If you mention Manchester to a casual observer these days - someone who might not be clued in to the current boogie-night zeitgeist - the response is likely to be Oasis, Coronation Street, and Man Utd. If you whisper Liverpool to the same person, the response could well be The Beatles, Brookside, and er, Liverpool. Rock music, TV soaps, and soccer - where did it all go wrong?
It's been over 10 years since I last set foot in Manchester, a city of the so-near but so-far-away variety, and a place that held no cultural space in my footie-less heart, aside from a smattering of good-to-great rock groups and Steve Coogan's Paul & Pauline Calf. An opportunity to visit the city (and Liverpool - more about which anon) for an update on youth culture was one I couldn't refuse, but there was a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that the place would leave me unimpressed - a Northern backwoods with a bad accent that didn't have the wit or the initiative to state anything beyond the obvious. How wrong I was.
The mood of Manchester has changed over the past 10 years. A drab 1980s lifestyle exemplified by supermarkets, retail parks and old department stores has slowly been replaced by a new wave of development and design. Forward thinking developers have recently converted decrepit department store buildings on Manchester's Oldham Street into neat and swish apartments. Other entrepreneurs have combined business nous with sharp design principles, resulting in a rash of new venues for the city's increasingly cool clientele to converse in. Whereas before, Oldham Street and environs was an ultra-suburban and shaky boardwalk that Ena Sharples might have bought her stock of hair nets from, now it is an urban nirvana with a smart mix of new bars and old pubs.
This mix of old buildings and new design is everywhere to be seen in Manchester. The amount of red brick and plate glass is almost overwhelming, and no more so than in the recent proliferation of caf bar and restaurant culture. Chic but functional designer-friendly caf bars such as Atlas, Bara (owned by Simply Red's Mick Hucknall), Isobar and Dry are as hip as they are affordable. Similarly, a host of excellent new restaurants has opened up numerous design possibilities that puts Dublin's best to shame. The family option is Sticky Fingers (2 St Mary's Gate, Deansgate), ex-Rolling Stones' Bill Wyman's venture into chichi junk food that definitely passes the taste bud test, but unfortunately uses gigantic posters of Mick Jagger and his wizened cohorts as wall decorations. Ugh!
For a blissful mellow eating experience, go to Mash & Air (40 Chorlton Street), a recent opening designed by international restaurateur Oliver Peyton. Occupying a vast 12,000 sq. feet over four storeys, Mash & Air is a converted mill complete with separate restaurants, a bar and a fully functioning micro brewery. While the bar is stuffed to the gills from early evening (and very uncomfortable with it), the restaurants reflect their design blueprints by being uncommonly calm and urbane. Quite simply, there is nothing like it in Ireland.
There's nothing like Metz in Ireland, either - although there soon will be if the owners have anything to do it, seeing as they're currently looking for suitable sites. Situated in The Village, Manchester's buzzing gay quarter concentrated along Canal Street (take the first letter away from each word and what have you got? It's a Mancunian joke - allegedly), Metz is a bar that heaves like nothing else. Loud music, people frugging on the tables, and funny/strange looks from the barman if you ask for water - it's life, Jim, but not as most people know it. The night was put to bed by visiting a club - Yellow at The Boardwalk, (Little Peter Street, Knott Mill). A major disappointment, the music was uninteresting, uninvolving and about as cutting edge as a lump of cheddar. It made me curious about the true nature of Manchester's hip cognoscenti. Where were they when they were most needed? I was sorry to see the back of Manchester, but Liverpool was next - cultural home to The Beatles, Alan Bleasdale, and Cilla Black. It's abundantly clear the city trades heavily on its most famous fab four, but other elements are afoot to seduce the visiting music lover and clubber. While the excellent Beatles Story at Britannia Vaults, Albert Dock, and the kitsch Mathew Street/Cavern Quarter are valid reminders of the group's galvanising grip on pop music over the past 35 years, it's likely that most people under 25 will want to visit Cream.
A phenomenon in club terms, Cream is second only to London's Ministry of Sound in hip quotient. People travel from miles away to get in, including a regular crew of Irish clubbers whose number is bound to increase once the new Super Seacat ferry service gets underway in March.
A cavernous, multi-level venue, directly behind the city's superb Concert Square (a must for pre-clubbing drinks'n'food), Cream holds over 3,000 people. The night I was there, Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, Nick Warren and Jon Carter were playing a variety of metronomic beats in different rooms, the DJ as robotic pop star greeting the masses in a way Kraftwerk - more than 20 years ago - said it would be like.
For an amount of people in such a small space the atmosphere was decidedly cool and friendly, and while specific drugs were an obvious enhancement of the ambience for some people, there was another far more crucial factor: absolutely everyone knew the score. The bouncers handled any potentially fractious moments in a firm, swift and polite way, while the punters willingly relinquished any sense of arrogance or truculence that might get them chucked out. In a two city contest - based on architecture, design, bars and restaurants - there is no doubt in my mind that Manchester is the funkiest. The buildings really have to be seen and visited to be fully appreciated. In a similar contest based on clubs and the proverbial good vibrations, Liverpool wins hands down - Cream should be experienced by anyone remotely interested in the future of music or club culture.
The final question: which of the two cities would I go back to if I had to choose? Manchester, without a doubt. As they up North - sorted.