction left - I think "the abandoned Smithfield market" is now a rather upscale food court. This and That is still there, though.
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