‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #24 Chrissy

'All the unsung heroes who clean, underpin and keep the city going are my favourites...'

What’s your name?

Chrissy Brand

What do you do?

I have worked in many places in Manchester in my time, including half a dozen offices on Oxford Road alone. Other cities I’ve been fortunate to work in include London for six years, and places as diverse as Oxford and Helsinki, Brussels and Barnsley. Having worked in both the public and private sectors I am now very happily ensconced as Research and Knowledge Exchange Manager at the RNCM. I’m also a published writer with a book and a decade’s worth of magazine columns. All views below are my own.

Where do you live?

When I first lived in Manchester it was by lovely Chorlton Green in a shared cottage with four others right by The Beech (but sadly not the beach). Now I divide my time between a crash pad in the city centre and a family home at the southern end of the tramline. Best of both worlds, lucky me.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

Manchester became my home but it was nowt to do with the city's charms. Simply that I was living in London and fell in love. The love of my life was headed to Manchester to study so a year later I dropped everything and followed. It wasn't long before Manchester and the North cast its spell on me too and I have been here ever since.

But before that, the first time I came to the city was to visit a friend at Uni. I remember a long coach journey from London, staying in amazing old student halls in Whalley Range, an all night film showing which included The Blues Brothers and Magic Roundabout and then queuing at breakfast time for banquette seats at the Royal Exchange. Manchester was exciting and had a very different feel from the South. It made me realise how important it was to move away from the places you grow up in and to explore elsewhere and lay down new roots of your own.

What’s great about this city?

The diversity of people who have moved here from all over the world and now call Manchester home. And the fact you can talk to anyone, whatever age they are or image they project, if you feel in a sociable enough mood. There's an air of friendliness if you look for it.

The fact that the city is big and varied enough for so much art, culture and fun, yet small enough to feel you can be a big part of it. I love the Northern Quarter’s independence, the buzz of Chinatown at night, Castlefield on a sunny afternoon, watching a film or sporting event on the lawn at Spinningfields, the jazz festival and other music in the tents at Albert Square, and the magical Christmas markets that light up the whole city in December.

There’s also the variety of good food and drink, the ease of getting around by public transport, the history and beauty of the understated architectural gems, the sense of history, and the revamped waterways.

The amazing countryside all around makes for a perfect escape when you need it too – the Peaks, the Lakes, north Wales, the Cheshire ring canals…

What’s not so great?

The city centre is a wee bit on the small side with not quite enough ‘obvious’ sights to see for the visitor. Although you only have to look up to see street after street of honey-coloured stone and red brick dripping with the wealth from nineteenth-century merchants, so maybe I am being harsh.

More greenery in the city centre would be good, and the Castlefield beach should be permanent or at least May to September. More could be made of the River Irwell and the canals – they should be more of the beating heart of the city than the tucked away offshoots that they currently are, though I must admit great strides have been made since I first visited Manchester in the 1980s, making the canals and rivers more into a café society than a place to park your supermarket trolley.

While the quote ‘The streets of London are paved with gold’ is a lie (unless you work in the City), sadly in Manchester it is all too true to say the streets are paved with chewing gum. Why?

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

Too many to choose from really. I love the little carved statues and ornamental windows and ledges zand architrave whenever you look up above the first floor all over the city centre. Art Deco is a favourite era of mine but there's not much of that I can think of in Manchester.

But If I chose two, very different buildings, one would be the John Rylands Library. It looks like it’s made from Cheshire sandstone (is it?) and is so beautiful, especially when it takes on a magical glow with the late afternoon sun reflecting on its Deansgate frontage. I also like it because it’s all that is left in the area from that era. It reminds me of a castle, it stands out and holds its own amongst the twenty-first century shopping vibe that surrounds it.

Campfield Arcade is lovely too (funnily enough that used to house a library too). When you look at it as a whole from across the road it’s a beautiful example of Manchester’s famous red bricks, and it’s got that lovely old clock that reminds me of a more famous one outside Macy’s in Chicago. Inside is the lovely arcade itself where you can imagine you are eating alfresco in Spain, Greece or Italy. Good restaurants and bars and the culture from the Spanish Institute too. And rarely crowded.

India House and Lancaster House are fabulous neighbours on Princess Street and I had to mention them here as being buildings that give me a shiver of excitement whenever I look at them…

My least favourite is the ‘Berlin Wall’ in Piccadilly, although iy barely qualifies as architecture. It is ugly and stark. It should be a place for commissioned street art and ivy – a hanging gardens is what they should be aiming for. At least there’s a campaign underway to green it, though that seems to have gone a bit quiet.

The Arndale and what it represents, likewise the Trafford Centre, would be least favourite. Manchester has all this beautiful countryside, art and cool places to go and yet people spend their weekends and evenings shopping in American malls. I just don’t get it!

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

I’m not one for putting people on pedestals really. I’d say the exploited workforce that suffered under industrialisation in the nineteenth century should be favourites as they did so much for the city. And today, all the other unsung heroes who clean, underpin and keep the city going are my favourites.

But if we are talking famous Mancunians, obviously Morrissey for his views on the monarchy and for being veggie, and for most things he says really. I place his music second to his views these days.

The Pankhursts, although the suffragettes who would get my vote are the trio of Annie Briggs, Evelyn Manesta and Lillian Forrester. They demonstrated at the City Art gallery 100 years ago, in 1913. ‘We broke the glass of some pictures as a protest but we did not intend to damage the pictures’. In court, supporters in the gallery unfurled a Votes for Women banner. The full history, or herstory, is at the ever excellent Radical Manchester blog.

Alison Uttley who was to Lancashire and Cheshire what Beatrix Potter was to Cumbria but with less reward and fame. She went to Manchester University and died in 1976. Little Grey Rabbit lives on…

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

I like Dimitri’s on Deansgate and if I’m in the right mood Font and Gorilla too. Apotheca looks fabulous but it's been ages since I was there.

If I just want somewhere nearby, The Molly House can be good – enough of an atmosphere but quiet enough to chat. I'd like to try some of those pubs in Northern Quarter that look like old men's pubs but seem to now be hangouts for young creative types. I'd probably need someone to take me there though.... I like the look of Cuba Cafe Bar too but need to pluck up courage to go in!

My preferred venues would be Band on the Wall and the Deaf Institute, but if the right band is playing I'd go anywhere. I’m waiting for Flunk to come over from Norway to play Manchester, or All India Radio from Australia, or Dave Dark and the Sharks. And I wish The Egg would head north too.

My coffee shop would be North Tea Power. Oklahoma is fabulous too. My favourite cafes are Earth and Eighth Day. Bistro 1847 would be my choice for an evening meal.

Last year I had a fellow blogger and her family visit from the USA and I had to think about how best to show them Manchester in an evening. We had a busy walking tour! From Piccadilly Station we went down Granby Row past the Vimto statue along to Albert Square, Lincoln Square, through the ginnels to St Ann's Square and the Royal Exchange Theatre. Then onto the medieval quarter of the cathedral and Shambles Square, and into Victoria Station. Then back through the Northern Quarter to see all the independent bars, record stores and restaurants, and the innovative and rotating street art. I would have added Spinningfields and Castlefield if there was time.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

A museum of popular Manchester music, some city centre tree-lined boulevards, and a tower like the Space Needle in Seattle or the Eiffel Tower in France or Blackpool Tower.  

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

It would need to be a long day to implement all the changes I have planned for my fellow Mancunians! As the clock chimed midnight I would unroll my sepia scroll and get the town crier to proclaim the following:

A congestion charge on cars coming into the city. Pedestrianising great swathes of the city, planting trees and opening roof gardens to grow crops. Taking over the Old Fire Station and converting it to public space of studio spaces for artists and musicians, galleries and a children's playgrounds, cheap housing and shops.

Banning fast food shops, implementing a living wage for all who work in the area. A heavily subsidised free public transport system paid for by a tax on multinational chains that have shops in the city.

Bringing back the statue of Oliver Cromwell that was at Victoria station and was decamped to Wythenshawe Park -and putting it in a prominent space. Commissioning new statues, including one of the Pankhursts and Suffragettes, one of Marx and Engels and another of animals in commemoration to all those murdered daily.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

These three Mancunians would have all something interesting to say: Political cartoonist Polyp, Zoe at the Vegetarian Society, and Ursula at Eighth Day.

Chrissy loves Manchester and the surrounding countryside so much that she blogs about it daily at Mancunian Wave. She can also be found on Twitter @chrissycurlz and Instagram.

On writing and running and Reena

Like books sometimes do, Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running fell into my lap just when I needed it. I was working on the first draft of my novel The Shakespeare Girl – my final portfolio piece for a Masters in Creative Writing – and I’d signed up to do the Great Manchester 10 Kilometre Run with a group of friends at work. We wanted to raise money for cancer charities on behalf of our much-loved friend and colleague Reena, who was fighting against non-Hodgkins lymphoma. When Reena lost her battle with that illness in November 2012, the run became something positive for us to aim towards, to honour Reena and the people who had caredfor her. It was a long time into treatment before we knew Reena’s chances of recovery were slim. She died at The Christie Hospital aged 33.

A regime of writing and running happened under a good deal of sadness. Early in the mornings, powered by stress and determination, I started to run. In the evening I came home from the office and worked on my novel. I was exhausted but oddly contented. Then I happened on Murakami’s book, which chronicles the novelist’s obsession with running whilst intertwining autobiographical anecdotes about teaching, marriage, and writing his novels. It had an immediate impact, encouraging me to run and write even when I felt too tired to do either, and persuading me that there could be some kind of fruitful relationship between the two.

Murakami started running at 33, an age that suddenly sounded very young. I had never knowingly run for longer than 2 km. At school I was a sprinter, and even middle distances left me anxious and bored. But I liked to cycle and swim, I was fitter than I thought, and I soon began making good progress with a ‘Couch to 5K’ running app. Before long I was running 6 km at a time and stitching together the difficult plot/sub-plot of my novel in my head as I ran. Just as I was finding a complementary relationship between running and writing for myself, I had an accident and broke my hand. The impact whenever I tried to run caused a jolt in the bones of my finger that was agonising. My training had to stop. I couldn’t type (the cast went from my little finger to my elbow) so I had to use voice recognition software for work and for my fiction. It proved to be an amazing piece of technology that I continued to use from time to time, even after my arm came out of the cast, but it was slow going in the beginning and eventually I had to get an extension to my deadline.

In the office, work piled up. I couldn’t type or do any overtime and almost every email in my inbox seemed like bad news. I speed-edited my novel and submitted it. I didn’t feel any of the relief I was expecting. ‘You’ve just sent your three year old off to day-care for the first time, that’s why,’ said my boyfriend Oisín, trying to rationalise my anxiety at letting the novel go. Just like the teacher who gets sick on the last day of term, a low-lying cough I’d just about been containing spilled over into a chest infection. I worked through it with barely a day off sick, all the while enviously reading about Murakami’s epic runs through Athens and Boston and Tokyo while I was prescribed one inhaler after another and every whiff of pollution sent me into a rattling cough.

Then the cast came off and I began running again, tentatively, with Ventolin and a steroid inhaler. My route took me around the lake at Chorlton Water Park where there were no fumes to trigger my lung irritation (now diagnosed as post-viral bronchial hypersensitivity). With the race only weeks away I decided to invest in a pair of proper running shoes. I was given a running test and was offered trainers with additional support for ‘over pronation’, which is basically running too heavily on the inside of the foot. I began training in my bouncy new techno-shoes. Then overnight I was struck with identical acute pains on the insides of my knees. I went from running 7.5 km with a rucksack on my back, to having Nurofen for breakfast and getting off the bus backwards to avoid shooting pains in my legs.

With a week to go to the run I went to see a physiotherapist about the pain that wouldn’t go away. It took a matter of minutes for him to ascertain that I wasn’t an over-pronator at all. The corrective trainers had damaged my perfectly normal tendons. I only had time for two sessions of ultrasound and massage before the day of the race arrived. My sponsorships had been generous but I was certain I wouldn’t be able to run. I felt like a fraud. My friend and colleague Lianne then reminded me in passing that in the hospital she had mentioned to Reena that we had all signed up to do the run, and that we would be doing so wearing moustaches to honour the iconically macho Ron Burgundy from Anchorman, one of Reena’s favourite movies. I decided I was going to start and finish the Great Manchester Run even if I had to walk the entire route. Some things are more important than running, and even Murakami would agree with that.

On the day of the race I stretched, freeze-sprayed my knees, took Nurofen Express, put on my elastic knee supports and joined my friends at the starting line. After the pistol I stopped and started then stopped again, walked a little way, then jogged, then stopped, walked some more,  and tried to block the pain. It became apparent I was having a different race to most of the other competitors. To start with, the opening 2 km was the hardest for me, but no doubt the easiest for everyone else. My knees took forever to loosen up and my opening gait was somewhere between a lollop and a shuffle. I couldn’t get comfortable or find my stride. When the course went uphill I was relieved, much of my training had been done on an incline. When we headed downhill, my knees buckled in pain while runners poured past me as their momentum increased.

Then, somehow, my knees found a motion that suited them and a fainter thud of pain became gradually manageable. Murakami, writing about marathon running and rendering our much shorter race a mere warm-up in comparison, had written:

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it any more.  The hurt part is unavoidable, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner…

I thought about Reena and everything she’d been through and I tried to remember Murakami’s exact phrasing as I came up to 5 kilometres, then 6, then 7, with brass bands and DJs playing at the side of the road, and a sea of brightly coloured T shirts ahead of me. I am running for my Dad, read the messages on the back. I am running for my son, for my sister, for my friend. When I ran through the blessedly cool shower I had tears in my eyes. For the first time ever, I didn’t get a stitch. When it got too hot, clouds covered the sun. With a kilometre left to go I threw in my lot and started to sprint. As I took off, a young lad at the side of the road shouted, ‘Go on Greg!’ (my name was on my shirt) and so I did. I hit the finish line at the Hilton Hotel at 1:11:11 and I made sure I was thinking about Reena when I crossed it.

You can still sponsor me for The Christie here.

‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #23: Pam

'Wesley Snipes is out of jail now so he's probably available, that would make living here just that little bit better...'

What’s your name?

Pam Van-Damned

What do you do?

I do many different things... from performing at clubs with creatures of the night, to photographing bands that pass through the city. My main love and path in life is photography, it really does rule over all the other loves that I have. I have a passion for working with people who I admire in some way (music, movies, fashion) so I try and find a way to photograph them whenever they are here. My most recent photography gigs were with Arthur Brown, Lydia Lunch and Paddy Considine... two at gigs and one at a film screening. One shoot planned, two unplanned. I try to keep up to date with whoever is doing something here and find a way to contact or connect with whoever I want to photograph. I really do get obsessed sometimes, but it's a good thing... I just get excited about fucking EVERYTHING! I'm also part of Tranarchy, a collective of drag queens, artists, performers, chaos makers and switchblade sisters. We put on parties, film screenings and perform around the city... anything from singing Judas Priest songs with a bunch of warriors before a screening of Mad Max II at a drive-in cinema, to putting on the Andrew W.K. after party with Cherie Lily. It's all crazy and wild and fun... we just want people to express themselves, get messy and freak out to disco and heavy metal. I'm curating our next film screening, it's an Action Movie Marathon showing Predator, Escape From New York, Robocop, Cobra, The Terminator and Road House. All nighter, baby! I've watched Robocop on repeat for longer than 12 hours before, so this will be a walk in the park for me...

 Where do you live?

I've recently moved to Salford with two men that I now class as family, my absolute father figures. Salford is perfect, I'm totally sold already. Before here I lived in Rusholme, and before that Withington. I do like that side of Manchester and have a lot of hang out spots that I'll still go to, but I won't miss the bus route. No fucking way. I was reaching Patrick Bateman mental murder levels with the students... and I don't even care that I'm saying this. I hate sitting on buses with students. I'm still getting lost at the moment because I've not lived in Salford long, and I recently found some really weird subway art that ended up in my nightmares... full flesh coloured mermaids with tiny heads. Terrifying. But I know I'm on the right road home when I walk past the church near my house because the massive plastic Jesus outside the door always shocks me back to life and I walk faster to get away from the fucking thing. Put it away! That all sounds quite scary, but really living in Salford has been a dream so far. I love a lot of the old buildings here and have spotted a ton of locations to use in new photoshoots already, I can't wait to explore this place.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I was born in Manchester... my mum and dad owned a scrapyard here for a while and a lot of my family were born here. It's just me, my mum and my brother now, and they live in Rochdale where I was raised from the age of five. Rochdale gets a lot of stick and even though some bad shit did happen to me there, it was also a great place to grow up, if you were adventurous with it. When I first got into photography I didn't have to go far to find abandoned buildings, woods and lakes to shoot in. I still use a lot of the same locations now. You just can't find that everywhere, old warehouses full of hidden passages and smashed bottles. I love that shit! I didn't really know anyone in Rochdale though, and I wanted to be near my friends and get involved with everything that was happening, and also start doing my own stuff too. So when I moved out I decided to get closer to Manchester because it was the natural thing to do, with most of my work and life dotted around the city. I love doing what I do in my hometown, and I'm proud to have been raised here. It's a big thing for me because my family history is scattered in the place that I create, and I can feel it when I experience things here. It's a special place to be. I don't think I could ever live central though, I need to be around big parks and places where I can get high, climb trees and break bones... city living makes me hurl, sorry friends!... (not sorry).

What’s great about this city?

The people. It's the people, hands down. People from Manchester, people from other places, people from nowhere, people from the wild side. I've met all kinds of people here, people that embrace this city and make a difference. From drag queens to art curators, teachers and bakers. I think it's a good sign when you know a lot of different people doing a lot of different things in one place at the same time. It hasn't always been so alive and exciting for me though, I remember having shit all to do but watch movies and imagine having friends that I could create with, party with and live a movie life with. I'm movie obsessed, I'm a dreamer... I always want things to be a vision, I just can't help thinking that way. So sometimes things get sad and tough, but I fight through it all like a warrior... and living here makes things less sad and less tough, because I'm surrounded by such brilliant people... flawless queens, fearless women, fabulous men and every little thing in between. So right now it's the people because it's down to them that exciting things are happening and I can live a half-movie life. I also have my first major solo-exhibition happening and I'm beyond happy that it's taking place here. It contains portraits and live images that I've taken of bands/musicians including Crystal Castles, Lene Lovich, Gossip, The Damned, Patrick Wolf, Debbie Harry, KISS, Amanda Palmer and more, with most of them shot in and around the city.

What’s not so great?

THE PEOPLE! Just kidding... The not-so-great things are the most boring things, and I hate thinking about boring things. No decent jobs, it's a small place, and sometimes you just wanna break out and sit on a beach or get picked up by Kurt Russell in a muscle car. Seriously, where are all the guys with muscle cars? I'm putting a call out right here right now. This is obviously the worst part about living here, because my head is in the clouds and I wanna be picked up in a muscle car. I wanna drive that muscle car through billboards and do tons of stunts. But we can start with a rad guy with a rad car. If you could just pick a few American men up and drop them around my house, that would be great too. Wesley Snipes is out of jail now so he's probably available, that would make living here just that little bit better.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I definitely don't have one favourite Manchester building. I really love a ton of stuff here, but half the stuff I love I know nothing about. I know that I should research places that I love, but I don't... I just usually say 'I really love that building' and hope that one of my many, well-informed friends gives me a little education. And then I forget and everything becomes 'that building' again. But when I was a teenager I really loved a place called Chamber House. It was behind my high school and was a huge, broken down mansion full of wreckage aside from a marble staircase that lead to nowhere, the steps just ended. And then you were upstairs, and outside because most of the roof was gone. It was the right side of creepy and in the grounds around the mansion we once found big, huge plastic dinosaurs that had their heads chopped off. I don't really know what happened to the remains, but apparently they started to sink into the ground and had to be removed. I heard that it used to be super grand and bad-ass, I would have loved to have seen it when it wasn't a half-burnt out Goosebumps set. I always skived school in there, so Chamber House was never 'that building', it always had a name.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

I think I'm just gonna pick who I fancy the most, and that's Ian McShane. My mum worked with his dad when she was younger, and I only found that out because I told her that I fancied Ian McShane and I wanted him to wink at me because it would make my head explode with sexiness. He is one of the greatest actors out there and I could watch him non-stop, his eyes are mesmerising and he just has a certain way about him that I find incredibly appealing. Plus he was in Hot Rod which is one of the funniest films ever, I watch it all the time. He's a Blackburn Blackbeard and as much as I do love a lot of Mancunians and people born in and around here, he is definitely right up there. He is just so SEXY.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

I don't really go out for drinks like people go out for drinks. Usually because I'm pretty skint and I prefer to go on full nights out rather than blow all my party money on the odd few drinks here and there. I like to save the party. But when I go out at night it's always Bollox, Drunk At Vogue, Off The Hook and I recently went to a new drag night, Cha Cha Boudoir, which is showcasing performers from all over in the form of American style drag tipping. With Tranarchy, we get to jump in and out of a lot of these nights and everyone supports each other throughout this... collectives obviously create craziness, and everyone wants to do different things. But then different collectives are born, new nights start appearing and everyone just jumps in and out of each others parties... it's never-ending fun right now. I'm also a movie obsessive, so I have the monthly pass for Cineworld at Parrs Wood and it's the best thing ever. Me and my friend go on full blown cinema days where we don't come out til night, armed with snacks and pre-made joints. It's like a day out. Get up, get out, get high, get lost. I couldn't live without that cinema pass, it's £14 a month and you can watch as many movies as you like... it's absolutely my favourite thing to do. We also go adventuring in Fletcher Moss (Didsbury) if we have a break in movies, it's the most beautiful place and we do lots of daft stuff and completely let go whenever we are there... usually by playing Jurassic Park.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

We have a serious lack of cinemas. Old Hollywood cinemas, or beat up 1980's cinemas... the cinemas that I read about, and that used to be here. We really don't have enough, and as much as there are way more film screenings happening, which is perfect and wonderful, I still crave a big screen and darkness. I think if Manchester was home to a late night, red-lit cinema then I'd definitely meet my dream date, watch The Lost Boys and drink a lot of beer.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

...be the worst choice, but also the best. I read that people have raised enough money to make a RoboCop statue in Detroit, so I'd use all of my Mayor power to get a RoboCop statue here... but it's my jawline and lips, so to other people it would look kinda weird but not weird enough for people to comment on, yet I know that it's really me under there... and I'm RoboCop. So it's the worst decision in terms of everything else in the world because I'd be a shit Mayor, but I'd also be a RoboCop statue in the middle of town. It's a fair trade, I think. Then I'd just sit in my office and look at the statue and smile to myself until you all got rid of me. Or kept me as Mayor, depending on your taste in movies.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Ian McShane. Give him my details. And my knickers.

Pam's current exhibition, 'City Of The Van Damned', produced by Two Little Birds, can be seen until Tuesday the 7th of May at 2022 NQ, details here. 

Propeller presents 'Twelfth Night' and 'The Taming Of The Shrew' at The Lowry

Another ambitious double-header comes to town from Propeller Theatre Company. In hot pursuit of the twin outing (no pun intended) of 2011's 'Richard III' and 'The Comedy Of Errors', this time around the all-male players present 'Twelfth Night' and 'The Taming Of The Shrew', playing on alternate nights and a matinee at The Lowry. An all-male cast they may be, but that's the only thing remotely 'traditional' about the company. Propeller's approach to the texts is both irreverent and devoted, and their productions offer other such rewarding contradictions; slapstick yet wonderfully choreographed, raucous but impeccably musical (all the cast seem to be accomplished musicians alongside everything else). Whether any common threads or new revelations will be drawn out between two very disparate plays over two consecutive nights' performance remains to be seen, but I'll be attending with a very open mind.

'Twelfth Night' plays on the 9th and 13th of April, 'The Taming Of The Shrew' on the 10th and 13th of April.

Don't forget to check out The Shakespeare Girl next week for my reviews.

Tickets are available here.

‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #22: Israel

‘There’s a sort of ‘against all odds’ vibe to this place, there’s a culture of acceptance but also of independence….’

Photograph by Malc Stone.

What’s your name?

Israel-Winter Delgado

What do you do?

I’ve tried a little bit of everything, shop work, writing for a fashion magazine, partying. But I’ve just started a course that should finally get me into University to study Public Relations.

Where do you live?

I’m living in Altrincham at the moment, it’s a Cheshire postcode but technically it falls within Manchester so it’s the best of both worlds while I’m studying really.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I’ve lived here my whole life, but I’ve done a lot of moving around. As a teenager I never really felt like I had a home except Manchester. It was never any specific place, just the streets and the buildings and the lights. I never spent more than a week anywhere at a time. I used to just disappear into the city, it drove my parents wild but there was always something I loved about never being tied down to one place. My friends and I would spend a couple of nights in a hotel or a friend’s place or a squat or guys’ houses. There were nights we had no money and we just slept rough or queued up for hostels. Those years were fluid, nothing was constant. People came and went and home was wherever you laid your head, home was just Manchester. I have a tattoo that I got done when I was seventeen, I was drunk and it was spur of the moment when a friend offered to do it, but it was something that I’d been thinking about for a while. It’s lyrics from the City & Colour song ‘Coming Home’, worked into the art from his first record and it says: ‘And hell you know it ain’t worth shit’. The whole song is Dallas Green listing the places he’s been to, but none of it matters because he’s coming home to the person he loves. It’s something deeply personal to me; I’ve never really felt at home in any one place and the tattoo represents that ongoing search for my one true home. It’s a reminder that no matter where I go, or what I’ve done, that Manchester has been a home to me.

What’s great about this city?

It’s been a home when I had none. But it’s not just home in that the streets and bars and hotels were my home. Manchester is such a nurturing city, and there is such history here. Some of the greatest bands, clubs, thinkers, writers, and people in every field have come from this town. I’m proud to be from somewhere that has been pushing the boundaries in so many ways for centuries. There’s an environment of acceptance here, I’ve grown up in a city where completely different groups of people, different cultures and subcultures all exist in their own sort of harmony. There’s a sort of ‘against all odds’ vibe to this place, there’s a culture of acceptance but also of independence. So many times I’ve seen minority groups that anywhere else would be mortal enemies defending each other and standing up for individuality. It’s something I’ve genuinely never seen anywhere else.

What’s not so great?

I think Manchester’s stuck in a rut at the moment; we have this incredible city that’s given so many great things to the world but there’s this massive question of ‘What’s next?’ A lot of the city is being modernised with buildings like Beetham Tower that just don’t really fit with the city. It’s like this directionless modernisation for the sake of modernisation. There haven’t really been many interesting developments in the culture scene, there are a lot of small club nights but there’s nothing big and new. I think the city just needs something new and fresh, it needs to be revitalised. There’s also a lot of history for me here. I’m planning on moving away next year because having lived here my whole life every street has a memory. There’s a lot of dark shit that went down here for me, parts of my life that a lot of people don’t know about, and in a way that’s personal to me there are memories that I need to get away from before I can come back. I love Manchester but maybe I’m just too jaded now, it’s a great city and I think it’s sad that I’m driven to a point where I don’t feel I can live here anymore. I will definitely come back one day, there’s just a lot of shit I need to get away from so that I can move on.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I’d have to say The Royal Exchange. I love the Victorian architecture in the Classical style and the arcade between Cross Street and St Anne’s Square is home to the tobacconist’s which is one if my favourite stores in the city. What really sets The Royal Exchange apart for me and makes it my favourite building is the theatre inside. I’ve seen so many productions there and the theatre in the round space is one of my favourites. I love the Apollo 11-esque theatre module suspended from the main columns in the hall. The contrast between the intricate Victorian architecture and the modern engineered theatre below the hall’s main glass dome is, I think, an incredibly successful one. Pictures don’t do it justice, you have to visit and see a production there, the atmosphere is unique and it’s a space I just love being around.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

I don’t think I could say, there are so many great people that have come from this city. Tony Wilson and Emmeline Pankhurst have to be up there, I mean one of them essentially gave the world Joy Division and the other is largely responsible for women’s rights in this country. I will say though it’s a special thing to be a Mancunian and a lot of people who aren’t from here don’t understand that. There isn’t really a sense of national pride in Manchester; it’s the city not the country that gives us our heritage and our unyielding sense of pride.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

I always loved Bar Below on Canal Street. I was never really into the whole scene there, but Bar Below was something special. I don’t know what it is now, it’s changed names and hands a few times since I last went a couple of years ago, it’s a shame. It’s a tiny basement space but it was so well decorated and run, it was intimate and elegant with a couple of sofas, a short bar and some of the friendliest bar staff. I had some great times there, just having a drink and meeting people without the queeny pop music vibe in the rest of the village, there was this dope guy on the bar who always played Blondie records and I remember this Debbie Harry shirt he wore a bunch of times. I miss that place.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Like I said earlier, we need something new and fresh. Manchester’s still a pioneering city but it’s been that way for so long it’s kind of passé. We have a lot of shit happening that doesn’t happen in other cities, and some really great individual scenes but Manchester has always been that way so it’s nothing new. It needs something even bigger and even more ground-breaking, especially with the destruction of places like Legends on Whitworth Street. There are a lot of people who I’m sure would lynch me for saying this but Legends had become stale, but it is sad to see it go. It’s an historic part of the city and it’s disappearing to make way for a hotel, it’s like the Hacienda story all over again. Inch by inch the concrete evidence of this great city is being eroded for what, hotels and apartment blocks? It’s time we created new cultural landmarks and gave Manchester some new history, and you don’t have to be a born and bred Mancunian to do that.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Pass an act to ban Ian Simpson from getting any more development contracts in Manchester. Parkway Gate student accommodation isn’t bad, but Beetham Tower is horrible and the plans for Sharp Street, First Street and a lot of other areas in the city are very similar. Planning permission is approved for a lot of his designs already and soon Manchester will just be full of tall, emotionless, cantilevered glass shit. I would definitely stop him or whoever is approving these plans, Manchester is a city with soul and it doesn’t need soulless modernisation for the sake of it.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Ian Simpson, I’d like to find out why he seems to hate Manchester so much! Vendetta aside I think it’d be interesting to see university students’ answers to these questions. All my answers have come from a place of living here my whole life, I never really chose to be here and the city has informed the person I am today. I’d like to get a whole new perspective from someone to whom the city is fresh and new, see what it is that draws them to current day Manchester from the outside.