Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts

Sunday, 7 June 2026

Views from Sora Sky Bar

 

Last night Meetup group Manchester Nightlife met in the lobby of Malmaison near the Town Hall and headed up to their second floor observatory bar Sora for some cocktails and mocktails. Good group. 4 of 9 showed up, plus 1 member who didn’t RSVP, but he’s a regular. Incredible décor, chilled house music, majestic views of the city and fine company from new and regular members. 

After this a few of us took a look at the new Katie O’Brien’s on Peter St, formerly the Peaky Blinders bar. Good atmos, heaving with people, shame about the generic indie and pop music but a popular spot. I’ll be back there next week.

Scenes from Manchester's new Katie O'Brien's bar in Manchester

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) 7 June 2026 at 20:43

 

In other news, Brian O’Halloran – Dante off Clerks – liked my comment about the best films of ‘77, ‘87 and ‘94. Not sure why I picked Dumb and Dumber over Pulp Fiction. (As it happens, both directors – Tarantino and Farrelly – are Zionists anyway.)

Sunday, 31 May 2026

Kodo

Hmm. Perhaps I wasn’t 100% honest with last week’s post on Castlefield: there was, in fact, a bristling of drama. But to describe it properly, I’ve got to go way back to early 2020. 

It’s March. Our idiot then-PM Boris Johnson shuns the COBRA meetings and locks the country down late, writes ‘bollocks’ across the COVID medical info and allows Cheltenham Festival to go ahead. COVID rips through the community and, as the months go on, 200,000 people die, including a load of my work clients (in the public sector tied to healthcare) and my mate’s dad. 

Early 2021: Pfizer announce a new, fully approved, fully tested and fully safe vaccine. It’ rolled out, and immediately COVID cases start to plummet. We’re heading back to normality. Sadly, a good number of my friends reveal themselves to be anti-vaxxers, and to believe a load of horseshit conspiracies. I try to talk some sense into them, but one thing anyone knows about me: I have no power of persuasion. The only thing I can do is block them and move on. 

Summer 2024: I’ve blocked loads of people. I’ve moved on from entire groups. The few friends I still have are busy with kids and careers. I bite the bullet and shell out to be a Meetup organiser. I set up Manchester Nightlife, a group for nights out in the city with a plan to see some DJs, try some cocktail bars and be the first to visit the new places. As the weeks go on, the group grows as more people join. 

May 2026. I now have 900 members, with more joining all the time. Last week’s Castlefield meetup takes place. I haven’t checked every member that joins, and unbeknown to me, one of the new members, AA, is someone I’d had to block on Facebook – not even that long ago – for spamming my profile with some crank far right website with batshit COVID conspiracies. I didn’t even notice he’d signed up to the event until he rocked up at Barca. He went to the bar. I mentioned this to one of the other group members, and then AA himself brought it up. I explained I just can’t have anti-vaxxers in my social media. 

And that was that. No big argument. We were civil. Then he seemed to leave early. 

Fast forward a week. Last night a few of us met in Roxy Ballroom near the Printworks for this week’s meetup. a new guy mentions that he’d been reading the reviews on the site, and someone had properly gone off at me. The Meetup website hadn’t notified me about this, so it’s news to me. I take a look, and it’s AA. 

‘Gossiping host allowed members to be rude and disrespectful towards me. I had a polite demeanour throughtout. Made to feel unwelcome. Very poor.’ (sic) 

Jesus fucking Christ. Like I've not known him for years. Whatever. The question remains: why would you go to a meetup ran by a guy who you gave some shit to online, and who then blocked you? Did you not think that they would have something to say? 

Whatever. We moved on from Roxy’s to Kodo, a new hidden bar with a Japanese theme.

 

All I had to do was find the venue and show them the pic from the website to get in, and then find the actual bar. It’d be good to go back once an upcoming wedding is out of the way and I’m not avoiding alcohol. Good little joint if you can track it down. 

Aside from all that, Magali Gorre liked my pic of us on Facebook. I am out of cereal, so my weight should start to drop soon, and I did a rare Parkrun with the family, getting 36:04. Watergrove in Rochdale is a tough, hilly course. And that’s the week.

Monday, 25 May 2026

Discover Hidden Bar Kodo on Saturday

Well. That IDRA meetup didn’t take off, for whatever reason. Too niche, perhaps. Anyway, I ended up staying in last night. Hence, I accidentally woke up at 5am, when I’d like to have been coming home. 

Also, actor William Forsythe liked my Insta comment about another actor Mike Starr.

I’m off work until Friday. I have a ton to do. Saturday night: Join Manchester Nightlife Meetup as we head to hidden bar Kodo Their location requires a bit of legwork to find, but I’ve figured it out. There’s a door. There’s a code to get in. (I’ve found all of this for you.) Think moody red lights, Japanese décor… and that’s all that’s available online. All you have to do is meet me and the group in Roxy Ballroom, Withy Grove, first. 9pm, Saturday. 


Sunday, 26 April 2026

So about For the Love of Horror...

Once again, For the Love of Horror was an astounding local movie event with some superb guests offering photo ops, autographs, stage discussions and there was even a Blade-style blood rave (that I missed). Find part 1 and part 2 of my writeups. I got a follow back on Instagram from Finn Carter, Rhonda off Tremors. Jeff Daniel Phillips, Herman Munster in the Munsters remake, liked my picture of him. Unfortunately, after paying for a picture with Mekhi Pfifer, he then turned out to be Zionist. Well. Terrifier’s Jenna Kanell liked my pic of her.

Dance music group Basement Jaxx liked my comment

Rewatched City of God, the Brazilian gangster movie. Excellent crime drama set in the Rio favelas, taking inspiration from real life, Goodfellas and I expect Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels. Rewatched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, an outrageous drug-fuelled trip through a police convention, a motorbike race and a desert. So many cameos that I didn’t recognise until this week. Rewatched Lost Highway, David Lynch’s weird tale of a sax player sentenced over the murder of his wife (an act of which he has no recollection) only for him to disappear in jail and be replaced by another guy who has no recollection of how he got there. So good, but such a headfuck. Not seen it in maybe 20 years. Patricia Arquette, man. Good lord. 

Polished off a citrus single malt 5cl bottle from the Chivas Regal blending kit I got Christmas before last. I’ve actually got 2 kits and am tapping through the content. I should try making a blend for the hip flask.

Excess Month ends on Thursday. I’ve read one of the books that I’d pulled out that fit this theme; review to be uploaded at some point. 

Lastly, today is Alien Day: 26th April. 4/26. As in LV-426, the planet they land on in Alien.

Monday, 20 April 2026

Join me to celebrate 2 Million Page Views

Upcoming blog posts: 3 Laws of Power posts, a recipe review, a book review and a pharma experiment writeup. Blog posts on For the Love of Horror. There’ll be a few. Also a piece on a Daytime Disco event. Booked today off just to hammer through it all. 

Still locked out of primary Facebook. Driving me up the wall. 

Recently I passed the 2 million hit mark on this blog, after running it for nearly 18 years. Took me 14 years to get the first million, and a further 4 to get the second. Must be doing something right. Anyway, I figured I’d celebrate. I’ve put up a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to do a few Northern Quarter bars, starting in Pen and Pencil. Come and join me!

Sunday, 29 March 2026

Alcohol at last.

After a month of bodybuilding, I met up with a couple of mates and got drinks.

First alcohol in a month. Stray bar. Oh Deer. Too sour for me. Taiko ramen lamb tantamen in Mackie Mayor's. Great. Thai fighter in Posie, new bar in the financial district. Bean flavoured. Original.

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) 29 March 2026 at 12:27

Started in Stray bar in Mackie Mayor, got food, found the new Posie bar, which had an almost Moroccan vibe. Had a bizarre bean-flavoured cocktail. Barman looked like Oscar Isaac off Ex Machina. Went on to Lawn Club in Spinningfields. 00s era house music and a Coral Club cocktail. Missed my last bus. Oh well. 

Also this week I passed the 1.9 million hit mark on this blog. Experiencing an absurd and inexplicable surge of page views.

Monday, 23 March 2026

Come sample the new Shrimp bar

Last week Ryan Keely weighed in on the ‘baboon vs badger’ debate.

She did not in fact get back to me. Sarcasm much? 

Also I passed 1.8 million hits on this blog. Experiencing an inexplicable surge. 150K in the last month. Incredible. At this rate I should pass the 2 million hit mark in a month. 

This week: on Saturday I’ll hit a deadline for this Bodybuilding Project that I will have been doing for a month. Hoping to squeeze in a couple more PBs before then. Then, time to relax… Manchester Nightlife Meetup group is headed to Bar Shrimp, a new venue in New York St, right in the heart of the financial district. First time for me. First alcohol in a month for me. 

Also, a book review, something on disability travel passes and a journaling event.

Wednesday, 25 February 2026

Tweet for Chaos resulted in… no chaos

It’s taken me 15 days, but I’ve finished this Tweet for Chaos project. I managed to tweet out the names of individuals and businesses that I’ve seen share insane content over social media. 

I’ve been keeping tabs on people since some time during the pandemic – slightly before the beginning of the vaccine rollout, I think – lockdown critics, anti-vaxxers, zionists, Tories, Trump supporters, Christians and Chris Brown fans (the singer who beat the shit out of Rihanna and assaulted several other women). Using Twitter, I’ve named them all. 

One account responded calling me a ‘dumb n-word’ (I’m white) – I reported it and it was ‘actioned accordingly.’ I’m not sure what that means because I also blocked them and forgotten who they were, so I can’t see their content. 

Stats: 

Overall page views at the start: 1,711,729 

and at the end: 1,731,926. 

So 20K page views in 2 weeks, with a big surge on the day I uploaded the introductory post. Not a huge difference compared to recent months, but what may happen is that as people start to trend on X for whatever reason, there’s a possibility that certain people might be individuals that I've named, and tweets of mine might get viewed a little more retrospectively. Not the most amazing outcome for a project. 

That’s 3 out of 8 projects complete on this Before 44 list.

Tuesday, 10 February 2026

Tweet for Chaos

I guess it’s time for you to hate me again 

Let's begin, now hand me the pen 

How should I begin it and where does it all end? 

The world is just my medicine ball, you're all in 

 -Eminem, Medicine Ball 

Back in early 2021, just as the vaccine rollout commenced, I noticed a few people I followed on social media were airing vaccine scepticism and sometimes straight up anti-vaxx falsehoods. At first, I thought maybe one or two people I knew might need to screw their heads on. I thought they were being post-ironic and making themselves look foolish for humorous effect, but after a few days on Facebook I realised these people were just idiots who either hadn’t rsearched the scientific info on vaccines or had, but just couldn’t understand it. 

I thought maybe if they read up they’d come to their senses. I quickly realised these people weren’t ever going to change. They were lost causes, who couldn’t bear the idea that they were wrong. 

I started to keep a list on Omininotes. I also started to cut off a lot of friends. Before long, I started to get a little hooked on keeping tabs on people: anti-vaxxers, Tories, Trumpster Republicans, Zionists, etc. etc. 

Omninotes allows you to search words to see if you’ve written them anywhere, and they’ll show up in whichever note you’ve written. You can quickly tell if you’ve ever recorded anyone as being a Trump fan, for example. Back in June, a certain MMA fighter found himself in hospital for what at first seemed an undefined condition. Nobody seemed to be saying on X. The fighter’s name rang a bell. I did an Omninotes search. It turned out he was one of a few MMA athletes who’d been sharing anti-vaxx content over Instagram in early 2021. I reminded X of this. 

Within seconds, my X notifications blew up. I was branded a limey piece of shit, a scumbag, and ‘the world’s biggest bitch.’ I’ve heard worse, to be fair. It turned out the guy had Staphylococcus aureus, a skin bacteria – not normally that troublesome but in some cases can be damaging. It also turned out he was in ICU. 

I deleted the tweet and put my X to private, but by this time I was being bombarded with death threats and insults. I reported hundreds of people. Quite a few of their accounts were removed. They were spamming my Youtube account and my blog with shit comments about *checks notes* vaccinated dolphins. 

It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but you try working in healthcare during a pandemic, dealing with hundreds of people screaming at you because you can’t put them through to their allocated professional because the professional’s caseload has more than quadrupled due to 14 years of Tory staff cuts. You try listening to people cry down the phone asking you ‘what do you expect me to do?’ The only answer you can give them is, ‘I am a Business Support Officer. I’m not allowed to advise you in any way. I can’t put you through to anyone. I take messages.’ Of course, they’ve been leaving messages every day for a week, and nobody got back to them. 

That’s because before the Tory takeover in 2010, the professional’s caseload would have had perhaps 10 people on it. During the pandemic, they had maybe 100 duty cases on top of that. During that period, a lot of the clients I had were aged around 50-75. They were getting into that vulnerable age group. 

They died in their droves. Every day, a son or daughter called reporting their parent’s death. We had to apologise, and again, send the message across. 

Eventually, in early 2021, the COVID vaccine was released, and steadily, those cases and deaths and subsequent phone calls started to decline. In its place, however, was a new breed of idiot: someone who believes they have more understanding than the experts who operate in the field of virology: the anti-vaxxer. These range from health shop managers, MMA fighters (as mentioned), incapacity benefit claimants, Olympians, reality TV stars, rappers, porn stars, actors, strippers, house music producers, pop singers, authors, newscasters, televangelists, comedians, tennis players, politicians, DJs, CBD CEOs and protein brand managers. 

Understand this: they were all wrong. Every one of them. And every dumb post that they uploaded strengthened a totally spurious narrative that there was something wrong with the idea of taking a vaccine. 

Anyway, the science has been properly explained form the start. I’m not going to reiterate it. That one MMA tweet, though, absolutely ballooned my blog hits. My X account has a link to this blog. People were finding my site and royally abusing me over it, even giving me thinly veiled death threats. I deleted all the comments, but the page views are forever. There was a huge spike, from that moment, that lasted up until October. 

It’s time to bring that spike back with some exposé tweeting. I’m not going to name random members of the public (of which I’ve recorded hundreds), but I will name anyone who’s in the public eye – whoever’s taken the decision to expose themselves on TV, like reality TV stars or suchlike. They’re getting outed on X.

I’ve got 1.7 million hits on the blog so far, and 488 thousand of those came in the last year. I’ve been running the blog since 2008. I’m going to stay active this month so that I have things to blog about, but for now, let’s bombard this awful X platform… 

Current page views: 

Overall 1,711,729 

Last month 41,766 

Yesterday 1276

Sunday, 31 August 2025

Hellraiser, House music, Taproom, Terminator, Terrifier

Busy week. 

Ashley Laurence, Kirsty from Hellraiser, liked my photo of her. Coincidentally, a few days before this, I bought Hellraiser on DVD.

 

Saturday Evening – my mate Paul Smith DJ’d at Ein Null: 10 Years of Sprechen, a house music celebration at Cloudwater Tap Room, a brewery / bar in Piccadilly Trading Estate, right in the middle of a load of business units. It looks like you’re walking into an accountancy at a first glance, but then on entry there’s the bar, and a DJ setup with a small dancefloor leading to a balcony. Over the edge, on the floor below, the brewery facilities are churning away behind the stored barrels. Unique venue. Great obscure house music. Friendly welcoming crowd as always. Also sharing the decks: Toni Key, Chris Massey, Muddy Feet, Elliott Lion, Miles Hollway and Flash Atkins.

360 of Sprechen, Cloudwater Tap Room. Chilled afternoon #housemusic

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 7:42 PM

August 29th, according to Terminator Lore, is Judgement Day. I shared my pic of myself with the 3 Terminator 2 stars, and Xander Berkley (foster dad Todd) liked it. Chufty badge. 

Way back in November I went to For the Love of Horror movie convention, and after writing up the event I shared the blog with the guests. On Friday just gone, Jenna Kannell – Tara from Terrifier – thanked me via inbox!

Saturday, 2 August 2025

Attention Training to Combat Anxiety

In 2025 we are awash with distractions, mostly from our smartphones. We fill our SD cards with apps for different websites, which then ping off to notify us of things that are largely irrelevant to our everyday lives. Sometimes it’s a reply to something we’ve said online, but a lot of the time it’s something a friend has done that isn’t relevant to us, an annoying feature that has emerged on various platforms in the last few years. 

Add to that the addictive nature of doomscrolling – largely on Instagram – and before you know it you’ve spent 5 hours on your phone doing very little (which can be confirmed by another available app that monitors your screen time). Away from phones, there are other screens- TVs, computers – at home and at work – there are distractions in the office, in the lounge, in bars. Your focus is constantly being syphoned off by a multitude of sources. 

Have we forgotten how to pay attention? 

It seems that I possibly have. I’ve received some treatment for anxiety in recent weeks. A long-standing problem, my habit of letting my brain shoot off in different directions has been spiking my anxiety for decades. The NHS have helped me with this a little bit. Dr C has encouraged me to try to develop tunnel vision, to focus on the individual I’m speaking to, or to the task at hand. He’s suggesting I try not to absorb everything that’s happening, meaning my mind shoots off on tangents, but to focus deeply on one thing, what’s most important, and forget the rest. 

I doubt I’m the only person who thinks that’s easier said than done, and it seems I’m right – Dr C showed me some YouTube videos called Attention Training, an audiovisual tool designed to develop a deeper focus on the one thing that you’re trying to do. Whether you’re trying to quell anxiety in conversations (like I am) or focus deeper on a piece of work (which I also am) or some other task that involves ignoring distractions, the Attention Training will, in theory, help to tune out the noise and allow you to think clearly and control your emotions. 

For more practice focusing, see also Attention Gym. These videos have millions of hits, and the comments show that other therapists worldwide, not just mine, are recommending these videos. Some are purely audio, some are purely visual, some a mix of both. The videos all follow a similar formula: many different things happen at once, with audio instructions requiring you to focus on one of these things. A small shape appears on a black screen and moves across it. You’re asked to follow it with your eyes. Soon, other shapes in different colours join the frame, and move in different ways designed to distract you – they spin, they turn, they rebound of the corners of the screen like a 90s screensaver. But we’re still asked to focus on the original shape, to ignore the distractions and stay focussed on the task at hand. 

The audio-emphasis exercises are loaded with similar distraction. The video – a black screen with text - will start with a ticking clock. A car’s engine will intrude on the sound, then a steam train, then you’ll be transported aurally to a greasy spoon cafeteria. These sounds will overlap, but your task is to read the text instructions and focus on whichever sound is described on screen. You need to identify the matching sound and cut out the cacophony from your mind. 

It’s no easy task. With time, though, I should be able to focus more deeply and not have my mind wonder off into some irrelevant thought or stressing over whether I’m doing it right. 

So, how is this relevant to real life? Concentration span has always been an issue for me, right from infant class. I’m now 43, and I’m still drifting off at times. For example, I’m embarrassed how long this blog post has taken to write, to be honest. Dr C has advised that not only will a deeper, narrower focus help me to understand things, it means the anxiety – over whether I’m good enough for the people I’m talking to, whether I’m ‘fitting in,’ whether memory difficulties are marking me out as different in some way – will be quietened as my attention will be on the other person in the conversation, not myself. These things might sound like ridiculous things to stress over, but when you strip everything away, this is my underlying problem. 

Other people have their own reasons for needing to practice focusing, but a lot of these videos have millions of hits, so it's far from an unusual problem. 

It would be a good idea to blog again on this issue in a month’s time, to see whether there’s any real-world changes to my attention and mental state. 

In the meantime, have a go yourself. 

Monday, 28 July 2025

43 this week.

Expect 2 blog posts about goals achieved, or not, or to be achieved.  

Viking project going well. Good food, workouts, and Netflix shows. 

Went to Diecast last Saturday, a food and drink hall with a nightclub vibe, in an old factory on the outskirts of Manchester. Think rusted metal, brickwork and vine leaves. House music in one room, live cover band in the other. Lots of small independent eateries scattered about. I figured it would be well worth running a meetup there, so if you want to join the 3 of us as it stands, get involved this coming Saturday. Manchester Nightlife will be there from 7pm. Come eat, drink, dance, talk. 

New Meetup Manchester Activity Group opened up this week, offering a range of fun stuff. Ice skating was already ran. Worth keeping an eye on. I’m certainly keen to try more things than just endless bars. 

Recharge and Reset also opens, ‘designed to help you slow down, recharge your mind and body, and discover simple tools to boost your everyday wellness.’ 

As some meetups open, others close. Manchester Clubbing has vanished. If that was your thing… there’s still Manchester Nightlife. 

Power is a State of Mind passed 1.4 million views last week. Whether you love me or hate me, thanks for reading.

Monday, 14 July 2025

Apollo, Vinland, Poetry, Bingo

 

Steadily chugging through this Viking project. I’ve bought Netflix and am watching a lot of Vinland Saga – Japanese animated series about Leif Erikkson’s adventures - and trying to regain my chin-up strength. Eating twice a day is going well. Just got to remember to drink plenty of water. Taking some annual leave to do this. 

I actually have some creative writing to go up on Wednesday, plus a write-up of a poetry slam in Manchester, a piece on attention training and book review also. 

I might be at Bongo’s Bingo with a different group at the weekend, so there isn’t anything planned in terms of meetups. But if that falls though – I certainly haven’t paid – Oleksandr Usyk is putting his heavyweight belts on the line Saturday night. I can’t see Brit Daniel Dubois offering much of a challenge, though. I also have no idea who’s showing it. 

Also, adult star The Apollo Show answered Popbitch’s baboon vs badger question. He even put it on his own Insta!

Sunday, 29 June 2025

Bongo's Bingo / Hong Thai / Carol Vordeman

I realise this is a long shot, but if you’ve ever wanted to win a Ninja Air Fryer to the sounds of DJ Sammy’s Fly on the Wings of Love, there is as it happens such an opportunity in Manchester’s Albert Hall, a 115-year-old chapel in the city centre. The occasion is of course Bongo’s Bingo, an absurd game where the prizes range from a Luke Littler darts set, a giant fluffy unicorn, an electric piano, some Coco Pops (to be thrown around the venue with willing abandon) and a double ended dildo. Towards the end of the games, the prizes get a little more useful, with the last game winner landing a solid £1500. I was at the Saturday daytime event yesterday with a mate from Manchester Nightlife meetup group. Great fun. No wins for us sadly. Albert Halls upper decks get HOT in the June sun. 

 

 

After this I ran a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to Hong Thai, a well-regarded Thai / Chinese fusion restaurant in Ancoats. Good chat with new members, great spicy food and was close to Counter House for cocktails. The whole thing wrapped up early enough to get the bus back.

Khao Soi in Hong Thai in Ancoats. Spicy broth. Then a Spicy Margarita in Counter House in Cutting Room Square. Good evening with new #meetup members.

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) June 29, 2025 at 8:31 PM

 

Lastly, I got an Instagram comment from Countdown's Carol Vordeman. I made her laugh. Go look. Too complicated to explain. 

Monday, 9 June 2025

Spinningfields Bar Crawl - Get Involved

On the blog: the last few Tenerife posts, that I’m sure are keeping you in suspense. Cough. Probably another recipe review. Plus I’ve got a few things that have happened since coming home. 

On socials: Actor William Forsythe reshared my birthday message to him over Instagram stories. Actor Richard Chaves liked my pic of us. Actor of a, uh, different kind Kat Kyle liked my pedantic grammar comment. I forgot to mention, last week Arabelle Raphael also liked this this joke in the comments of her reel. My comment got 10 thousand likes on a video. 

All is not well on the online social group scene. Not just my meetups, but it seems that there’s an issue with other groups on the site, plus groups on Discord too. Manchester Social has proven to be hugely unpopular with certain crowds, if this Reddit thread is anything to go by. 

Sadly, I got mentioned in this too. It seems in a meetup with Manchester Psychology Social group I briefly mentioned confidence building as a facet of psychology, and what I said was massively misinterpreted. Some weeks later, I got utterly lambasted for it. I apologised on the Reddit thread, although I’m still not sure what for. I can hardly even remember the conversation in question. It could, I guess, explain attendance dropping off. I did everything I could to bring people together just to share an interest, and it feels like it was thrown right back at me. Obviously, a bit of time has passed since this thread was active. I do want to run another Psychology meetup, but to where, and to do what exactly, I don’t know. 

The upshot is, you can’t please everyone. I took a break from running meetups as I had a ton of conventions to go to, plus a holiday, so I was too busy anyway, but I really just didn’t want the heat. 

But I did run a meetup to the Northern Quarter Friday for Happy Hour in Pen and Pencil, Before the start time, Get Social launched in Banyan in Spinningfields. This Meetup group is ran by the same guy who does the Manchester WeRoad meetups, and seeems to have a similar purpose: just bringing people together whether they’re travelling or local. I had a look. Pleasant enough evening, good people, still a bit of a sausage fest. 3 of us met in Pen and Pencil, which was utterly dead, so we tried a few other bars but called it early. 

The rumour on the night was that the heads at WeRoad cancelled the Manchester group because of an offensive comedy night that Manchester’s WeRoad branch apparently attended, hence the Manchester team launched GetSocial. 

Saturday night: There was supposed to be something happening in Freight Island, although I can’t find it on Meetup. Freight weren’t letting in anyway, so we tried 186 but I was in pumps so they weren’t having me. BLVD nearby hosted a hen do of mostly Irish girls from Crewe. The DJ got everyone into what he called a ‘Congo line’ (conga?) that threaded through the bar and out into the Spinningfields Avenue. Then my friend and I shot off to Ocasa, formerly Australasia (samba music) and Lawn Club, which was pumping out cheesy pop for another hen do. Mostly women. Can’t complain. 

So what’s happening this week? 

Friday night: looks like WeRoad meetup still exists in some form in Manchester, as they return to Box bar on Deansgate, booking the upper level out. I’ll be there to see which familiar faces I can spot, and also to try to badger a few people into my own meetups. 

Speaking of which, Saturday night: Spinningfields Bar Crawl with Manchester Nightlife. I’m aiming to get to a few new places this night, including Habbibi and Shiruku. If you fancy some cocktails, smart décor, possible celeb sightings and chilled house music, pencil this in for Saturday and come meet us. 

 

Monday, 21 April 2025

One and a Quarter Million

Comic Con Liverpool is the weekend after next. I still haven’t bought tickets. The cast of Aliens and the cast of Starship Troopers are on the roster. Incredible. The money I could spend doesn’t bear thinking about. I need to make a decision about who I’ll meet. Hopefully a lot will have sold out, ruling out the tempattion to splurge £400. 

I’m on TOIL Friday. Thursday night I’m planning to do… something social. I can’t just do chinups and watch DVDs. What is there on a Thursday to do? Reddit suggests Northern Quarter. I’m still planning this. But I have slammed up a Meetup in the hope that someone else will voice some ideas. Albert’s Schloss is looking likely. 

I’m also on TOIL on Monday 28th, but Sunday nights look suspiciously quiet too. More so this week as we’ve just had a bank holiday. Can I be arsed putting up another meetup? I dunno. 

I hit a million and a quarter hits on the blog this week. Good going considering the million mark only came in April ‘23, and I’ve been blogging on this platform since 2008. I must have done something right. Maybe the months of Teeline shorthand and touchtyping have paid off.

Sunday, 20 April 2025

Finally met with Manchester Social

Last month I blogged here and here about Manchester Social, an online group organising in-person meets for food and nights out etc. I described how, at an event I wasn’t at, there was some kind of fallout between attendees, and a breakaway group formed that I for some reason got invited to. I met with them a couple of times, but they really weren’t my kind of people. Not for any particular reason, but they didn’t seem to be any kind of people at all – a mishmash of different personality types and no real interest in doing anything I wanted to do. 

So I left the WhatsApp chat. 

Meanwhile, Manchester Social was growing in popularity and were putting up different nights out, food events and other outings. I kept an eye on their Discord page, where people were interacting and planning. I’ve a strong interest in the idea of people meeting online, and then in person, based on shared interests. So, when a site emerges to compete with the Manchester Meetup scene, I’m going to look into it. I gather Discord is a like a message board, mostly for videogames. Their icon looks like a console controller. 

I had a browse through Manchester Social’s Discord, steadily getting my head around the platform. A lot of their planned events either weren’t my thing, or clashed with Meetups I was running with Manchester Nightlife

Eventually, a night out was uploaded for Maundy Thursday, starting in Wolf at the Door in Northern Quarter. I met with the organiser and a few regulars. One attendee had actually come to one of my meetups before Christmas and had told me about Manchester Social, hence my involvement in all this. Wolf at the Door did good food.

 

Took ages to get served, but it tasted good. Had a good chat with the organiser about all the drama with this breakaway group that I don’t even speak to any more, that occurred on a night when I wasn’t even there. It seemed like we might get on. 

We moved to Freemount, a large pub on that recently moved from one Oldham St location to another. Wasn’t my kinda place before, isn’t now. Too loud. We didn’t stay long, so I can’t have been the only one feeling that way. 

Affleck and Brown had a live band on. Too crowded and overpriced, but we found a table to chat. People seemed cool. 

Not long after this, though, the decision was made to go to Moon under the Water, a Wetherspoons pub on Deansgate – a bit of a walk away – as it’s cheap and everyone was broke. Once we got there, I explained to them that the pennies you save on a pint you more than pay for with your reputation. They all seemed totally oblivious to CEO Tim Martin’s shit behaviour during the pandemic. I also mentioned I was an essential worker during this time, working in admin dealing with clients who were mostly 50-75, who were largely massacred by the bastard Tory government. 

So I bailed at 10pm. 

I’ve kept an eye on the Discord. It seemed after Moon under the Water they moved on to Satan’s Hollow, another atrocious shithole, some rock place, and a load of them for some reason got kicked out. 

Again, another online social system attracting people with limited social skills, all bouncing off each other. And yes, I fully get the hypocrisy: I run 3 Meetup groups, and haven’t had many repeat attendees across them. But that’s where my efforts are going to go. 

So yeah, give Manchester Social a shot if you want, but I won’t again.