Sleuth is a sideways glance at the city every week, it's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. He's several people all at once. Sleuth sometimes even gets serious @mcrsleuth
BACK TO BLACK
Looks like another operator is ready to take a punt on the seemingly doomed former Inland Revenue offices at the Lawrence Buildings on Mount Street (pictured above), an unfruitful site in recent years to Beluga, Citrus (for about three months) and finally Velvet Central - which packed up and cleared off in April 2015. Now Sleuth sees Bourbon & Black – Didsbury’s newish meat and hard liquor restaurant – has moved in and began work converting the site into a new ‘Food, Drink & Blues Bar’.
Sleuth thinks this a very apt location for a brand such as Bourbon and Black. Peer up Pennington and Brigden’s fine five storey building, past the unicorn and the lion and you’ll spot, hiding in a niche, a statue of Queen Victoria - who not only enjoyed a drop of whiskey in her claret, but was partial to a bit of black herself.
Bourbon & Black have moved in on Mount StreetNEW SPORTS BAR & NEW CLUB
And in some rare new bar news, Sleuth hears Ancoats’ effervescent Cutting Room Square is about to get a new American-themed sports bar and restaurant. Second City Bar - which opens early next year - comes from a former manager at the House of Adventure Group (Cord, Simple, Wood Wine Deli) and will screen the usual football, rugby and cricket alongside American sports like basketball, American football, WWE and, Sleuth’s favourite, Ultimate Fighting Championship. Sleuth hopes these chaps can deliver something that works in harmony with the revitalized area and avoids the usual banalities of sports bars: insipid American beer, sticky wings, even stickier floors and dust-ups.
Whilst on the square, Sleuth hears Mital Morar, the bloke that brought us Superstore bar, kitchen and convenience store on Tib Street in Northern Quarter - since taken over by the folks behind Mughli - has taken on a new site round the corner on the ground floor of the Nuovo building.
Cutting Room SquareOh and before Sleuth forgets, Sleuth's heard whispers of a planned new and exclusive members' club to go in beneath The Lowry Hotel. Details are scant, but Sleuth hears hotel owners are hoping to replicate the success of Manchester's other new and exclusive £750-a-year members' club, Club Brass, which took off earlier this year like a penguin with a dicky flipper.
The Lowry to get new members' club?SPINNINGFIELDS CURLING RINK
Now don't hold Sleuth to this one, but Sleuth has heard from a small number of trusted sources that to make up for a lack of skating this year, Spinningfields are planning to install a new 'Curling Rink' on the slither of remaining grass outside The Lawn Club. Yes Sleuth knows this sounds a load of mullock, but Sleuth has it on good authority that the game, which involves ice, sliding stones, wild sweeping and gobbing off, will launch on the patch sometime in the next couple of weeks with the recently closed Rust and Stone bunker becoming the clubhouse. Bizarre, yes, but Sleuth likes it...
Is Spinningfields really about to get a curling rink?
...and is this proof?SLEUTH'S BT BOX OF TRICKS
Sleuth hears Hanging Ditch Wine Merchants are having telecommunication problems. The exceptional wineshop between the Cathedral and Harvey Nichols has on its terrace, a metre or so from the shop window, a BT phone box. Sippers of fine clarets have been treated to and filmed people shooting up in the box, arranging drug deals and being a deal of bother. Entreaties to BT have fallen on deaf ears. They want to keep it. Forget the anti-social behaviour, forget the fact it's never used as a phone box anymore, but oh what a fine advertising hoarding it makes. Apparently that's a prime spot for advertisers and so crime pays, you might say, for this particular telecommunications giant. Although on recent inspection, bottom picture in this sequence, Sleuth found its value as a communication system has been compromised lately.
Kiosk of advertising
Kiosk of wrong-doing
Something seems missing
SLEUTH IS FREAKED ON THE STREET
Sleuth's wishes the household in Old Trafford who have placed these 'features' on their house would cease and desist. They're on his way to work and they frighten him. Sleuth has always been a bit scared of garden gnomes but hanging baskets of dolls are terrifying - why are their eyes so real? And what's that little one doing looking out of the window? Help. Sleuth has deep-seated pediophobia - although you have to be careful how you say that.
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Please, God, no...SLEUTH'S NEW BIBLE FOR MANCHESTER HOTELS
There was a London publisher in the 1600s who printed a travel bible in a handy pocket-size. It wasn't sub-edited properly and there was a tiny error. Very small really. Only three little letters. Easily done. Shame that the three little letters were the word 'not' and the these were in the ten commandments in the sentence: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery'. Oops. You can see what became known as the Wicked Bible in John Rylands Library on Deansgate, were 'Thou shalt commit adultery' reads as a command not a suggestion. The printer went bust and the stock was burnt. Most of it. Very few survived. Now one is for sale for £15,000 if you feel like it at Bonhams. Sleuth remembers showing the book in John Rylands to a group of Manchester hoteliers few years ago. "That's the one we should replace the Gideon's with in our hotel, our guests are always up to no good," said one of the managers.
At last something positive in the ten commandments...SLEUTH'S WAR MEMORIAL OF THE WEEK
Finally the big iron plate with holes resembling shell holes at Victoria Station has been explained. This blocks the Soldiers' Gate where tens of thousands of men left to board trains that would eventually lead them to the battlefields. The holes make a pattern which is a map of the main war cemeteries in France and Belgium. Now a glass panel has been placed over the iron plate with the names of the cemeteries. It's a sombre memorial but moving. Still, thinks Sleuth, isn't it all a bit macabre, a celebration of death almost? To lighten the mood, Network Rail have placed a jolly Christmas tree next to it. There's also an absolutely massive poppy. It's all getting a bit floral down that end of the station.
Graveyard art
Poppy, war dead, treeSLEUTH'S ENTHUSIASTIC CURRY OF THE WEEK
Sleuth is passionate about his grub and expects the same in return. So Sleuth, reading a review in the Manchester media this week, was pleased to learn Thaikhun's curries are well up for it...
SLEUTH’S UNEXPECTED FRIENDSHIP OF THE WEEK
Sleuth’s colleague L’Oréal Blackett bumped into notorious Manchester drag queen Cheddar Gawjus, dressed as a 7ft Geisha, at the launch of new NQ ‘Manconese’ bar and restaurant Cottonopolis this week.
“Hi,” she said seeking new friendship, “I’m L’Oréal – you know, as in the shampoo.”
“Wonderful. I’m Cheddar," replied Gawjus, "...as in the cheese."
"And I'm Sleuth," said Sleuth, as they both strolled off...
CheeseBONKERS BONGO'S BINGO
Sleuth popped along to the new bingo night at Albert Hall this week... Sleuth won't be taking his dear old mum back.
