In his final editor’s diary, David Adamson reports back from goingson in the city and beyond
When I began writing my Confidential Safari series almost exactly a year ago, it started as a longform, slightly boozy version of ‘What I did on my Holidays’, and in many ways that’s how it’s remained; a means of writing up the thousand PR events and launches that flesh is heir to if you’re part of the media in Manchester.
While the events - from exhibitions, festivals and press conferences to new menus and the opening of the odd envelope - always gave me something to write about, it was the things in between that formed the connecting tissue of life in the city.
People are strange, and people also make places. So it would follow that places are slightly strange as well. Few more so than Manchester. It’s been a pleasure. So before I sign off, here’s what I did on my holidays.
Crack out the nibbles
Abigail’s Party, Royal Exchange Theatre
Lily and I attended the press night of Abigail’s Party at The Royal Exchange. Lily was tasked with reviewing it, which you can enjoy reading here, while I put my feet up. As someone whose childhood was liberally seasoned with parties of adults getting steadily sozzled, this was like seeing a Stockport suburban dinner party turned up to 11. It brought a Proustian rush of Debbie falling in the fireplace.
The upwardly-mobile Mancunian middle class are probably a bit less full on now, certainly less fun; somehow more moralistic but less gossipy and inclined to let go, which makes something like Abigail’s Party, in all its gin-soaked mania, a highly enjoyable portrait into the way things no longer seem to be.
The run was rightly extended so there’s still another month in which to go and see it. You’ve been to worse parties.
Let’s go round again
Renae launch
I’m surprised it’s taken this long, but Thomas Street is now home to a bar with a concerted focus on vinyl. Renae, which in its own words is ‘not a listening bar’, is a welcoming and understated place that I would say has already planted a firm flag in that side of NQ.
It took me a moment to realise, but I’d been in the building 14 years ago, when it was the Richard Goodall Gallery, for an exhibition of Gered Mankowitz’ Jimi Hendrix photographs. Noddy Holder was there, wearing a beautiful Herringbone Irish tweed coat. I saw Noddy again a few months ago at The Lowry’s production of The Shark is Broken, only now I was wearing my own Aquascutum Irish tweed coat courtesy of my grandad. Things don’t repeat, they just come back around.
Renae is, to me, just what was needed. Now that ‘everything shop’ Clark Brothers over the road is no more, you wouldn’t be surprised to see that become something similar. An iPod shuffle of a bar called ‘Everything Shop’. If I had more than a journalist’s salary I’d do it myself, but until then, you read it here first.
Scissor me timbers
Forbici launches on Cross Street
Pizza has come full circle a few times by this point. We’ve had the greasy glory years of Pizza Hut, the Pizza Express/Peroni duopoly, the Neapolitan invasion, and the deep dish redo of what we once only knew as Chicago Town. Where to go from there?
“Forbici isn’t just another pizza restaurant—it’s a new way of experiencing pizza,” says Andrew Garton, CEO of Forbici. Outside of dissolving a Diavola onto a first class stamp and tabbing it, I’m not sure how differently you can experience pizza. Cut it with scissors, it seems.
Snippy comments aside, the pizza was very nice. It didn’t lift me onto the astral plane but it was very tasty. Ultimately, the place is the thing. That corner unit of Cross Street is a very handsome and light-filled space that I would happily while a few afternoon hours away in. When it comes to something like pizza the margins of excellence are slimmer than most, so it’s as much about where you are as what you’re eating. Cross Street is a cut above most.
The near, clear white sands of Salford
OCASA launches ahead of big summer for Spinningfields
Spinningfields. To paraphrase Ian Brown; it needs a beach.
So much of what’s on offer is about the untrammelled enjoyment of life; no chin-scratching, no hair shirts, just a night out. Yes, a few too many white trainers and alabaster gnashers for my liking, but as I said when reviewing maximalist fever dream Sexy Fish, everyone deserves somewhere to enjoy themselves.
So the invite to the launch of modern Mexican restaurant OCASA brought with it the opportunity to assess the lay of the land in this once-booming end of town. Australasia is attached, and around it a clean, fully pedestrianised part of the city that is surely ripe for reinvention. Half the place is taken up with offices, and who goes into the office anymore?
Most cities would kill for a plot of land this large with so many opportunities on offer, so with summer on the way I hope the place, and OCASA’s 80-seat terrace, a busy season. Lemming central has long shifted to the east of the city and NQ, but as anyone who’s tried to find a seat in Stephenson Square will attest, a city is more than just its trendiest square. Summer could bring a much-needed boost for Spinningfields, and in doing so give the weekend fare options across the city.
Three pit stops
Brotherhood // Blacklock // Sam’s Chop House
I was invited to attend the Jonnie Walker Blue Label event at The Stock Exchange Hotel, which started at the tricky time of 8pm. You can’t exactly sit and have a lengthy meal, and maybe at half past six you don’t want to. But you definitely can't drink a load of whisky on an empty stomach. This is where pit stops come in handy; somewhere to have a post-work pint, somewhere for a quick bite to eat, somewhere nearby your destination for a swift one.
I had my Dad in tow, so met him around the corner from my office in Brotherhood, a bar that does wonders for that postwork pints atmosphere, something I think people crave when there’s nowhere decent around to do it. The sunlit exterior is ideal, but then the bar inside, light streaming through the double-length windows and a breeze coming through, is also great.
Something satisfying that doesn’t eat into your evening; you can’t beat sitting at the bar for a quick bite. So it was back again to Blacklock for that famed steak sarnie, which I’ve already covered in these pages, and suitably fuelled we marched down Cross Street towards the Stock Exchange Hotel. With 20 minutes to spare, we slunk down into Sam’s Chop House for a pint of Guinness.
They were playing jazz (good jazz), and as my Dad and I sat and talked about Barry Hearn’s series of coups on previously unglamorous British sports, I felt as if we were being eavesdropped on. If the brass LS Lowry did have thoughts on Steve Davis’ career, he didn’t let on.
Rhapsody in Blue
Jonnie Walker Blue Label event
I’ve never had occasion to try Blue Label, and as more of a gin man I don’t really search out whiskies, but the chance to try some Jonnie Walker Blue can’t be sniffed at. Suitably for the more luxurious end of the scotch market, the event was in the rooftop bar of the Stock Exchange Hotel, awash with (you guessed it), blue light.
Stood sipping with my dad, Jonathan and his pals Matthew and Simon from Manchester University Press, we steadily sampled the cocktails made with The Blue Stuff, which were very nice, but not as nice as a glass of the stuff straight. Sometimes you can’t be a classic.
The bar also has access to the roof, something that should surely be used to its fullest extent, if it’s not already. There’s not a lot of rooftop bars in Manchester, certainly not as many as there could be, so if you get a chance to scale the heights of the Stock Exchange Hotel and take in the skyline, I’d suggest you do it.
All the way to the bank
The Cut and Craft launch
In doing this job you quickly learn to leave your Thursday evenings free; it’s PR Friday. Sometimes these pages would have three or four entries just from one evening, and it was always a Thursday.
So it was a pleasant change to instead have to block out a Friday afternoon for a press lunch at The Cut and Craft, and enjoy a slower pace (with the option of moving through the gears into Friday evening, should you wish). Jonathan, Gordo and I had been kindly invited along by Cut & Craft marketing manager and sometime Confidentials writer Georgina Pellant, who joined us for a glass of Moët and a natter.
What’s been noted most in the various outlets is the building, once the Manchester and Salford bank and now a Grade II listed gem with extravagant central bar to match. There’s certainly little point in it being an actual bank so by all means these buildings should be restaurants and bars, somewhere to sit with family and friends or for schmoozing clients. It’s definitely got the vibe of a schmoozing spot. If you’d really rather not have to take James from the Nottingham office out to talk Q4, at least remember there’ll be a sirloin in it for you.
Patio table or a bit of wall, sir?
Salut Wines // The City Arms
When I last went to London, part of the press trip involved a night in London’s Glamorous West End to see Moulin Rouge: The Musical. I’m not a musicals kind of guy.
After the interval I began to enjoy myself a bit more, and this may have been in part due to the pubs surrounding the Piccadilly Theatre. Instead of queuing round the stairs for the theatre bar I popped outside, took about three steps to the left and straight into The Queens Head.
What struck me, after the fact that the pint of Guinness didn’t require me to hand over my shoes and trousers, was that I could take it outside, in a glass, and pop it on a window shelf while I had a cigarette. Strangely, the streets weren’t littered with casualties, aortas slit along the line of the G, and Denman Street awash with the blood of people who should’ve asked for plastic. People just drank their pints, smoked their cigarettes, and nothing happened.
So when Jonathan and I followed our press lunch at The Cut and Craft with a few Friday afternoon pints we ventured over to The City Arms. Jonathan, fond of wine, stopped us by Salut Wines and we (Jonathan) decided to stop there. It’s a nice place, the staff are very lovely and knowledgeable, but Jesus Christ Manchester City Council please explain why you can sit outside with a drink, but not sit outside with a drink and a cigarette unless you stand up to smoke it. It’s the sort of logic and ruling that would have Franz Kafka tied up in knots. In ordering a pint at 18 the implication is that you’re an adult, so treat people as such.
Over the road was The City Arms, and over from that a long run of wall chocka block with people enjoying themselves much like they did outside The Queens Head, but with plastic glasses. Sturdy ones, but plastic nonetheless. Gigs and festivals, fair enough, but after a point drinking plastic pints is like being given an Olympic swimming pool to do laps in as long as you wear your armbands.
The Tree of Life
Seven Oaks pub, Chinatown
It’s good to have a local that’s not actually near your house. A little bothole you’re keen on if you’re passing. The tyranny of choice when it comes to bars and pubs can be exhausting, so it’s nice to have somewhere you know the bones of.
The Seven Oaks in Chinatown has been that place for me, somewhere to pop into every now and then on the way to the train. Somewhere to sit at the bar and talk bollocks with the barman, or read your book, or sit in quiet contemplation. A pub in the true sense of the word, which is a sort of blank canvas that’s stretched out every day and rolled up at night. Very familiar, but never exactly what it was yesterday. Even the well-trodden talking points of the perma-barfly have different inflections and new shades of insight. You never step twice into the same river.
And with that, summer, and the end of my time at Confidentials.
When people used to ask me who I worked for, I rambled a load of praise about how it was like working for a magazine in the 90s - maverick, loose-limbed and speaking its mind. Free swim all week. Then I got to be editor, and loved it.
Ultimately, all things must pass. It’s been a moveable feast, an education, and at times like one long lunch that lasted two years.
See you out there
David
'Despotic and batwinged fabulous’: Abigail’s Party, The Royal Exchange, reviewed
Stock Party set for June return
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