suggested soundtrack: Joy Division - Isolation
the views from my hotel, The Britannia, formerly a mid-1800s sales warehouse:
it has coolass stairs and lobbies that felt like i was on the Titanic
lobby view
at night i unconciously imitated Bill Bryson when he went to Manchester in Notes From a Small Island:
"I went on a long, purposeless walk through Manchester's dank and strangely ill lit streets...I felt as if I was never
getting nearer to or farther from anything in particular, but just wandering around in a kind of urban limbo."
"...some plan to introduce trams because they have them in Zurich or someplace and they seem to work pretty well there..."
seeing this made me laugh, b/c Bryson wrote about it...
"I awoke early and hit the drizzly streets determined to form some fixed impression of the city...
If I haven't got a very clear image fo the city, it's not entirely my fault. Manchester doesn't appear to have a very fixed image of itself.
"Shaping Tomorrow's City Today" is the official local motto, but in fact Manchester seems decidedly of two minds about its place in the world..."
Urbis, the city museum, which also had a cool exhibit on The Sex Pistols, punk and Manchester's early punk scene
(my favorite part was the handwritten lyrics)
odd, for a city museum, it's butchered its view of the city...
next stop is Liebeskind's Imperial War Museum North - on the ends of the earth (or the other side of the city)
that's a hella lot of cranes...maybe even more than Leeds...
there was almost a fight on the tram over...between a chavette and an old man who yelled at someone else's crying toddler,
while a well-dressed woman behind me muttered to herself "Oh God no, this isn't happening..." but finally we arrived in one piece.
Bryson on the area; "At Salford Quays...planners have...done everything they can to obliterate the past,
creating a kind of mini-Dallas on the site of the once-booming docks of the Manchester Ship Canal."
the museum was great; unlike London's IWM, you can get through it in a day, and it's got hands on exhibits even adults can enjoy,
like a cute lass that lets you hold relics from a rotating display case;
but my favorite was the propaganda poster displays that let you change the message;
as Bryson said, "Even after twenty years in Britain, I remain constantly amazed and impressed by the quality of humor you can find
in the most unlikely places-places where it would simply not exist in other countries."
there's an observation deck in the "Air Shard"
the old mills here are awesome...when i come back, i'll check them out closer
i had a little time to kill before my train, so i walked towards an area that seemed really well-preserved
i would've stayed here if there'd been cheap vacancy; it's furnished lofts/hotel
what, you were expecting some grand ending? well a cute girl from Nambia did give me some licorice on the train...
->
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