Words by Louis Diamond
Manchester certainly doesn’t lack self-confidence – after all, as the mural boldly claims, “on the sixth day God created Manchester”. This city of ours has long continued in this reassured manner with our very own mayor being proclaimed the King of the North. But is this all bluster or does Manchester stack up and deserve to be called one of the best student cities in the UK? Of course, we all came to the University purely for academic reasons, but what other qualities of this city drew us here and made us stay?
Manchester is of course legendary for its nightlife, even if it doesn’t always feel it in first year on the Deansgate locks. Far too many of us spend our years splitting our evenings between 256, 42’s, and Factory – but if you manage to escape these student hotspots you can see just how many places there are to spend the early hours in this town.
What description of nightlife in Manchester would be fit without talking about Sasha Lord? While many may not know his name, the man behind The Warehouse Project and Parklife Festival should need no introduction. During first semester, Depot Mayfield became one of the most popular destinations in the UK. with a capacity of 10,000, the Piccadilly venue truly is a great asset to this city. Like Marmite, you either love or hate The Warehouse Project, but for broader appeal, Blues Kitchen or Albert Schloss offers live music that’s perfect for dancing the night away.
To prepare ourselves for lectures the morning after a long night before, a lot of us will resort to the classics – a Spoons breakfast, or a jacket potato from the SU, or the perennial watering hole of Fuel offers us a quick and cheap eat by our doorstep. But I believe what separates Manchester from other cities is its choice of independents. Be it a birthday, or family and friends in town visiting, you can head to the up-market restaurants of Spinningfields that lie beyond the average student’s budget. With over 650 restaurants to eat your way through in Manchester, it’s tough to know where to even start.
The oh-so trendy Mackie Mayor remains head and shoulders above any other food hall in this city and really shows it at its cosmopolitan best. Or, slightly closer to home, Onda pasta bar located just off Oxford road in Circle Square certainly garnered some fanfare with its opening over summer. As a third year myself, I don’t think I have even begun to touch the sides of culinary destinations across the city, but would encourage everyone to start trying.
The picture painted above definitely looks quite rosy, but this piece did not set about to be unadulterated praise. An issue we all deal with while studying here is the lack of housing and its cost, as well as the, let’s say varying quality of the housing stock. This endemic problem is obviously not limited to Manchester. The student housing crisis is one felt across most cities in the UK with sizeable student populations and when looking at the stats, Manchester is certainly middle of the pack, with rents remaining cheaper than other Uni city hotspots of Leeds, Nottingham and Bristol. So, until the national government get a grip on housing shortages, the problems for all students will endure; this certainly shouldn’t turn prospective students off from moving here.
When trying to put words on a page to describe living in Manchester, it is so hard to distil the essence of what makes the student experience in this city unparalleled. While we could all live our lives within the Oxford Road corridor, what makes this truly special is what lies beyond.
