Month: January 2026

Manchester Venues 194 to 195

On the Friday of 29th August 2025, I unsurprisingly yet again sallied into Manchester for a gig, but this time I had an hour of opportunity before I was meeting up with a pal for a pre-gig aperitif. So, I thought I would embark on a Jimmy treasure hunt to see if I could tick off any other venues not previously attended. As a result, I chose an area of town near to Deansgate that I do not visit on a regular basis on my other evening gig jaunts.

I alighted the train at Manchester Oxford Road station and gravitated to the left down Oxford Road into Peter Street were residing opposite Albert Hall is Manchester Impossible. This establishment was previously Bar 38 and possibly prior to that Pizza Express, but my memory is a tad hazy on that latter reference.

Bar 38. Image Credit restaurantsofmanchester.com

In 2005, Bar 38 was one of the locations alongside the Metropolitan University Students Union venue to stage a four night residency for an American TV programme called Total Request Live, though I have no personal recollection of that show. The premise of it was that at the chosen locations they played music videos and staged live music in the venues. It was compered by the likes of Trevor Nelson and Zane Lowe with acts playing including Editors, Mystery Jets, Kooks and the rapper Kenzie.

After a couple of years of inactivity after Bar 38 disappeared, Impossible opened in 2017. The new owner was Aaron Mellor who was the manager of Tokyo Industry’s (not the old Tokyo Joes night club in Preston!). He brought to the table his pedigree of being the UK’s largest privately owned nightclub operator having previously run popular club nights in Ibiza, New York and London.

The three floor site undertook a £3m renovation with the 500 capacity basement named the Theatre of Impossible, which was designed with the intention being a 21st century version of a nightclub, hence the theatre title. It came complete with a large dancefloor and long bar and had opening hours of between 10pm and 4pm at weekends.   

Impossible Bar. Image Credit Visit Manchester

The mezzanine area upstairs is a gin area badged with the informal name of ‘Ginpossible’, with an eighteen page menu listing a choice of over ninety gins. They also apparently have a cryogenic freezer, one of only three in the world, which has the capability to freeze alcohol to minus 74 degrees and thus creates edible cocktails! 

The ground floor is a bar and eatery with a 280 capacity where they serve tucker until 9pm. They also stage live music with slightly pretentious names such as Industry Thursday and First Call Friday. They have a large south facing outside terrace space on the Great Northern complex side of the building.

On the night in question, I was mulching past this area and saw a punter having a smoking break and through the open door I could hear some tuneage. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth I adopted my scarlet pimpernel pose and tailgated them through the door. I leaned innocuously on a side wall and watched a couple of tracks of drifting loungecore from a singer called Sally before leaving via the same route.

I am sure you can gain easy standard entrance via the front door, but I am going to generate some poetic licence here and retain the unjustified notion of me grabbing an ‘illegal’ cheeky bonus gig and venue!

I then headed over to Bridge Street, which is located off Deansgate, and which takes you down to Salford Central station. On the west side of the road is the appropriately named Manchester B Lounge at the Bridge. It first opened its doors back in 1808 under the moniker of The Pack Horse.

The Bridge. Image Credit todobares.com

More recently it has had spells as The Bridge Street Tavern and then morphed into the award winning gastro pub The Bridge which under the chef Mr Owen-Brown was renowned for Lancashire sourced grub. The latest incarnation was instigated by the same folk who introduced the B Lounge at the Brunswick pub over near Piccadilly station.   

The pub has a traditional layout and a long thin bar area and in the upstairs space there is a dining area and a function room for hire. This area also provides to a small roof top garden space. The latest version of the pub now stages live music and when I visited there was a local singer called Tania performing some jaunty folk tunes.  

Liverpool Venues 25 to 27

Firstly, this week I will look at the latest hostelry visited within the cornucopia of establishments within the Matthew Street enclave. The lineage of the very traditional Liverpool White Star can be traced back to the 1880’s and this is proved by a reference to the White Star Carvery and Bar within an 1887 Empire Theatre programme. It is named after the Titanic shipping owners White Star Line.  

Apparently, the pub in those days remains relevantly unchanged from today, apart from the fact there used to be a back yard and there was living accommodation upstairs. Astoundingly there were no ladies lavatories in the building until 1987, the wafer thin justification for this was due to the premise of endeavouring to discourage visits from the large number of prostitutes working in the city post Second World War up to the late 1980’s.    

After the war, a punter called Mr Quinn purchased five pubs in the city, including this one and on all that quintet he inscribed the word Quinns on the front windows. To a degree that name stuck to the level that the good beer guide named the pub as the White Star (Quinns 2).

The Beatles ‘back wall’. Image Credit pinterest.com

In the 1960’s, two promoters named Bob Wooler (the original DJ in the Cavern Club) and Alan Williams arranged for bands to play in the back room, and that is where the Beatles played their first ever gig. That room is also where the bands were paid after they had performed at the Cavern and naturally contains Beatles memorabilia, known locally as the ‘Beatles back wall’.

Apparently, Brian Epstein also discussed with Mr Wooler there in 1963 about their upcoming appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show which provided their first exposure to American audiences. On my one foray there I saw a local singer called Siobhan performing.   

Across town on Renshaw Street within the Grand Central building, you will find the Liverpool Liffey Bar, and as I am sure you can glean from its moniker it is yet another Irish themed hostelry, this time named after the river which permeates straight through Dublin city centre.  The plethora of such bars is no surprise when you factor in that 75% of Liverpudlians have Irish descent, the highest heritage of any British city apart from Glasgow.

The pub was subject to a long running rental dispute with a former tenant which resulted in the pub suddenly closing in March 2022, the disagreement also impacting on the Smokie Mo’s and Nelly Foley bars, which were reviewed in a previous blog. The Liffey was closed for around a year and grabbed that fallow period as an opportunity to undergo a £200,000 refurbishment.

The Liffey Bar. Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk

From a business profit viewpoint, they ensured that they managed to reopen in time for St Patricks Day on Friday 17 March 2023 and must have expected a busy one by stocking fifteen barrels of Guinness which equates to 1500 pints, you would be a tad merry after that! They have live music every night and on my visit, there was a singer called Paddy performing.

The Liverpool Sound City festival is an annual multi venue music shindig similar in structure to the Dot to Dot events. It was founded in 2008 and acts such as White Lies, White Denim, Gil Scott Heron, Swans and Hold Steady played in some of those earlier years.

It also runs in conjunction with the John Peel World Cup which is a British Heart Foundation led event where teams derived from band members and music industry bods play in a five a side tournament. It is a gala that I have always yearned to attend and in May 2025 that came to fruition.

Now, my football team Preston North End had proceeded to make an absolute dogs’ dinner of the end of the season, and this allied with some unfeasibly spectacular results from their rivals meant that the spectre of relegation had gone to the last game. Thus, I was nervously checking the scores on the train commute over but results thankfully went in our favour and we achieved safety. I could now relax, and as a result the first cold one did not touch the sides!

The hub points for picking up our wristbands and then our first venue was Liverpool Spanish Caravan. The bar and tapas restaurant is located on Slater Street, and the side wall of the building contains a large mural of ex Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp. There was a spacious indoor bar and beer garden and a decent choice of beverages.   

Spanish Caravan complete with mural. Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk

At our visiting time the singer on the small stage at the end of the bar was a chap called Oscar Blue who maintained our Irish theme by hailing from County Clare. He had a busker vibe about him and has apparently been a hit on social media where his initial debut singles have been streamed over 10 million times globally.