nobody knows the way it's gonna be

More on The Kitchen and Hulme Crescents:

Manchester Evening News (2022):

"You'd walk in and to the right there was like this half door to the kitchen, which is where the drinks were sold. It was dark, but it wasn't pitch black. There would be like a single pink lightbulb on, it wasn't a place that pandered to the consumer. "It was like the last days of the Roman Empire.

"At the time there were all these areas in Manchester that were basically left un-policed and without public services. "There were no police in Moss Side, the Gay Village, Hulme," he said. "And when that happens places become their own kind of entities. People make up their own rules. "So Hulme became this kind of commune, an anarchist haven. It was f***** fantastic. But you also needed to watch out for people taking your s***."

The Guardian (2023):

Constructed in 1972, the vast brutalist estate was the largest public housing development in Europe and could house up to 13,000 people. Intended as a futuristic blueprint for social housing, design and safety flaws became apparent within two years. In 1974, a child died falling from one of the easily climbable balconies. Cockroaches were plentiful, the heating system unaffordable, and residents were soon petitioning to be re-housed. By the mid-1980s, the council wanted to demolish it but couldn’t afford to, so they stopped charging rent. It became a magnet for a disparate crew of squatters – students, travellers, punks, ravers, anarchists, artists and drug addicts all living in chaotic harmony – and a dilapidated incubator for Manchester’s future musical talents. “It was a creative epicentre,” says Martin Moscrop of the post-punk funk outfit A Certain Ratio, who lived there. X Republic vocalist and resident Lily Laina Munster concurs: “It was a bringing together of minds through rebellion and music.” A Guy Called Gerald, the Smiths’ Mike Joyce, Ian Brown, Mick Hucknall and countless others also lived there, as did the film critic Mark Kermode and even Nico from the Velvet Underground. “Although I think she stayed for the cheap heroin,” says Una.

Late night blues parties had been run locally by the Black community for years, but by 1987, ecstasy and the burgeoning dance music scene brought an appetite for a different kind of early-hours do. So the Kitchen as a late night club was born. Scrawled graffiti on the walls in the estate provided directions for party-goers to reach the top floor of Charles Barry Crescent, where a sound system pumped out funk, hip-hop and imported house and techno. “On the first night there were 500 people,” says Williams. “It was crazy.” Nicholson remembers “a jam room upstairs for musicians and then DJs downstairs.” Williams recalls the room functioning for other activities. “People used to do a lot of fucking up there,” he laughs. Chris Jam and Tomlyn of the Jam MCs were brought in as in-house DJs. “The first time we walked in to Hulme it was like a scene from Mad Max,” recalls Jam. “It was lawless.”

This rent-free creative mecca for young people who shaped the future of Manchester sits in stark contrast to the city today, one which trades heavily off its own musical and cultural legacy but with a housing crisis that makes living there simply unattainable for many. “One of the reasons you get such incredible art, effervescent culture and creativity is because of a low or no rent situation,” Una says. “Rent is biblically expensive in Manchester and there are no areas where counterculture can be allowed to grow naturally and develop. Hulme was a haven for that.”

more sources:

DJ-mag: 24-hour party people: raving and rebelling in Manchester’s Hulme Crescents