Last night's meetup went down a treat:

Manchester Cool Bars started in Flok in Stevenson Square, the whole area rammed with stragglers from Manchester Pride on the other side of town. I had ran this meetup maybe a year ago, and we'd had to change bars as we couldn't get in anywhere- everywhere we tried was full.

This time we got straight into Soup Kitchen, which was quiet, but with great funk music, and straight into Eastern Bloc, playing what I think might have been acid house and was serving sweet treats like rocky road from behind the counter. I love it there but I think it might have been a bit niche for the group. After this we headed away from Stevenson Square up to Hold Fast, on the way to the Piccadilly Station end of the Northern Quarter. This nautical-themed bar has accessible SNES consoles at the back of the bar, where 1991 beat-em-up classic Street Fighter II was programmed to play. We all had a go, bashing away randomly at the handsets and occasionally pulling off some coincidental submission move, with 70s disco pumping out of the sound system. Cain and Grain followed, (indie on the ground floor, dance upstairs) which led into The Freemount, Matt and Phred's Jazz Club (both dead and dear), the we ended at Behind Closed Doors, a porno-chic smut-themed den with tiled walls, 70s mucky mags plastered to the insides, booths with phones connected to the bar and other booths, and a risqué cocktail menu, all set to an obscure disco soundtrack. Fantastic. It's a small bar so there was a queue to get in, but it was worth it.

Around 15 people showed up for the meetup- one of the most popular nights I've ran. I'll probably run it again.

Away from the bar scene I read Memoirs of a Very Stable Genius, a graphic novel from Shannon Wheeler. Mostly a series of one-frame newspaper-style visual jokes, the book can be whipped through quickly; intermittently it features multiple-panel story strips- some humorous, some interesting. Some somewhat pointless. Well worth the £2 I spent on it. Not worth the $20 RRP.