CityLife Rating
The Corner
IN every student town or city in the country you’ll come across two distinct styles of student bar: those that are trying desperately to be anything but (notable for style-bar apeing interior design) and the bars that revel in their squalor, promoting shooters, shots and – God help us all – random test tube-type drinks with the sole aim of getting the future leaders of the free world as broken as possible with the least amount of impact on their student loans.
Thankfully, this is Manchester and – to paraphrase the late Tony Wilson – we do things differently here. Or we do now, following the opening of The Corner in Fallowfield.
The first time we went it was like someone had crashed a back street Kingston dive bar into someone’s living room.
It was the reggae that did it (played loud through the Bose sound system, via the suspended DJ booth over the dancefloor at the back).
But it was also the shambollically chic jumble of plywood, kitsch 12in covers used as wallpaper, the dismembered mannequins, the wall padded in bus seats and the spit and sawdust vibe.
Not a style bar, but a bar with style, a genre that owners of this Trof spin-off have become specialists in.
Trof
They have gone from student origins via two bars of the year in the Northern Quarter and Grosvenor Street (Trof At The Deaf Institute) before coming back home to Fallowfield.
Corner is a new development for the owners and deviates from the round the clock stylings of the rest of the portfolio: no big breakfasts or epic portfolio of draught and bottled beers, no opening before 8pm, and though you can still get a cocktail if you want one, you’re more likely to opt for a pint of Poretti or San Miguel in a plastic glass.
The Corner is first and foremost about music programming with electro, techno, dance, jacking house, techno, electro, electronica, reggae, roots and live.
Big sounds for the studenty suburbs, but just the kind of place Fallowfield needs.
The Corner, 254 Wilmslow Road, Fallowfield.
Reviewed: Thu, 23 April, 2009
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