The other day in the shop where I work, I was asked by a young German girl, “Why did you come to Germany? It is bad, or?”. I told her that at the moment it was preferable to England. Although I was being sincere, that’s not entirely true. Because when I came to Stuttgart for my gap year, it was not England I was getting away from – it was Manchester.

Having been born and raised in Manchester for eighteen years, I suppose you would say I’m a fully-fledged Mancunian. Only by birth, I assure you. For I have as little Mancunian in me as I do Tanzanian (at least as far as I know), and although it may appear on the surface as if Manchester has been kind to me, I despise the place. I’m using this review to get a few things off my chest. Forgive me if I rant.

Culturally, Manchester is a city living in the past. During the acid house revolution, it was a centre for innovation, invention and experimentation. 808 State were a Manchester band who took the original concepts of house and twisted and tweaked them to create their own, thoroughly Mancunian blend of dance music. A similar thing was done to punk about twelve years previously, by bands like the Buzzcocks, Joy Division and later New Order, who more or less invented house music five years before it became known as such, with their 1982 classic, ‘Blue Monday’. But this was years ago. House music is long gone, along with any interesting Mancunian music. Yet the locals still like to think of it as a trendy city.

Physically, Manchester is ugly. From the engrained grime on the pavements to the awkward architecture of the City Centre, to the perpetually grey skies, Manchester is not an attractive town. Because of the Coucil’s “regeneration scheme”, which has been in place ever since The Big Bang (or the 1996 IRA bomb, as it is also known), great concrete monstrosities keep popping up all over the place – usually in the form of that great bastion of cosmopolitan capitalism, the Shopping Centre. Sometimes it’s a multiplex cinema, which will get shut down in three years’ time because it shows the same films as the four other multiplex cinemas in the City Centre, and there just aren’t enough cinema-goers to go round. It doesn’t matter anyway, because it is around that time that the shiny white concrete building will become stained with muck and diesel smoke, and will be an Eyesore. Manchester has a lot of those.

The roads in the centre of town are organised into blocks for navigational ease, but the streets are so narrow that the tall buildings on either side have a claustrophobic effect. The sun could be beating down on the city above but from down here any natural light is all but blocked out. That is enough to depress anyone who has to work here every day, for a start. And that’s before they’ve bumped into any Mancunians.

Now, people from Manchester are, on the whole, not that bad. If you’re lucky enough to meet one in the pub who is either over the age of 25 or an immigrant from the South, you’ll probably find them to be perfectly nice people. But whatever you do, just try not to meet a young person from the inner city. These are usually quite easily identifiable by their baseball cap, tracksuit trousers, Rockport boots, constant frown and primate swagger, to make them look ‘ard. This description applies to both males and females, with the addition of classy ‘wet look’ hair for the girls. Until recently, ‘scallies’, as they are known, only consisted of white youths. But now, it seems that a minority of second-generation Asian lads have got in on the act, and there seems to be a kind of ongoing feud between some young white and Asian men. This is no joke, and is another reason to get out of Manchester. Whatever you do, do not get involved in any kind of debate on this matter – rational or otherwise – with a scally of any creed.

While we’re on the subject of scallies, I may as well mention the crime rate in Manchester. Although we are constantly being told that crime in England is falling, fear, of crime is going up, and many of the crimes that occur in Manchester just don’t get reported. These are what they call ‘petty’ crimes – street robbery, mugging, that sort of thing. One way I have had to change in Stuttgart is to stop assessing everyone I walk past in the street on risk factor. In Manchester, old ladies score very low; dodgy looking teenagers in baseball caps rate quite high.

But still they come. Manchester has the largest student population in Europe, many of whom come from cosy middle class setups in Berkshire, or its northern equivalent, Cheshire, attracted by the Mancunian clubs, its ‘nightlife’ and, of course, that ellusive Northern Wit. TV companies film police dramas there. And of course, there is that film, 24 Hour Party People, about the Manchester music scene from the ‘birth of punk to the death of acid house’ – a perfect metaphor for the way the city is thought of now. Manchester was once the rave capital of the North. Now it is the gay capital of the North. Energy and innovation have been traded for superficiality and camp.

The Clubs and Wonderful Nightlife

Manchester has many clubs, many of which are dire. The majority of them, I think it’s fair to say, are aimed solely at weekend clubbers, who generally consist of suburban schoolgirls and men with gel in their hair and lurid coloured shirts. These, I presume, play the usual pop/handbag disco pap (for girls to jig around their handbags to). The rest are either outlets for the angry Macclesfield youth (heavy metal clubs), or churches for their false idol, hip-hop, which people in Manchester (and here in Stuttgart, no less) seem to think is the new musical revolution to get excited about (the fact that it’s over twenty years old doesn’t appear to bother them). There is also a growing skate-punk scene, the followers of which tend to get swallowed up by the metal clubs; although I find neo-punks generally more pleasant – if not a bit more intelligent – than your average metalhead. There was also a club – Planet K – which opened up to cater for more alternative tastes; but I think that by ‘alternative’ they actually meant dance and hip-hop, for it soon became a place where ‘Bugged Out’ events were promoted constantly, but where Mouse On Mars had to cancel because no-one from the club actually bothered to try and sell the tickets (official reason for the cancellation: ‘lack of interest’ – despite dozens of enquiries at the box office in Virgin Megastore as well as at the record shop over the road from the club). This was another deciding factor in moving from Manchester.

Sport and the Suburbs

There are two football teams in Manchester: Manchester City and Manchester City Reserves. The big team who wear red and win everything are situated just outside Manchester, in a suburb called Stretford. I was unfortunate enough not only to be a Man. City fan, but to be a Man. City fan at school in Stretford.

Going to school in the Mancunian suburbs (once called ‘Greater Manchester’ – I have no idea why) was not a pleasant experience. I found that of suburban Mancunians, many of the people’s ignorance and fear of anything from the city is matched only by their sheer audacity and downright cheek when proclaiming that they are in Manchester. Many of them support Manchester United – it is their local team. A much worse specimen of football ‘fan’, however, is the person who lives in central Manchester, is not Irish, but supports Man. U. These people are not to be trusted, along with about a million Chinese people and Angus Deayton.

A couple of good things that can be said about Manchester

Despite the constant erection of multiplex cinemas, the Cornerhouse – Manchester’s only arthouse cinema and a sanctuary during my last years as a Manchester resident – remains as one of the few purveyors of culture in the city (especially since the art gallery closed down permanently for building work), along with Piccadilly Records - just about the only place in Manchester where you will find any decent music. And while not culturally rich and musically quite lame, Jilly’s on a Thursday night will provide you with Eighties post-punk & pop to dance to, plenty of women to chat up, and the alcoholic means to do both of those things at £1 per bottle of warm Carlsberg. There’s also a skate-punk room, but just make sure you avoid the main room, except for when shifting between the Eighties and Punk rooms – heavy metal anthems abound.


Recommended: No

Best Time to Travel Here: Never