MEAT & PUDS FOR SPINNINGFIELDS?
Sleuth has hopped on rumours that a well-known meat and pudding spot on Booth Street is currently in talks to open a second city centre site in Spinningfields. If confirmed the new venue will join Iberica, Dockyard, Scene, Tattu, Comptoir Libanais, Spinningfields Kitchens (with six new food vendors), a new Artisan, a new Alchemist, a new Lawn Club, chef David Gale’s new restaurant and another new operator on The Lawns... what’s left of it. This means, in the first half of 2015 alone, developers Allied London will have increased their Spinningfields bar and restaurant count by around 65%. Blimey. Sleuth hopes you're hungry…
NEW BOOZER FOR DISBURY
Looks like Didsbury’s Burton Road is set to welcome a new watering hole. The George Charles Didsbury – named after a local Armenian fruiterer - will offer a range of local and international beers, ales and ciders. GM Ben Brown told Sleuth the new pub at no.244 (in the former-off licence) is around three to four weeks off completion and will feature a basement, stripped back wooden interiors, Chesterfield sofas, alongside ten draught and four hand-pulled pumps from mainly local microbrewers. No food to start with but this will come a few weeks after opening.
Not much of an Armenian name, George Charles. Sleuth’s informed Mr Charles – formerly Mr Migredichian - arrived among an influx of Armenian silk merchants into Manchester during the 1890s (even more so following the Armenian Genocide in 1915), married a local lassie and changed his name. By all accounts George was quite the local businessman and personality; though Sleuth hopes, as a former fruiterers, the new pub doesn’t stock those god awful new-breed, super sweet fruity ciders - 'orrible they are. And as we've seen above, now would be a terrible time to lose your teeth.
George outside his Didsbury shop
244 Burton Road
SLEUTH IS ON THE PULL
Sleuth is setting up a number of Internet dating sites in the style of Grindr, Tinder and Manchester’s own Bristlr.
He’s seeking the IP for Mumblr, Fumblr, Scarpr and Tumblr.
The first, Mumblr, is for people who when meeting on a first date get very tongue-tied. The second, Fumblr, is for people who don’t want to go all the way. The third one, Scarpr, is for people who run away in panic as soon as they see their date sat in the bar or restaurant. And the fourth, Tumblr, is for couples who share affection for stout-bottomed, sensible drinking glasses. There's already a Tumblr? Oh well.
Tumblr 3-way
SLEUTH’S LOCAL NEWSPAPER STORY OF THE WEEK: PART ONE
The Manchester Evening News reported the theft of a Henry Hoover from a Pizza Hut restaurant in the city centre. This terrible calumny was reported complete with an inset picture of a smiling Henry Hoover. The story is engagingly trivial to the point of hilarious. Thing is Sleuth has the true scoop and the Hoover wasn’t stolen but escaped wanting a fulfilling life in a restaurant with real Italian pizzas. Unfortunately it couldn't find any employment and the its life fell apart and it took to drugs as the video below shows. Henry is now serving three years for attempting to violently suck money from people’s wallets to support its addiction.
SLEUTH’S LOCAL NEWSPAPER STORY OF THE WEEK: PART TWO
Sleuth is still reeling over the serious suggestion by the MEN, in a hapless week for the paper, for an unusually tasteless and vulgar exercise in popularism over the Piccadilly Wall. The suggestion of ‘Big Head’ Mancs (see below) makes Sleuth want to curl into a ball. Since largely leaving the city centre the Manchester Evening News seems to have lost all sense of what modern progressive cities should be attempting.
Speaking of leaving the city centre, Sleuth is highly amused by the complaints from the Manchester Evening News over the city council holding the results night for General and Local Elections at the National Cycling Centre. Apparently The Manchester Evening News doesn't understand why ‘results night’ can't be held as it traditionally is in the city centre in Manchester Town Hall. Meanwhile many people in Manchester can’t understand why the Manchester Evening News can’t be based as it traditionally was in Manchester rather than Oldham.
Modern Manchester?SLEUTH’S HORRIBLE JARGON OF THE WEEK
This is ‘Northshoring’. It comes from Business Desk: ‘Demand for office space in (Manchester) should remain strong – buoyed by ‘Northshoring’ as companies reconsider the costs associated with having large numbers of staff in the capital.’
SLEUTH’S MEN DREAMING – QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Friedrich Engels, who lived for 22 years in Manchester, said as a young man: “If I had an income of 5,000 I would do nothing but work and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces.” He didn’t have that income as a young man, so with Karl Marx, to whom he’d said the sentence, he wrote the Communist Manifesto and changed world history.
Engels: Communist PlayboyAPOCALYPSE NOW
Something parculiar dropped into Sleuth's inbox this week. 2.8 Hours Later is an 'urban zombie chase game' coming to Manchester that sees people pay up to £40 for what appears to be a massive game of tag nearly 3 miles long. There's a mission and some zombies and probably a fair bit of falling over. Still, if Sleuth wanted to be chased over three miles by a bunch of zombies, he'd save a few quid, nip into The City on Oldham Street and turn off the pumps.
