Sleuth week 6: plus, new towers to be built... in the ground
Sleuth is a sideways glance at the city each week. It's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. Sometimes Sleuth even gets serious, but not often... @mcrsleuth
IKEA designs new Manchester buildings
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, died last month. Since then Sleuth has heard unsurprising news that many of Manchester’s new buildings were in fact flat-pack Ikea products constructed with the aid of MASSIVE ALLEN KEYS.
A spokesperson for Rowlinson Construction, the developer behind Pomona Wharf near Cornbrook, told Sleuth: “When we heard of these new off-the-shelf flat-pack IKEA apartment blocks we knew they were for us because they are cheap and easy to construct using MASSIVE ALLEN KEYS.
"They go up very quickly with very little talent needed, especially in their design, and if they date very quickly then that’s no concern of ours. We thought they were perfect for Pomona. We just hope people don’t have parties or sex in them as shaking can lead to collapse.
The spokesperson said the only snag were the queues in the IKEA store. "There were so many developers queuing up to buy these flat-pack apartment blocks that the queues took forever, luckily we passed the time with the nice people from Renaker, who also largely build from flat-pack IKEA products with MASSIVE ALLEN KEYS.”
Manchester towers to be inverted
Sleuth hears that following the council's rejection of a new thirteen storey tower on Shudehill, developers are turning to a new innovation in tall buildings. They're called 'inversion towers' and will be built down into the ground rather than up into the air.
“We’ve been digging into all the social media comments and there seems to be a general consensus that we are building too many towers in the city centre,” said Mr R. Enaker, Executive Chairman in charge of extracting every possible £ from every possible centimetre.
“So the only solution is to do more digging, this time down. We’re planning a 50 storey, 200 metre, 650ft inversion tower just off the Mancunian Way which will be called 'Warren'. All the flats will have a view of each other across ‘the pit’, as we call it, and there will be a fence around the top so people don’t fall in. There will be a bar at the very bottom called 'Hell' with 74 different types of frozen daiquiri."
Confidential talked to Manchester Shield about the plans, “It’s a stitch up between Sir Richard Leese and big business, of course,” they said, as they always do. Hobbits, ex-coal miners and dwarves are invited to apply for the new scheme from March.
Manchester Art Gallery condemns towers
Manchester Art Gallery have confirmed that they fully agree with inversion towers. A gallery spokesperson said:
“Towers such as the ones being built on Owen Street are clearly phalluses imposed on the city to reinforce the male-dominated, crypto-fascist hierarchy that for generations has repressed women, LGBTQ people and others.
"Views of architecture and views about representation have moved on, maybe we need to challenge the way these buildings have been read. Inversion towers will clearly be more female and lead to a debate on nurturing and compromise...er...however should everybody disagree with these sentiments then as a responsible gallery we reserve the right to immediately backtrack and PR our way out of it, just as we did with Hylas and the Nymphs.”
Pub reacts to art news
Following the controversial news last week that Manchester Art Gallery had removed JW Waterhouse's 1896 artwork, Hylas & The Nymphs, in order to provoke debate about the objectification of women, the landlord of The Waterhouse pub on Princess Street told Sleuth he plans to remove all art from the boozer in protest.
"If Manchester Art Gallery won't have Waterhouse, then The Waterhouse won't have art," said Tommy Taylor. "Yeah ok the pub is named after a different Waterhouse, but one for all and all that."
Taylor told Sleuth that instead of replicating the post-it notes stuck to the wall of the gallery where the painting once hung, he had instead allowed punters to graffiti their thoughts to the walls of the boozer in true pub toilet style.
"It's really prompted conversation about how we perceive and communicate with each another," said Taylor, "so far we've had comments including 'Dave is a bellend', 'Fuk U Scouse Twatz' and at least seventeen drawings of nobs."
Bar bans old people
Sleuth hears that Sandbar, the popular student bar on Grosvenor Street, has now gone completely cashless in a move to discourage old people. Sleuth spoke to owner, Jack Lardon, to find out more.
"This new system offers more security and convenience to the customer," said Lardon, "but should also discourage older people from clogging up the bar."
"As a bar popular with millennial students we've got to stay ahead, stay modern, and a new study has shown that people over 60 are literally incapable of paying for a round of drinks in under four minutes and 37 seconds. They also smell."
Sleuth asked an old person for an opinion: "Contactless? That's the devil's work that."
