REVEALED | Beat Street Takes Shape In Great Northern

David Blake 16 June 2016

GODZILLA, Andy Murray’s old wine rack and a collectable art deco lamp worth more than your TV. It’s amazing what you stumble across on a walkabout Beat Street HQ – but then these guys have made an art form of collecting junk. Quite literally. Their recent Junkyard Golf project, which has just stormed London's Shoreditch after a sell-out six month run in the Great Northern Warehouse, saw the Beat Street boys - Chris Legh, Lyndon Higginson and Bart Murphy - fashion a crazy golf course out of old washing machines, knackered treadmills and even a burnt-out speedboat.

The last Friday of each month we're bringing back Friday Food Fight as a street party with extra entertainment and madness

'It's nice to take a piece of Manchester down to London, rather than the other way around,' says Legh.

If you missed Junkyard, you may remember this lot from their Friday Food Fight series, which saw over 75,000 hungry punters pack into 76 'food slams' over sixteen months within three iconic Victorian locations.

Miss that too? Oh come on now.

Well, this week they invited us to take a sneak peek around their latest project, BEAT STREET, a jumble of new bars, micro diners, arts spaces, sun decks and 'weird s**t' set to take over Great Northern’s Deansgate Mews indefinitely from next month.

Here Legh and Murphy take us on a tour through their new playground before the launch on Friday 15 July...

MEZZANINE//GRILL//SUN DECK

Chris says:

"I guess this is where we start, welcome to Beat Street! The first thing you’ll encounter is the entrance underneath our sun deck. It’s a large scaffold mezzanine we had designed especially for us, providing a covered space in the rain and the best sun deck in the city on a good day. As you walk through you’ll see, or rather smell, the outside BBQ - but I can't tell you too much about that yet.

"We'll have loads of art installations going on outside, and yeah a seven metre long T-REX... though we don't know where to put her yet. The whole street is partially covered and heated in the colder months, making it a year round inside and outside space."

MILK of BURGUNDY

Bart says:

“Milk of Burgundy is an unpretentious, cosy, bustling, wine-focused bar, driven by an aversion to those impersonal enomatic wine dispensers and pompus wine snobbery. This is going to be somewhere with knowledgeable, affable staff, who want to share their passion but don't give a monkey's if you know your claret from your beaujolais."

Chris says:

"I’m still trying to persuade him to stock Cherry Lambrini, as the 1994 Vintage is exceptional, but I'm not really getting anywhere. Milk of Burgundy is going to have great wines and great coffee without the wankiness of either."

LUCKY LUCKY

Chris says:

"Lucky Lucky is really Lyndon’s twisted dream. It’s a sleazy, neon-lit nod to Tokyo dive bars... or is that massage parlours? Packed with everything from Godzilla murals to Japanese Cult Film posters and, of course, hundreds of Lucky Cats. Our office is currently full of weird Japanese toys, snacks and soft drinks. We’ve even got hold of a huge Japanese gong. It’s going to have a great selection of drinks and some of the over the top cocktails our events have become famous for."

KOZEL BAR

Bart says:

"The guys from Kozel (the Czech beer brand) have been massively supportive of street food in the UK, but we also love the beer, so we’ve given them their own bar. It’s based around the hugely popular beer bars in the Czech Republic; somewhere to grab an amazing pint, relax and kick back with friends. The bar is being curated and built by Kozel themselves so all we really know is that it'll be selling the freshest, crispest, coldest beer available. It'll also become only the second place in the UK selling Kozel Dark, the other being some Junkyard Golf place in London."

MICRO DINERS

Chris says:

"This is the heart and the most important part of the new street. We've pulled together some of our favourite street food traders and given them each a micro-diner to make their own. Think of it as an incubator for street food talent and something the city is really missing. It will become the most dynamic and diverse selection of food in the city, all in the same place, with great bars, art and a cracking soundtrack to boot. The last Friday of each month we're planning to add guest traders and bring back FRIDAY FOOD FIGHT as a street party with extra entertainment and madness. We're going live with the food line-up next week, so watch this space."

ARTS & EVENTS SPACE

Chris says:

"We've been working with a fantastic local illustrator Harrison Edwards (below) - who's been grafting on all the art and creative elements with Lyndon - to curate a gallery space above the food traders. It’ll become a large indoor seating area with all the walls used to display local talent. We'll rotate the exhibitions regularly with all the pieces put up for sale. They've been up to all sorts, from commissioning murals of Godzilla to buying knock-off Turner’s from Essex. Oh and that sodding T-Rex... where the f**k are we going to put that T-Rex?"

PHASE TWO ssshhh

Chris says:

"For us this is just the start of things, we already have plans and permission in place to transform the rest of the street, starting pretty much as soon as Beat Street opens. This is mainly because we're struggling to cram all the traders and ideas we'd like into the current space, but also because we need somewhere to put all this weird s**t they keep buying..."