I’ve been spotting this mascot (a lion?) from cars for years as I’ve gone past, but I think this is the first time I’ve stopped to take a picture.
There are a few other photos from a wander around Strangeways and the Salford border on Monday on Flickr.
I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
Kissed a girl by the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Clouds a drifting across the moon
Cats a prowling on their beat
Spring’s a girl in the street at night
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Heard a siren from the docks
Saw a train set the night on fire
Smelled the spring on the smoky wind
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
I’m going to make me a good sharp axe
Shining steel tempered in the fire
Will chop you down like an old dead tree
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
Kissed a girl by the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
This is the Schmap guide to attractions in Manchester. It’s a mini tourist guide to the city and one of my pictures has been used to illustrate the entry for the Printworks (this one, in fact).
However, take a closer look and you’ll find that the Lowry is in Fallowfield (Just down from Sainsburys and The Friendship pub), the Triangle is in Salford and Manchester Art Gallery has taken up residence with the Halle. Most out of place, however, is the Currier Museum of Art, which now resides on the campus formerly known as UMIST, having been transplanted from Manchester, New Hampshire.
I’ll send them a thank you along with some map references for where things should be.
(Written about our excursion to ARA in February.)
When I was a youngster I’d attend discos in the local church hall. The pews were moved to create a dancefloor. There was a tinny mobile disco and crisps and soft drinks provided. Most of us were too self conscious to dance and the cool kids were all round the back drinking cider.
My first visit to ARA reminded me of those days. It takes place in a church and it had the table of snacks and pop and a sound system less powerful than regular clubbers are used to. But I can’t imagine horror films being projected onto the wall of Kirkland Mission or the playlist being so dark.
There is no publicity for ARA. You have to find out about events in Sacred Trinity church on the fourth Friday of every month for yourself. I discovered it on someone else’s blog and vowed to attend. It took me three months to get around to it.
The church isn’t licenced, so the night is bring a bottle. With beer and Guinness in a clinking back pack we set out, meeting the rest of our gang at Sinclair’s Oyster Bar. Sacred Trinity is over the Irwell, just inside Salford. Crossing the bridge and heading downhill I got that familiar sinking feeling. What if I’d read the map wrong? We rounded a corner and there it was- arched windows flashing and music audible from across the road.
On the door we were told the rules. It’s not the cool kids, but the cancerous smokers who have to hang around behind the building. Services are still held every Sunday, so respect the structure and fittings and tidy up after yourself. Enjoy yourself but don’t spoil it for anyone else. The toilets and a trust driven cloakroom are down a side corridor off the main dancefloor.
There are two dancefloors at ARA, though the second, The Belfry, is more of a dance corridor. Situated behind soundproof glass on the viewing gallery it allows you to look down on the main dancefloor. The music in this lair was too obscure, so we went downstairs, where the playlist is request driven and eclectic. Goth staples like the Cure mixed easily with the Pet Shop Boys and stuff I’d never heard before. At one point I was informed we were listening to very early Faith No More. “Back when they were still called Faith.” I offered, getting a black look in return. As the requests became increasingly niche, and we ran out of beer, we left at one in the morning.
I won’t pretend to be converted to the cult of ARA, but I can see myself going back. It wasn’t as busy as I’d expected, and I couldn’t shake that church disco feeling, but it was different. More groups should try the DIY approach to events and there should be more “alternatives to the alternative”, as the night has been called. Manchester’s already active nightlife could prosper further from the increased diversity.
Today saw the second day of location filming for Memory. It was nowhere near as successful as last Saturday’s.
We were shooting scenes for the first and second episodes in Erie Basin in Salford Quays, on a bridge. The weather was against us in every way. We have almost no useable sound because of the wind noise, my leading lady was undedrlit in all her shots and we all came close to having frostbite. To top it all off, the bag for my tripod blew into the water and was unretrievable.
I’m not sure whether we need to re-shoot all the footage, but we’ll definitely need to over-dub the sound at the very least.
Technorati tag: Spinneyhead Presents, Film, Salford Quays
http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2007/01/03/030107_totem_home_feature.shtml
Salford’s Native American connection goes back to when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show set up camp there. Of the 97 Sioux who were cast members at least one stayed in the city to start a family.
The pole itself was donated in 1969 and stood outside Furness House until 2005. It has now been tracked down and is to be restored and returned to the Quays.
Since I set up the Gallery for Amanda And Dave’s Wedding, I have been think about what else I can put in there.
September (Last Year) I took some photos of Salford Quays which I though some of them were quite good.
Maybe I should start adding photos regularly? You be the judge, the comments are open…
(To View all the photo albums, click here)
Technorati tag: Photos
A development near the Trafford centre is set to become the UK’s biggest indoor alpine centre.
A consortium of backers are behind the project which also involves Trafford Centre owners Peel Holdings. They intend to build a rock-climbing wall, a toboggan run, an indoor skateboard park and a children’s snowplay zone where youngsters can build snowmen and throw snowballs. A separate “warm” zone will feature Alpine-themed bars specially designed by Austrian craftsmen and restaurants with panoramic windows and balconies overlooking the slopes.
There was supposed to be a big indoor snow centre built in Salford a few years ago, but it never got beyond a billboard promising so much fun. I think they’re building flats on the ground cleared for it now.
Technorati tag: Snow, Trafford Park
After the A1GP we went to Exchange Square to see some more of the Sky festival, and were greeted by a pall of black smoke on the skyline behind Darth Vader and the stormtroopers.
An HGV had exploded in Salford and it and a building were ablaze. We spent a long time in Next waiting for their customer service to get their act together and by the time we left the smoke was no longer there.
Technorati tag: Manchester, Fire
My main worry about taking shots with my hand me down SLR was that it’s manual focus. Judging from the first batch of pictures off it, I’m not as bad at getting stuff in focus as I’d worried.
Abstract snow on branches heaven from Saturday morning.
Technorati tag: Photos, Manchester
Actually, the Shudehill photos were taken on Saturday, but I’ll include them here because I’ve just uploaded them.
I realised that I wasn’t going to hit my 50 miles a week cycling target if I didn’t go out for a ride on Sunday. So I headed out to the Quays to meet my sister and take a few shots. Loaded down with three cameras (1 digital, 1 SLR, 1 APS) and a tripod I safely navigated the Mancunian Way and parked up outside the War Museum, meeting Jo on the bridge.
The bridge is photogenic, and frames the War Museum rather nicely. But there’s a sign (“No pleasure craft beyond this point”) that spoils all the best views. I took a photo anyway.
At this point the trip nearly came to a halt when we spotted a severed leg floating in the Quays. It freaked us out for a while as we watched it and came to the conclusion it was from a mannequin.
Putting the shivers aside we walked toward the water sports centre and photographed egotastic architecture, anti aircraft guns and swans.
I took the same photo a few times on the three different cameras, courtesy of the tripod allowing a fixed position, for a comparison of the technologies’ qualities. But I haven’t had the SLR’s film developed yet, so you can’t see them. Shortly after this the digital’s batteries failed and the replacement set proved to be flat as well. Consequently I used up a whole roll of APS, but I’m saving most of those for the upcoming resurrection of Discontinuous Infill.
Most of them. You can have this bovine shot for now.
Technorati tag: Photos, Manchester, Salford Quays
There’s a street in Salford named Buffalo Court, in honour of the Indians brought to the dirty old town by Buffalo Bill in 1887.
Just about the only relic of the Sioux visit is in local street names: Cody Court, Sundance Court, Cassidy Court, Dakota Avenue, and Kansas Avenue.
I think I used to work on Kansas Avenue, at a company that made frozen pizzas.
Technorati tag: Salford, Buffalo Bill
A new Deputised Experts page is up. I’m particularly proud of the two views of Salford Quays I used here. There was a certain amount of cheating involved, including using greyscales of the original photos to provide the shading, but the end results are cool. There is an overcast quality to it as well- perfectly appropriate for Manchester.
And please vote. There’s still a chance to give DEx a decent leg up the TopWebComics and BuzzComics charts.
I still don’t know when webcomicsnation is going to launch and I can start publishing Deputised Experts. But I thought it was time I highlighted some of the work that’s gone into the comic, so now there’s a gallery. It’s not in the pinup collection style of the Mary Tales gallery. No I thought I’d do something a little different. I’ve assembled a collection of the backgrounds. Let me introduce you to them.
Chapter 1, Page 1 is a full page shot of the front of a block of apartments. I cheat a lot with the backgrounds, tracing them from photos then adding shading in a variety of ways. The building in this picture was actually boarded up when I took the shot, but, as with almost every building within three miles of the city centre, it’s now being turned into posh flats just like the one in the comic.
Some early scenes take place on the periphery of a big demo. Most of the reference photos for this were from a few years ago and one from a recent Anti War demo.
A later scene takes place in a deli, as two of the characters discuss matters over a coffee. These were images where layering really came into its own for the various patches of shading.
Chapter 3 (they’re short chapters) opens in Salford Quays with two panoramic establishing shots. One of the Lowry and Imperial War Museum from across the Ship Canal and another of the Lowry from close to the War Museum. For the second picture I thought I’d experiment with ways to get the grey fills that bulk out the basic black and white art. In the end I used a Photoshop filter for removing scratches and dust with the size limit set way up to remove loads of detail.
Some other images used in establishing shots- MI6 headquarters, a street near to Manchester’s central Police station and the Katja. The original MI6 picture was taken in the summer of 2001 on a wander along the banks of the Thames. There’s a terrace overlooking the river that I’d actually been able to walk along before crossing the bridge. I imagine that’s closed to the public nowadays. The Katja was taken from a found image of a cargo ship, with the watercolour filter applied to get the background greys. The ship plays an important part in the backstory to the first DEx storyline. I’ll probably be using a 3d model for future views of it.
And finally, some out takes. The Flea and Firkin and some woodland. Now I’ve done these images I’ll just have to find a use for them some day.
A new service in Salford for sad little men and their cars- Babe Wash has recruited lapdancers for Monday night sessions.
