Memories of Manchester’s ‘shit hole’ nightclub

The Peak District is a beautiful national park, surrounded as it is by hills, fields, and rocky outcrops. People come from all over the UK to holiday there and hike its popular trails. It was, however, a devastatingly dull place to grow up for a drama-loving teenager like me.

To liven it up, I would see my friends almost every night. Before we were old enough to get into clubs, we would spend our evenings hanging out on benches sharing 20 Sovereign. Sometimes we would get the 199 to the next town and find somewhere to sit and smoke there instead. We didn’t have smartphones back then, just a faintly nihilistic attitude coupled with pilfered booze from our parent’s cabinets.

One night I was up late with a friend and we knew the newsagent opened at 5 a.m., so we walked a mile in the dark just to get cigs. There wasn’t such a steady stream of narcotics to the countryside then as there is now. That meant we made our White Lightning last all night until we started college when we began frequenting the two clubs on Buxton’s marketplace.

But for me, Manchester was the place to be. It excited me. As the train pulled into the furthest platform at Piccadilly, the tall red brick buildings would start my imagination firing off in all directions. I moved to Salford to study when I was 19 and to say I was happy with my decision was an understatement.

5th Avenue, the Ritz, the Roadhouse, 42s, Subspace, Jilly’s, the Zoo, Sankeys, M-Two, The Star and Garter, Satan’s Hollow – we did them all. I didn’t say “no” to a night out for my whole first year of living in Manchester. 

Even though I was constantly meeting new people, my worlds would occasionally collide when I’d see people from home in the city for a bender. When they would have to get the night bus home, I was glad not to have to go back to the sleepy Peaks. No 5 a.m. cig walks for me.

When I needed a new job, it made sense to work in a nightclub. A friend got me a job in 42s (my favourite indie club) and I spent the next two years slinging XXXX and vodka Red Bulls. The “Red Bull” in question came straight out of a tap, the thick orange liquid mixing with the soda water to produce a cheap yet questionable energy drink. 

I loved working at 42s, despite it being described as a ”shit hole” by previous owner George Best. It has always been a quintessential sticky floor establishment, so much so that its slogan ”42s, dirty shoes” has always stuck.

Now that indie club rival 5th Avenue has closed and the Haçienda was converted into flats, 42s is an important part of Manchester’s cultural heritage. While those bigger venues have shut, several of the smaller ones remain, which is probably why it is still going strong. New ones have opened and warehouses have been repurposed for big nights as it’s too hard to fill any club for nearly 365 days of the year like the old times.

There is a historical connection as well because 42s has always been housed in South Central. Back in the 1900s it was a warehouse for John Stevenson & Sons Ltd where workers packed up goods. It’s funny to think that where people once rolled their sleeves up and grafted is now home to a nightclub where emo rockers skip around with bottles of knock-off Blue WKD. But that’s Manchester, a more complicated and faster-paced place than the one I grew up in, yet one that suits my mind much better.

Now, I think it’s a shame that there wasn’t more to keep me in my hometown, but that’s how cities, even those far beyond Manchester seem to work. Maybe the problem is that we’re youth-obsessed when in fact, there is no reason why someone of any age can’t be a part of sustaining and creating culture. People feel freer in cities than our hometowns, so clearly there is something holding us back.

After working at 42s for two years, I went home for 12 months and then returned for one last year. It wasn’t quite as popular then due to the recession, but it hung on and so did I. Once I finished studying it was time for me to move on and get a job when I worked in the daytime, which I duly did.

Over a decade later, hearing the opening bars to “There She Goes” still reminds me of 2 a.m. waiting for the hardcore drinkers to stumble home. Blue roll is also weirdly nostalgic to me, which is odd, considering how much congealed vomit I cleaned up with it.

So yes, it may be a shit hole, but it’s a shit hole full of memories for generations of indie kids. Especially those who had nothing like it at home.