Category: Manchester

Manchester Venues 196 to 198

This week I am continuing the tale of my Manchester gig treasure hunt on the eve of Friday 29th August 2025. So, as you gravitate up Bridge Street away from Salford Central train station you traverse past the impressive People’s History Musuem before reaching the renowned day and night pizza parlour spot Crazy Pedro’s. In the 1960’s the latter location housed Edwardia, a boutique clothing store created by footballers of the day, George Best and Mike Summerbee.

Beyond there are two subterranean bars opposite each other across the street, the one on the right is the Gas Lamp which is housed in the former Manchester & Salford Children’s Mission building. Across the road was the Brink, a cracking real ale establishment opened in 2014 that had a mural of bees on the stairs painted by local artist Qubek, but unfortunately it never reopened after Covid.

 

 The Gas Lamp. Image Credit Time Out

Three doorways further down is a new venue on the block called Manchester No Vacancy. It is virtually an all-day establishment opening at 10am for breakfast and brunch before staging live music from 5pm onwards from Thursday through Sunday before finally closing the doors at 4am, hopefully they operate split shifts for the staff employed there! When I visited there was a local singer/songwriter called Trev playing.  

As Bridge Street hits Deansgate, there is Katsouris Deli with their belly busting portions, diagonally opposite the Sawyer Arms, which is believed to be Manchester’s oldest pub with a continuously held licence, dating back to 1730. Now this compares to the Old Wellington Inn which despite being built way back in 1552 it did not actually become a pub until 1830.  

A further couple of doors down is the Lost Dene public house which was one of my hero establishments during Covid. In the days where you had to book your two-hour boozing slots we visited with Jo and Paul and when we were upfront about having different addresses, they had no choice but to separate us initially but were then gracious enough to arrange adjacent tables so we could converse verbally instead of texting each other across the pub! These small human touches were gratefully appreciated in that bleak period.  Just beyond there is the atmospheric Rylands Library which certainly rocks a Harry Potter vibe.

The Ape and Apple. Image Credit Dreamstime.

If you then follow the route from Bridge Street onto John Dalton Street you shortly find yourself landing at the Manchester Ape and Apple. The hostelry which went through a £400k refurbishment in 2025 is a multipurpose venue with long running Comedy Balloon nights, salsa classes and Murder Mystery events and also contains a heated roof terrace. It was initially opened by the footballer Denis Law in 1997 after its previous life as a bank and is owned by the Manchester brewers Joseph Holt.

A lady called Jane Kershaw is the great great great granddaughter of Mr J Holt and on one dull soggy day at the age of ten, she was tasked with designing a sign by her father. That very sign depicting an ape balancing an apple in its hand whilst perching on a beer barrel still hangs over the pub entrance today and Jane is now within the sixth generation of the family to work for the company.  The walls also contain a blue plaque to honour the scientist John Dalton who has the moniker of ‘The Father of Modern Chemistry’.

I arrived before Marcus so ensconced myself in the homely room armed with a cheeky ale. He arrived just as a singer called Evan hit the stage who despite being acoustic was thumpingly loud drowning out our conversation, so we moved on after a couple of tracks.  

We then progressed onwards to our next port of call, Manchester Founders Hall which directly faces Albert Square. The hostelry was previously called Duttons for a decade from 2014 before JW Lees brewery took over the reins and they decked out the spacious beer hall with dark wood surrounds and black and white tiled floors. A lot of the furnishings were reclaimed from their 200-year-old Greengate Brewery.   

Founders Hall. Image Credit manchestersfinest.com

Alongside the plethora of tempting real ale options, they also have regular quiz nights and ambient DJ evenings. They also stage live music and on the night of our visit a three-piece act called Late Last Night were playing, who in their bio portray themselves as a Wedding band from Stretford. After my flurry of five new venues that evening, we then headed on to my sixth new venue and our feature gig of the evening, one that I will cover in a future blog.

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.