Pride: The Big Weekend and Parade, Friday 23 August – Monday 26 August
Tens of thousands are expected to descend on Manchester’s renowned Gay Village this weekend to celebrate the climax of the Pride festivities. Over 100 bombastic floats will cruise from Beetham Tower on Deansgate to Albert Square before making their way along Princess Street to the finish point in the Village.
Performing on the Main Stage this weekend will be indie-pop-by-numbers band The Feeling, Grammy-nominated Sam Sparro (that Black and Gold guy with the tache), lemon-chuffer Kate Nash, X-factor debris Shayne Ward, Celebrity Big Brother and how-is-this-guy-even-famous winner Rylan and Mutya Keisha and Siobhan or MKS, the original line-up of the Sugababes before their management ditched the ginger one, then the chavvy one, then the bully.
There’ll also be the Village Market on Chorlton Street, plenty of food and drink stalls, the new Gaydio Dance Arena open till midnight on Bloom Street and the ominous sounding ManBears lurking around Sackville Gardens.
The parade is FREE. Tickets for the Big Weekend range from £5 - £26.
More information on Pride here.
The street sweep let out an agonized sigh
Art: ‘Heritage Hostage’ London Road Fire Station Exhibition, 4a Piccadilly Place, Thursday 22–Sunday 25 August, 1pm–5pm
What to do with the London Road Fire Station opposite Piccadilly Station is a hot topic in Manchester. The Britannia Hotel group have held several approved planning applications for the site but are yet to see any of them through. For more than quarter of a century this neo-classical Grade II listed building, built in 1906, has lain empty, unloved and decaying. This exhibition, organised by the recently formed Friends of London Road Fire Station, will feature artistic visions of the possible future uses for this iconic city centre building, contemporary artworks focusing on the building and historic artefacts including a reproduction of the original fire station blueprints.
A petition set up by the community group has gathered over 3000 signatories to save the building and they hope to drive and engage the people of Manchester to take up the good fight. Raise the people, seize the state and all that.
FREE entry. To get involved visit here.
London Road Fire Station and the only way into Mordor
Three Tours: Uninteresting Objects, Peterloo Massacre and Haunted Underworld. Saturday 24 August, noon, 1.30pm, 3.30pm
The editor, Jonathan Schofield, is conducting three tours around the city this Saturday on an epic guidefest. At noon he's starting with the Peterloo Massacre - including a little known cause of the 1819 event he's just discovered. Then at 1.30pm he's down in the dark scaring people with ghostly tales and unexplained mysteries in the Haunted Underworld. At 3.30pm he's taking people along Fountain Street and into the Northern Quarter looking at Uninteresting Objects.
Peterloo and Uninteresting Objects tours start outside Manchester Art Gallery on Mosley Street. The Haunted Underworld starts at the War Memorial in St Ann's Square. £8. Pay through the links above or just turn up.
What has this volcano got to do with Manchester? Find out on the Peterloo Walk
Theatre: National Youth Music Theatre: West Side Story, Victoria Warehouse, Thursday 22–Saturday 24 August, 7.30pm (also 2.30pm Friday and Saturday)
Nikolai Foster directs a cast of 40 performers supported by an orchestra of 35 youngsters drawn from all over the UK in what is arguably one of the most significant and best-loved musicals ever created. West Side Story transports Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet back to 1950s New York City, as two young idealistic lovers find themselves caught between warring street gangs, the Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks.
Set in Warehouse Project’s new home of Victoria Warehouse, this post-industrial space becomes a fantastic performance arena, if a little hot and stuffy (this is the first time I’ve come close to an ever-so theatrical over-heated feinting episode – and I went to a fair few MIFs). The cast are youthful, exuberant and achingly virile while the voice of the sixteen-year-old Amara Okereke (Maria) travels with such perfectly delivered potency that ears pricked all the way over on the Upper West Side of New York. She’s certainly one to watch.
Plenty of tickets still available from £15, keep an eye on our facebook tomorrow for FREE tickets.
Food and Drink: Bolton Food and Drink Festival, Bolton Town Centre, Friday 23 – Monday 26 August
When you think of fine food and drink, Bolton is unlikely to be the first place that pops into your head, you’d probably throw it in the same basket as Luton, or Grimsby (you can’t argue with £1.99 fish & chips though). However, Bolton’s four day food and drink festival draws in a multitude of high-profile and celebrity chefs, including Michael Caines MBE, James Martin, Aldo Zilli, those Great British bakers Berry and Hollywood and the always sprightly Andrew Nutter (read our big interview here), performing classes and demonstrations to the public as well as a host of market stalls, live entertainment and kids’ activities including fruit kebabs and biscuit decorating. Mine’s a bourbon.
Keep an eye out for Emperor of Manchester’s Yang Sing, Harry Yeung MBE, in his FREE dim sum demo on the Saturday at 1pm on Ashburner Street. He’s a bit of a character our Harry (read here).
All the events and goings-on at Bolton Food and Drink Festival are listed here.
Harry Yeung MBE, great chef, crap bouncer
Music: The Abattoir Blues Festival 2013, The Castle Hotel, Oldham Street, NQ, Saturday 24 – Sunday 25 August
Abattoir Blues Records are holding a two day music festival this bank holiday weekend at The Castle Hotel, a fine pillar of Manchester pubbery for over 200 years. For only £3.50 a day (less than your average pint and the same price as four Holland’s cheese & onion pasties from Tesco) you get the chance to see upwards of 22 blues and blues-inspired acts spread across the weekend including: The Rag n Bone Man, the New York Wannabes, Cactus Knife, the Dirty Vagrants and our personal favourite, The Genitals, fronted by frenetic rock’n’roll wolverine G.C.Holmes. Listen to The Genitals’ Humanimal here.
G.C. Holmes has Genitals... and a lovely barnet
Kids: Titan the Robot, Lowry Outlet, MediaCityUK, Saturday 24 – Monday 26 August
We humans tend to possess an innate fear of robots, machines and the like. I personally blame Space Odyssey, Terminator, iRobot, The Matrix, printers and parking meters, much like the Luddites of the 19th century we all possess a deeply repressed unease that one day they shall replace us all together, only sparing our species in order to harvest our organs for Biomass (even machines can’t solve depleted fossil fuels). Titan, on the other hand, is everything that’s good about machines; it’s the Henry vacuum cleaner of the robot world, lovable, comical and most importantly, it works. Most of the time.
Titan has appeared on TV the world over and has worked alongside Rihanna, Will Smith and Jackie Chan, and will be bringing it’s blend of comedy, music, dance and street theatre to the Lowry Outlet this bank holiday weekend. A great day for the kids, a bad day for Crouchy.
Performance times: 12pm, 1.30pm and 3pm each day. Info here.
Spinfest: Beer and Blues, The Oast House, Spinningfields, Sunday 25 August, 12pm – 8pm
So to the final Spinfest of the summer and that unavoidably slow and torturous descent back into the grey and bleakness. Sorry that was all a bit Cormac McCarthy of me. Oh well, as the kids are saying (you know, the ones that like Biebs, Miley, that other model, and would probably eat their own Gran for a lock of Harry Styles hair), YOLO. Meaning you only live once. So rejoice, for it may be the final Spinfest but it’s also probably the best one, for it’s all about the beer and the blues.
With blues of all flavours, John Clapper’s delta, James Sayers country, Tony Nicholls classic, The Nightcreatures brand of New Orleans , Terry Butters boogie and Nick Steed’s rock and blues, this free summer day festival promises to be more blue than the boys from the boyband Blue joining the the Blue Man Group and jamming with Sam Chatmon, Johnny Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in City shirts. Pretty blue then.
And if you have to bring the kids down (and let’s be honest, no one wants to) then there’ll be plenty of things to keep the little rascals entertained with the funtime activity bus, a sandpit, dressing-up, story corner and everyone’s favourite since 1949, Lego (one for the Dads).
FREE. For more info on SpinFest 2013 go here.
Oh how they loved beer
Drink: The Alchemist Lock In, Spinningfields, Sunday 25 August
We all love a 2-for-1: cheese, Alton Towers, glasses from Specsavers, briefs, cinema tickets, not so much twins, but cocktails? Yes. There’s been a tendency to poopoo cocktails of late, what with every bar going serving up a cocktail of sorts. Granted, when Wetherspoons started to dish out cocktail pitchers of ‘Purple Rain’, looking like someone liquefied Barney the Dinosaur and tasting a bit like licking Brazil, then cocktails lost their mystique somewhat.
But do them properly and they’re fantastic. Alchemist do them properly, and with all the theatrics of Christopher Biggins on the naughty salt. It’s no longer on the menu but order a Godfather, it’s a fantastic cocktail. The robust flavours of whisky joyfully swimming around an ice sphere with the sweetness of amaretto and blowtorched with a sprinkling of cherry brandy. Unlike 99% of cocktails, it looks terribly manly to boot.
The Alchemist
Museum: David Beckham exhibition, Manchester United Museum, next 12 months
As famed for his adolescent lexicon, hairstyles (cornrows though?), black painted finger nails, red cards, skirt, wife, love of pie and mash, tats, H&M pants, metatarsals, boots in the face and allegedly sticking one up that Nanny, David regularly outshone the whole world of football. But it is ultimately David’s ability on the pitch, his devout patriotism and genuine love of the game that will go down in history.
First signing for Manchester United as a schoolboy at the age of 14, he made his first-team debut for the club aged 17 in 1992, going on to win six Premier League titles, two FA Cups and that famous Champions League title in 1999. Some of David’s winner’s medals, shirts and even the training kit he wore as a teenager will feature amongst the exhibition. In addition there is also an interactive free-kick element to the exhibit. Apparently, he was quite nifty with a dead ball.
Market: Levenshulme Market, Levenshulme Train Station, Saturday 24 August, 10am - 4pm
This community run social enterprise sees its sixth outing this Saturday with funds raised used to help develop and breathe life back into Levenshulme's creaky high street. With an initial goal of attracting around 25 of the best produce, art, food and craft traders from around the region, the market has surpassed all expectations and now boats over 50 traders with long waiting lists for every market until the end of the year. There's sausage producer of the year, Bobby's Bangers, artisan bread, macaroons from Harvey Nics chef Alison Seagrave, Bud vintage clothes, Gin & Tonic vintage homewares, wine, entertainment, plants, cakes, pies and a kitchen sink.
We love a bit of community interest come good at Confidential. Whilst there you may as well pay a visit to the 'sanctuary' that is Trove(recently reviewed here).
Film: Morrissey 25: Live, Cornerhouse, Monday 26 August, 6.20pm
“I always thought my genitals were the result of some crude practical joke.” Quite. To mark the Lancastrian lad’s solo career spanning 25 years, this legacy concert film celebrates one of the world’s most iconic, enigmatic, smug, mysterious, mercurial and quiffy performers. Shot during an intimate gig to 1,800 fans in a Hollywood High School auditorium in LA (tickets sold out in 12 seconds), following a night on from a sold-out Staples Centre packing in 18,000, this film begins with fans declaring their unwavering devotion to the Smith’s frontman and the appeal of this unusual venue before covering the concert in full, with what seems like an endless supply of cameras and angles. True, Mozza may be showing signs of aging and only functioning at around 80% these days, but his epidemic popularity and quasi-religious appeal do not falter. He is the son and heir alright.
