Is Manchester the best city n the country?

[clapham_gull]

Lived in Manchester for 12 years now. The City centre is very nice. This was helped a lot by the IRA bomb which perversely took out a lot of the old shitty centre in one go. Now replaced by some great shopping areas, trendy bars and clubs. All cities have their bad areas and Manchester certainly has these with Moss Side, Ordsall etc. It's now almost certainly the UK's 2nd city behind London but in front of Birmingham. The people have a swagger about them, seen as cockiness by many. You could sum it up as being a Manc.
However, you can't beat your home town. I like Manchester but love Brighton.

The centre was never that bad. To be honest I much prefer the old Manchester, pre - the redevelopment. There were some great independent bars and shops.

I had time of my life up there in the early 90s. Brighton now, around the North Laine reminds me very much of Manchester of old. A bit of character.

I was quite depressed when I visited it recently. Parts that had a unique identity now look like everywhere else.

There was a fascinating "book shop" up near Piccadilly, I suspect long gone. Full of weird magazines, postcards, old football programmes. It was a treasure troth. Never seen a shop like it before or after.

Just really funny odd independent stuff. Like a huge fanzine, I guess.

I was doing some project or other for University and just picked up a random collection of really left field stuff and stuffed them in the boot of my car.

Unfortunately one night I got pulled over by the police and forgot about all this stuff I had picked up.

( This was around the time of the Warrington bombings by the way, I lived out therefor a while but used to drive in )

They did a quick search of the car and found all these Irish Republican Newspapers, all quite legal but very very embarrassing. Fortunately, all the other stuff I had picked up "proved" I was somewhat confused politically !

Loved that shop.