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. Sometimes Sleuth even gets serious @mcrsleuth
A LOAD OF CORK & BULL
Sleuth has wind of a new bar coming to The Workshop in Old Granada Studios (pictured above) on Quay Street this summer. The bar - which will open for a ten week residency from Friday 24 June - is called Cork & Bull and comes from Manchester pop-up bar specialist Bitter Twisted (the folks behind Spinningfields temporary festive karaoke, Bar Hutte). Sleuth’s told the venue will become Manchester's first 'social darts' bar - a concept which has proved mightily popular down in London with the likes of Flight Club in Shoreditch. The idea? Groups of pals or colleagues or some guys you picked up off the street take a board and go head-to-head without worrying about all the numbers guff, because the interactive electronic boards do the maf' for you. Handy when you're on the shandy. There's also pool, table tennis, street food, no doubt some craft beer, a cigar terrace and most of this summer's sport showing. Sounds crap eh? Keep an eye on their Facebook and Twitter for updates.
Corking UBREW COMES TO MANCHESTER
Coming soon to the oxymoron that is Temperance Street, a weird road between viaducts close to Piccadilly Station and hosting Beer Nouveau, comes UBREW (https://ubrew.cc/). Here, you can brew with your mates your own craft ales or lagers for 70/80p a 330ml bottle. Membership is £50 per month but this can be shared between five people. They’ve already got 50 members, and want 63, signed up through a crowd-funding scheme. In the original site in Bermondsey they have 800 people on a waiting list. In Manchester there can be ten kits going at once meaning about 80 people brewing every week. There’s tap bar too, open until 11pm on Friday and Saturdays, 7pm during the rest of the week plus a free brew course as part of the initial membership. Sleuth might join as he’s out drinking five nights a week already, usually of ales and craft beers, so he might as well brew his own for the remaining two days and start drinking at home.
UBREW CALLE DE LA PUERTA DE DEAN
Meanwhile, Sleuth sees Manchester’s long-standing Pizza Express in Old Colony House on King Street South has wound up operations. Strange one this, compared with the Pizza Express units on King Street and First Street, this seemed to be the busiest of the lot. Sleuth spots that the To Let board outside reads ‘A3 Opportunity’ – A3 being for the sale of food or drink. Looks like it’s to be another bar or restaurant then. But who and what? What’s that rumble? Oh it’s just the Spaniards rampaging down Deansgate again. You wait, there’ll be in there faster than you can say 'Gambas'.
No more LEADER OF THE HOUSE, BEER AND CANALS
Sleuth loves Wikipedia. Sleuth was looking up Chris Grayling, the Leader of the House of Commons, after a radio broadcast, just because. In the list of publications written by Grayling are a surprising range of books many with Manchester connections including canals and beers. Thus: The Bridgewater Heritage, The Story of Bridgewater Estates by Chris Grayling, 1983; A Land Fit for Heroes, Life in England After the Great War by Chris Grayling, 1985; Holt's, The Story of Joseph Holt by Christopher Grayling, 1985; Just Another Star? Anglo-American Relations Since 1945 by Chris Grayling and Christopher Langdon. (Click here for the Wiki page). How odd. Ah but suddenly Sleuth twigs what’s happening. There are two Chris Graylings and the Leader of the House of Commons has never been near a pint of Holt’s beer let alone written a book about the brewery. Good old Wiki in scooping up all the Chris Graylings they could find and turning them into one single person.
Not the Leader of the House's fave tipple but definitely Chris Grayling's, the other one SLEUTH AND THE NOMENCLATURE GAME
Sleuth and pals were lamenting the Death of British Branding given the sorry state of top down naming in Manchester. First the name HOME was mocked by the group as being ridiculously prosaic given the art and life inside. Then someone mentioned the daft name Corridor pertaining to Oxford Road. Worse again is Circle Square, where the Bruntwood development on the former site of the BBC is taking shape. “Yes,” said one friend, “soon, with the latest apartment development we will be able to purchase a home on Corridor in Circle Square.”
Circle Square... on Corridor SLEUTH’S BEST INVITE OF THE WEEK
‘Dear Sleuth, please join us for The London Clown Festival. On the Press Night the Balkan Bad-Boys Boris & Sergey will host a night of hilarity and absurdity. The festival celebrates physical comedy and clown influenced contemporary performance while challenging assumptions about the word “clown”’. Sleuth has no assumptions about the word clown, he knows they’re all sinister, still, he does regret missing Boris perform with the Balkan Bad-Boys. Those leave campaigners will do anything for attention. This is Sleuth’s sad face because he's missing out.
Sad clownSLEUTH’S UNEXPECTED BEAUTIES: THE MANCUNIAN WAY
In Birley Fields the poppies blow, between the cars, row on row. Sleuth is delighted by this planting scheme in the roundabout with the subways on Princess Parkway with the Mancunian Way above. Poppies in the city centre. Sleuth feels like starting a new social group called Urban Picnics. Hampers, straw boaters, pretty frocks, champers and cucumber sandwiches within a Hulme roundabout. Anybody up for it?
Poppies of Hulme TAKING YOUR BEANS FOR A WALK
Sleuth likes pets but they can be so messy and not always suitable for city centre life. So Sleuth is taking inspiration from this man in the Northern Quarter. Sleuth is going to start taking his beans for a walk, instead.
'That's it boy, sit' SLEUTH'S MIND BOGGLES
Sometimes the logic fails Sleuth, especially when it comes to the city's current traffic management system. No, a car parked in the cycle lane will not do. Very naughty. Remove it by all means. But surely don't choose to remove it at 8.40am on a Wednesday morning during rush hour, blocking off an entire lane the process. Thus causing cars to back up onto Deansgate and causing much more of a bloody obstruction than if the original obstruction had been left there in the first place. I mean for Pete's sake.
Lunacy
