Good Or Shit: Manchester

I used to think you could tell a northern Englishman by his Oasis-style haircut. Longish, shaggy, with a fringe falling over the forehead. But on the streets of Manchester the style is not as prominent as one might think, or as it once was - even as 90s-era music and fashion resurges in popularity.

I used to associate Manchester with Gallaghers. Noel and Liam of Oasis fame, and Frank - the dole-bludging, pill popping, lager drinking, working class star of Shameless, a television series based around the mischievous goings on of a family living on the fictional Chatsworth housing estate. Associating Oasis with northerners may sound like a generalisation but, one night in a pub in London, when popular Oasis tune Don't Look Back in Anger came on, every northerner in the joint stopped what they were doing and started loudly singing along, arms in the air or around each other, as though it was an anthem, a national one, unifying them in their northern-ness.

To me it seems a bizarre trait – old western countries divided within themselves, more loyal to their own states and counties than to the country as a whole. It's almost tribal. There is a stronger sense of identity here, an identity that prides itself on being salt of the earth as opposed to the refined flora that may spring forth from the more fertile southern ground. As a Mancunian bar tender said to me – “Australian? You guys know how to party.” And, when I mentioned the reputation that northerners also have for burning the candle at both ends, “Yeah, but you lot party ... and then you keep on partying. We just party until we beat each other up.”

Manchester was not only the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution but also several musical revolutions. The city has gifted the world an extensive list of prolific musicians going back to the 60s. Including, but not limited to: The Hollies, The Buzzcocks, The Fall, Joy Division, New Order, Simply Red, The Happy Monday's, The Stone Roses, The Smiths, M People, Lamb, N Trance, and of course, as the perfect example of the northerner's stubborn prerequisite to never do exactly what you tell them, but rather inform you of a few things that you can go and do to yourself instead – Oasis.

I found that there were two standard reactions to the city of Manchester from southerners –either that it's a rad city and great place to party, or that it's a fucking shithole. Perhaps the latter is what makes it the former, as a form of escapism, but this analysis depends on your definition of “shithole”. It's gritty, still industrial looking in appearance, with imposing neogothic buildings in the city centre, council-house towers that occasionally interrupt the flat sprawling landscape and areas made up of endless rows of indiscernible red-brick townhouses that a wayward traveller could easily spend weeks trying to navigate their way out of.  

Unpretentious and made of strong stuff. A city where, in temperatures hovering around 5 degrees on a spring day and 0 to minus 1 at night, I have to wear tights under my jeans whist the immaculately made up Mancunian women get around in miniskirts with their bare pins exposed to the elements.

There's a perception of Mancunians, and northerners in general, of being uncouth rowdy commoners – much like Queenslanders, except in freezing conditions – and I think – unlike Queenslanders – this is why I like them so much. In 1998 Noel Gallagher said in an interview, whilst pointing to his heart – “The thing about Manchester is ... it all comes from here.”