Blog meet

The Manchester blog meet was a big hit - about 30 people were there, and everyone seemed to enjoy meeting the faces behind the blogs they read. Chern Jie, a very friendly Engineering student from Malaysia who I met there (and whose eponymous blog I have just added to the manc blogroll) has put up some pictures and a nice long description of the multi-stage event here. That's where the above pic comes from. Chris, Tom, Norm, Spinneyhead and Clare have posted about it as well. Hopefully this will be the first of a series of once-in-a-while blogger social outings. Kro was so busy and, often, loud - maybe next time we can do it in the quiet side room of some old fashioned pub. But I suppose that wouldn't have the wireless.

Weekend: green, zines

There is some pretty cool stuff going on this weekend, and seeing as I got such a positive response to my "what's on" post of last week, I thought I'd make it a regular weekly feature.

If you're coming to the blog meet and have an interest in homemade magazines, while you're in the 'hood you may also want to check out the Manchester Zine Fest, which is going on from high noon into the evening at The Basement, a collectively-run cafe/art/event space at 24 Lever Street. They're going to have workshops, speakers, a zine gallery and all sorts of treats for zine-lovers. (The picture above comes courtesy of Barnard College, home to many fine zines.)

I've been curious about Green Bohemia for a long time. It's a live music night at Greenroom with an appealingly eclectic list of performers. I see that tomorrow night is their second birthday party - the ideal time to check it out; Isobel Heyworth, Gideon Conn and The Shmatte Kid will be playing, with a whole bunch of other folks. Plus, it's free.

The bluest blog in town

Ladies and gentlemen, may I direct your attention to Bitter and Blue? If you're a Man City supporter you'll want to bookmark this blog, because it's all about the boys in baby blue. It's the work of Danny Pugsley, who says: while I do include a bit of news and match reports, I try to keep it more of an opinion based blog as there are many forum and fan sites for news stories etc.

This strategy seems to be paying off, since we see that an excerpt from Bitter and Blue was featured in Sunday's Observer. Well done!

I've actually had Bn'B on the blogroll for a long time, but have been holding off on introducing it until I could also find a Man United blog that was written by a fan based in Manchester. Curiously enough, I couldn't find one ...

Love rides again

Just noticed in Metro today that the Deansgate branch of Love Saves The Day, which has been shuttered since late 2005 due to financial problems, is to reopen on February 14. Yep ... Valentine's Day. The Oldham Street branch has been permanently closed, from what I've heard. Rats.

Flick: King Kong

I may be the last person in the country to have seen King Kong, but it was on its last week in the cinema and the consensus seemed to be that this was one you really had to see on the big screen. I was in the mood for a blockbuster that didn't require strenuous use of the brain, and that's just what we got. KK is perfectly good entertainment - light on character and plot, heavy on gobsmacking special effects.

My favourite parts of the movie were the beginning and the end, which were set in a gorgeous Depression-era New York. As soon as the boat approached Skull Island, the movie basically turned into a Jurassic Park/Indiana Jones style adventure with a triple helping of scary beasties and violent dismemberings: Dinosaurs, check. Big evil fanged bats, check. Tentacles-with-teeth, check. The one creature missing from this movie was the most important (and potentially fearsome) of all - the editor. Just because you can construct seventy-nine distinct species of disgusting overgrown insect-thing doesn't mean you should. I kept imagining Peter Jackson saying, "aww mate, let's just throw this one in, too. Go on."

blogs, meetings, blog meetings

The plotting continues ... Friday I met with Chris Gribble from the Manchester Literature Festival, Lord Rich (who kindly came all the way from Bradford) and Duncan of Stripy T-Shirt to talk about the Manchester bloggers project (Rich and Duncan set up Manchester blogbound - sign up if you haven't already) and we had a good chinwag about what the site might be like.

So far everyone seems to agree that a group Manchester blog linked to an aggregator is a good idea, as well as hooking up blogger posts about the same topic (i.e. linking up blogger reviews of the same movie or gig.) And, of course, a directory of Manchester bloggers grouped by category and locality. We'll be at the blog meet this Saturday, and will be interested to hear about what features/functionalities people would like to see on the site.

On Friday I also met up with Norman Geras of Normblog for tea and a nice chat about blogging, movies, New York and all sorts of things. Mancophiles will want to read the list of great quotations about our city that Norm recently posted about. It's oddly comforting to see that Manchester has been the butt of jokes for at least a couple of centuries.

Updated weekend: art galore, smithsco

What to do this weekend? For starters, the British Art Show 6 is in town, so seize the opportunity to gorge on contemporary art, it only comes around every five years. In particular, I thought the Whitworth Gallery and the Chinese Arts Centre both had a pretty impressive selection of works. Above image courtesy of The Telegraph, where you can see a gallery of images from the exhibition before it arrived in Manc.

And Friday is the monthly Smiths Disco at the Star and Garter, if howling lyrics to little-known Moz tunes in the company of sweaty former teenage misfits is your thing. Get there early...

In totally unrelated other news, it appears that XFM has finally announced a launch date for the Manchester station: March 15. Indie-heads rejoice.

Update: have removed refs to blog meet and zine fest because, erm, that's next weekend. Talk about getting ahead of oneself.

Manchester media gossip, part two

News comes of another contestant in the rush to fill the yawning cultural void left by City Life. We hear that The Mix, a fortnightly culture and listings magazine, is being planned for Manchester. The editor comes from Wideshut Magazine, which has been running some interesting collaborations with local arts organizations, most recently Castlefield Gallery. The publication is to be based in that cultural hub of Salford, Islington Mill. And see what I did there? ... I mentioned a mill without referencing trouble at t'mill, rubble at t'mill or even stubble at t'mill (though admittedly there is a lot of stubble at that particular mill - not exactly a clean-shaven bunch, those creative types.) Oversubscribed puns are the bane of a writer's existence.

Music to blog by

Music bloggers do us all a great service - they go to all the gigs we can't and listen to all the new bands, helping us pre-sort out the wheat from the chaff with a minimum of music journalist badditude. And in most cases, they're not getting anything out of it - no money, no "reputation", just the knowledge that they are harnessing their obsessive enthusiasm about music for the power of good.

As you'd expect, the Manchester area's home to several excellent music bloggers. Phil Thompson created Bloodshot Dawn out of a desire to spread the word about good music overlooked by most DJs. Artists featured lately in BD's album reviews, gig reviews and concert news include Sufjan Stevens, Belle and Sebastian and the Arctic Monkeys.

Formerly known as the Ledge on the Edge, The Indie Crediential is written by Rick (The Ledge) and Mindy (justHipper), a Salford couple who go to 40-50 gigs a year, plus the odd festival. That's a lot of live music. The most recent is a review of the Secret Machines gig last week. Rick writes: The site is due a redesign as soon as I've finished reading my Eric Meyer books, and the content will be beefed up with extra cd reviews and commentary as well as regular mp3s. Cool.

Others don't blog exclusively about music, but feature it prominently in their blog posts. Girl on a Train posts lists of songs she listened to that day. Crinklybee is doing a series of posts about his old 45s, and 3 degrees of noise often posts about bands. Check them out.

Blogs: Dangerous Man, Gooseania, Crinklybee

Today's crop of new-to-you blogs have been lurking around on the blogroll for a while, but I haven't formally introduced them yet. First off is The Dangerous Man, aka Jay, who writes of himself and his blog:
I am a 20 year old gay guy. I live in Manchester, UK ... In August of 2004 I moved into an apartment in the city centre (on Deansgate) with my partner Paul who is originally from Liverpool. My blog is a daily snapshot of my life. With honest accounts of sex, drugs (or lack of), music, work and play. Warning, this blog contains thoughts of an open mind and is not suitable for right wingers, religious people, and the 'sexless' You have been duly warned!

Maths graduate student Craig Laughton writes Gooseania, which he describes thusly: My blog is about what it's like to do a PhD, I thought it would be useful to document the three years because when I started, I didn't have much idea what I was in for! I tend to write a lot about my subject (maths) and general PhD stuff and unfortunately not too much about Manchester per se, but I guess I'm forever talking about the university so that must count for something. Craig just had his first article published, and it was about blogging - congratulations, Craig.

Another is Crinklybee, a blog I've long been a fan of for its quirky tone. Check out this post title: A short post about Twiglets which suddenly turns alarmingy into a long one about the Dogme film 'Italian For Beginners', before getting a grip of itself and ending up back with the Twiglets again. Brilliant.

The man behind Crinklybee is Johnathan, a 30-something Geordie living in Levenshulme, who writes: I suppose like most bloggers I just write about the stuff Iget up to- I try to make it engaging and humorous and build up a picture of my world ...

Nine Black Alps dis Manc, define "scally"

I was delighted to see that Manc's own Nine Black Alps made the "A Night Out With..." column in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times yesterday. In the past this has featured now-huge-in-the-states bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, so this must mean NBA are on their way to getting that elusive American acclaim.

It's maybe not so cool that they use this press space to slag off their hometown clubs. Guess we won't be seeing them at Fifth Avenue next Friday, then. Note, also, the clarification of "scally" for American readers.

The four members were working odd jobs before they hooked up through Manchester's underground music scene, "at one of the few clubs where they don't play Stone Roses and Oasis for a bunch of scallies," the band's guitarist and bassist, David Jones, noted.

Scallies? "English rednecks," he explained.

(Image from the NYT)

Manchester Blog Meet: : The Details

Clare, the intrepid organiser of our first ever (I believe?) Manchester Blog Meet has passed on the relevant times and locations for the multi-part event on Saturday, Feb. 11. You can find the post on her blog here.

Folks are free to come to just one part, or the whole shebang. Here's the schedule for Saturday:

3pm: tea/coffee and cakes at the new Kro in Piccadilly Gardens
7:30 pm: dinner at Efes Turkish restaurant (let Clare know if you're coming to this)
9:30 pm: libations at Mother Mac's Pub, back Piccadilly

Our hostess has also offered to put folks up at her place if they're coming in from far afield. Many thanks, Clare, for putting so much time and thought into this. I'll see you all at Kro, but won't be able to come to the later bits.

New Blogs: Free Man, Feeling Listless and Keris

Okay, so I’ve stretched the boundaries of the Manchester area all the way up to Preston, but I think A Free Man in Preston is well worth the long commute. As featured on Radio Five Live (and, apparently, recommended by the Guardian), it’s written by a disorientated Lancashire man, who says: “What do I write about? The office where I work, mainly, and stuff about outside work sometimes too. I think that about sums it up really.” Check out the geekariffic soundtrack feature, powered by Castpost. Is it legal? Who knows. But it sure is cool.

Another new addition, Feeling Listless is penned by Stuart Ian Burns, a student at Man U who splits his time between here and Liverpool. His blog is the place to go for cultural review from the clueless (Stu’s description, not mine. I’m sure he’s just being modest.)

And finally, Keris Stainton is a writer and dedicated reader who maintains a blog here. She says it’s generally “a combination of popular culture/celebs, my own journey to becoming a professional writer and some personal stuff too.” You can access her novels in progress there, too.

Manchester media gossip

With the demise of City Life last year, lots of us have been forced to resort to the quaint practice of scanning posters and flyers to find out what's going on in the way of gigs and events -- or actually buying the MEN on a Friday for the GO! section. At 10p, it's quite a bargain. But fear not; If the rumors are to be believed, there's already more than one group waiting in the wings to pick up where CL left off.

The former editor of City Life, along with a couple of the mag's erstwhile columnists, is said to be drawing up plans for a regional mag. What's more, The Leeds Guide, an established player in the listings mag game, is said to be looking at moving into our tantalizingly untapped market, and has already enlisted some local talent - namely, a few City Life writers - to help set things up. Should be interesting to see what happens.

Gregorian Rants

Greagoir Ó Dálaigh writes the cleverly named, wide-ranging blog Gregorian Rants. I asked him to describe what he wrote about. He replied: “a better question might be 'what don't I write about?'

On any given day I'm likely to be talking about adventures on location with the BBC in Italy, being Irish in England, serving beer to Dublin crimelords, meeting Mikhail Gorbachev, excavating a human skeleton in Greece, how badly Everton football club is performing, how G.K. Chesterton is the most magnificently underrated English writer of the twentieth century, or any of a host of topics to do with travel, politics, history, sport, religion, art, cinema or music. Sorry. I talk a lot.

And he very kindly put me onto a number of studenty Manchester blogs which will be added to the blogroll shortly:

There's nmr boy, who lives in my hall, for starters. Steph at kaleidoscope eyes used to live here and probably will again; in any case she studies Egyptology here. Maria at gingerbeast is a trainee teacher, and Eleanor at Ramble On studies something to do with French. Stuart's Kitchen Table is a venerable Mancunian blogging institution, but it looks as though Stu's just gone on hiatus, which is a huge shame.

In closing, I want to direct everyone’s attention to a hilarious, though sadly defunct blog posted about recently on Gregorian Rants: Ash-Burned Foods, which detailed the culinary delights on offer at a Manchester university dining hall (source of above photo.) I quote: "'Burger In A Bin' reads the menu for this Friday's meal. A self fulfilling prophesy i fear." Come back Ash-Burned!

Planning a Manc blogs website

Oy vey! In the last week I’ve been contacted by so many people wanting to be added to the blogroll that things have gotten more than a little backed up. If you’re one of those people waiting patiently for your blog to be introduced to its Manchester brethren, my apologies. I don’t have much on for the next couple of days, so I should be able to catch up in a mad fit of posting.

So by this point, you’re probably saying something like: sheesh, who knew there were so many great blogs in Manchester? Someone should probably collect them all together on a proper site with bells and whistles, rather than just being lumped unceremoniously on some poor girl’s blogroll? Island Monkey posted about this recently, and I've been thinking along these lines for some time now. So I’ve started getting the ball rolling on a new Manc bloggers website. This would serve as a portal to the city's blogs, a way to organise bloggers and get more Mancunians blogging, with occasional get-togethers. The lovely new Manchester Literature Festival (rising from the ashes of the poetry fest this autumn) are keen to provide support to this fledgling project.

I think it’s important that this be a blogger-driven endeavour that serves everyone, so please let me know if you’re interested in being involved, or even if you just want to offer your two cents’ (two pence?) worth about what it should and shouldn’t be like. You can email me at themanchizzle at gmail.com, or leave a comment.

Wireless in Manchester?

Due to technical difficulties in the home office, I just spent the day schlepping my laptop all over the city centre looking for a place where I could plug in, power up and log on for the price of a coffee. But no dice. I remember doing this in New York, before, once or twice. I cherish fond memories of the NYC cafe society, teeming with coffee shops that offer free wireless to customers, and power outlets too. That's why New Yorkers have the thriving mobile office culture that enables self-employed folks like me to get out of the house and work/meet/procrastinate in public, right?

Wrong. My friend Marisa, a freelance writer who lives on the disgustingly leafy West Village block used for exterior shots of Carrie's apartment on Sex and The City (in a hatbox-sized apartment)is here to set me straight:

Ok. Pause the America-is-better rant, b/c it ain't as cute as it looks. While, yes, there are cafes on every corner, it's really tough to find one that has access to free-flowing electricity and free wireless. There are two by my apt, but one blocked off all of the outlets so you can only have juicy internet and long-term electric flow if you get there at like 7 am. The other has 4 tables and is unbearably hot. It's not a win win.

Okay, rant paused. But surely there must be some sweet underpublicised wireless hotspots in Manchester that don't cost an arm and a leg? I've just enabled comments, and am asking readers to comment/email with any wireless spots that they know of around Greater Manchester. I'll sum them all up in a post later.

Bookish blogs

Here I am, jetlagged and happy, back in the UK with a big red suitcase stuffed full of blogs to add to the Manchester blogroll. I'll begin with a few blogs of the literary persuasion. First up is the excellent literary blog the Art of Fiction. The man behind the blog is Adrian Slatcher, who also edits the Manchester-based literary review Lamport Court. It offers "comments on the literary scene, and thoughts on the creative process."

While not outwardly identified as a Mancunian blog, Ready Steady Book, a big, beautifully produced group blog concerned with all things literary, makes the blogroll because both blog founder Mark Thwaite and blog designer Kelle Link (nice job, Kelle) live in Manchester.

I also class as literary those blogs which exist mainly as an outlet for creative writing. People have just begun to explore the possiblities of using blogs as a vehicle for a narrative or as a way to experiment with characters or voices. In the sprit of ambiguity I direct you to Community Fair, which landed in my inbox a couple of weeks ago. It's a narrative that appears to emanate from within a government programme in Manchester. Read it from the bottom up, and decide for yourself whether it's real or not.

Correction (26/1):

Mark from Ready Steady Book has set me straight: RSB is not a group blog, and, in fact, it's a whole lot more than just a blog ... it's a literary website. Whoops. Mark writes:

"Not a group blog - only I blog here on RSB - but we do have many contributors adding reviews to the site. On the local front, watch out for some minisites dedicated to local writers and poets coming soon ... "

Cheers Mark, we'll be looking forward to that.

Additions from feedmap

Thanks to alert reader Roy of Mantex... I have discovered feedmap, "where blogs meet maps"... and found a cache of Manchester blogs I didn't know about. So, welcome to the blogroll
Ramage, James' Blog, Port 7, Kookosity, vanillasky, and Towards a Free World. I'm not going to attempt to summarize each of them today, but I urge you to go by and check them all out. Some thoughtful writing and beautiful pictures in this lot.

Will be heading back to Manchester Saturday after a few days in my old town, New York, and I can't wait to get back to the UK. I'm in a sad state after three months without a decent curry or pint of bitter, the morning papers, the carefully modulated tones of Radio 4, and, of course, the daily proximity of my nearest and dearest. Plus the whole snow thing is getting kind of old.

Manchester Blogger Meetup

Doing her part to prove that bloggers are not all malajusted misanthropes who shun social interaction, blogger/novelist Clare Sudbery, of Boob Pencil , is organising a multi-part Manchester blogger meet-up on Saturday, Feb 11. Locations have not yet been determined but the meet will probably kick off at a coffee shop in the city centre somewhere. I'll post the details here as they become available, or check Clare's blog as the date approaches.

I'll be there (at least definitely for the afternoon bit), and look forward to meeting a few of the folks I've been trading emails with in the past couple of weeks. And picking the brains of the tech-savvy about new ways I can pimp up my blog. You have been warned!

Clare also passed on a new addition to the blogroll, Mad Dan's Blog, which lately has been extolling the restorative powers of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood.

Had also forgotten to add this Manchester blog that I came upon a month or so ago when I caught a post about the demise of City Life: Island Monkey, who writes about popular culture, politics, moustaches and, of course, Manchester.