CityLife

Bar Fringe

Bar Fringe: quirky

LEGENDARY live music venue Band on the Wall reopens this September after a £3.2m redevelopment that promises to turn its formerly tatty interior into something altogether more state of the art.

Over the road from the venue, infinitely less conspicuous than its scrubbed up neighbour (sitting comfortably behind a well worn exterior for which a refurb is definitely not on the cards), is the bar that will benefit most from the relaunch and the resultant human traffic.

Not that it really needs the boost: elbow room at quirky CAMRA-approved drinking den Bar Fringe is already at a premium.

If you're going for the first time and it's a weekend, be prepared to sacrifice some personal space in your quest to the bar.

Spit and sawdust

Bar Fringe, on the Swan Street edge of the Northern Quarter, is a bit spit and sawdust; part biker bar, part old man’s pub, with a dash of geek chic and a connoisseur’s taste evident in the selection of continental beer behind the bar.

It’s a small place that feels smaller still after work and at weekends, when office workers mingle with students and creatives under the watchful gaze of a life sized vampire slayer (Buffy, not Faith) who towers into the ceiling cavity atop bottles of assorted obscure beer brands, eyeballing the activity below.

For many, the beer is the main draw. Bar Fringe stocks about a range of continental (mainly Belgian) beers so extensive CityLife struggled to count them all.

Pleasingly, they’re all served in appropriate glassware (so simple, but so few bars get this basic right), alongside reasonably priced guest real ales and another continental draught beers, including, unusually, Duvel Green.

In the summer, you can take your drink out into the courtyard behind.

Bar Fringe, Swan Street, Oldham Road, M4 5JN  (0161 835 3815)