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.