What's the Story?

You’ve got to admire some people’s entrepreneurial spirit. In these testing financial times, with pubs and restaurants closing daily all over the country, one plucky Manchester company is bucking the trend and actually opening one up – nay, re-opening a former victim of the aforementioned financial meltdown. The Farmers Arms in Burnage is now in the hands of the apparently thriving Levenshulme Pub Company, an outfit that already owns two watering holes in, unsurprisingly, Levenshulme.

So how does one go about trying to make a success of a once-bankrupt pub? What could possibly be tried that hasn’t been tried before? Well it’s simple – find a tenuous link to the surrounding area and flog the hell out of it. Ladies and gentlemen The Farmers Arms presents the Oasis Music Lounge - a place for fans to come and listen to the music of their favourite band (because, obviously, you don’t hear it anywhere else in Manchester) in a room a bit closer to where the Gallagher brothers grew up than most other pubs in the country. Have Messrs Gallagher ever been in the Oasis Music Lounge? Well, no. What about The Farmers Arms? Probably...possibly...who knows? Who cares?

To be fair to the Levenshulme Pub Company, they do have some unique features in their new venue – some photography of the band taken at their gig in Eastlands and some undisclosed memorabilia, and despite the obvious tenuousness of this venture, I wish them well. It’s good to see people trying things out and taking a bit of a gamble instead of just moaning about why it wouldn’t work and never doing anything about it. I might even pop down myself. What are the chances of Wonderwall being on the jukebox when I walk in?