Live Like Common People

Common
39 - 41 Edge Street, Northern Quarter
Manchester,M4 1HW
0161 832 9245

Common has the youngest feeling of the bars in the Northern Quarter, it’s an interesting mixture of the arty and soon to become arty, the creative and on the brink of something genius-like, rather than the older more established, semi-successful crowd of the clique, which is Cord.

20 something’s with original haircuts, tongues-in-cheeks and up-to-date ironic fashion sense, mingle with smoking social workers, defunct bedroom DJs, embarrassingly knowledgeable vinyl collectors and down-to-earth graffiti artists with plans a foot.  

Artwork has a big part to play in this Northern Quarter ‘community bar’, as well as music and food, and so from the John Flower-esque, boarding to the exhibitions on the walls, Common is ever changing with art, with June showcasing Dot the I’s, a Manchester based collective of doodlers and the like, it also has other works coming up from Salford and Manchester Uni’s.

The bar itself is much louder than many of its older Northern Quarter brethren and this young brother seems to want to party as much as possible, the open styled seating arrangements, more to perch on than to lounge, and the moveable table arrangements just itching to be pushed aside for festivities. Festivities include the Best Foot Forward (a Saturday monthly) allowing music lovers to wander off track with an eclectic blend. Hear No Evil every Thursday lets Ryan Hunn (from Vox Pop) indulge himself with a huge collection of vinyl, and the bar favourite, occurs every Sunday, in the form of Licktronica, a lovely evening of electronic music from Burnley to Berlin.

But is this really a place to party? The friendly all girl bar staff seem to think so, openly enjoying the music as much as happy punters, the punters enjoying the chat over the bar as much as the party people and the party people loving the beers. Many a different type of bottled beer, not so obscure as to make you wonder why, but different enough to please the palette – the Fujli on tap being the cheapest you can get around these parts. This is a great bar to go have some fun. And with the membership scheme through the website you can even cut down in the costs of the £2 after 10pm, and miss out on the queues in the later evenings – not a bad call.

For those of you who want to cheat i.e. eat, whilst you drink, Common won’t let you down, with posh toasties, nachos and even cakes during the day. All food during the day time comes with different deals to tempt those office people and local heads to venture in somewhere a little different. When people do venture to Common, I think they find it’s in a class of its own, it’s fun, it’s quirky, it’s independent and not common at all.

Words: Danny Sodergren