The Peer Hat, Manchester
Find the article at
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/mar/30/celebrating-the-uk-50-writers-choose-their-favourite-places
“In a city where Factory Records’ legacy is exploited by the same property developers who are rapidly pricing any creativity out of the city centre, the Peer Hat – a pub, grassroots music/arts venue and DIY record shop – has, in 18 months, come to feel like a much-loved last stand … a persistent weed amid all that new concrete and glass. Hidden on a Northern Quarter side street where stag dos fear to tread (and so shambolic they wouldn’t stay long anyway), the Hat has a gloriously random, lo-fi events programme, clearly done for love not money, giving it a friendly, all-comers community feel that is far closer to the dissenting spirit of late-1980s Manchester than any Hacienda revival night. It is an oasis of odd in an increasingly bland city. “
Tony Naylor, Manchester-based Guardian journalist