Captain America comes to town

If you were an American-based film company about to make a superhero film set on the gritty streets of New York and you had a huge budget to play with, you’d think the obvious place to film the scenes set on gritty New York streets would be, well, New York, wouldn’t you? Either that or some massively expensive bespoke film set made with the latest technologies, in a warehouse in Los Angeles.

It is with some surprise then that we learn the forthcoming, and much anticipated (especially amongst the geek community), Captain America film is to shoot some of its scenes in Manchester’s very own Northern Quarter. Filming is due to start next month, running for two weeks and should see the film’s big stars arriving in Manchester, with all the associated entourage that a big budget Hollywood movie comes with (we’ll be expecting to see at least one trailer). Chris Evans, who plays Captain America himself, Samuel L Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones are the big names on the cast, so keep an eye out for them when you’re in the area.

We’re told, “Producers picked the Northern Quarter to recreate the Big Apple in the 40s because of its towering buildings and pre-war architecture.” They’re going to be filming a car chase, apparently, and I suppose if it’s questionable, exhilarating driving they’re after, Manchester might not be too bad a place to find it. I see quite a lot of it myself on a weekly basis. There’s never a police car around when dudes are doing 80mph through town though, is there? Yet I do 34 mph on a deserted country road and there they are!

Anyway, in homage to this nod from Hollywood we though we’d have a little go on our friend Google Maps and see if we could find some similarities between New York City and our very own Northern Quarter. First, we had a look at a typical street scene – here’s 5th Avenue, Greenwich Village, New York City:


And here’s Oldham Street, The Northern Quarter, Manchester:


Hmm...it was obviously a Sunday when they took the Manchester photo – either that or some sort of air raid siren had gone off. Next, we tried to find a typical bar – so we took the Dry Bar as a classic example:


In New York, we found the Mercury Lounge:


That’s not too bad actually. One more...what other classic Northern Quarter feature could we pick to compare? How about a typical back street – the apparent reason they’ve chose The Northern Quarter over New York. Here’s Manchester’s finest:


We were a bit hard pushed to find a New York alternative, as it happens, and our intensive 60 second search could only produce this pleasant looking, leafy street. Maybe the film’s producers have a point – as far as Captain America's concerned, the Northern Quarter is better than New York.


Do you know New York better than us? Got a Google Streetview location that is more Manchester-like than our sorry examples? Leave a comment with details.