FAC 251: The Factory

This is our favorite venue when it comes to student clubbing in Manchester. One reason above anything else: music! The ground floor is commercial and dance music with some hip-​hop on Saturday and Thursday night. No weird stuff in the speakers, if that’s the music you like you won’t be disappointed. Ground floor is also quite spacious so normally you will be able to move around down there.
2 more floors are available upstairs, one generally offering more rock-​ish music and the upper one more deep house/​techno music. The place is huge and despite being there almost every week, only once I had troubles moving around. Price tag is affordable, never more expensive than 6£ at the door.

Waited half an hour in the queue outside then 1 hour and ten minutes at the bar for drinks. There’s a few bars but they were all understaffed heavily. They advertise £1 drinks until midnight and then you only get one chance to buy them since the wait is so long. It was so packed that it took 15 minutes to get out because of the masses of people shuffling along like sardines down the stairs.
The music where we were was good in on the second floor, but I was so fed up and angry about waiting that I’m never coming back.

A friend of mine took me here on Saturday night as I’m a bit clueless on where to go in Manchester nowadays. We’d been at a wedding the night before and managed to get back to feeling physically able to go out again, so we went for somewhere new for me.
I’d been told that there’s different music on each of the 3 floors, with the top floor being the cheese room, which is where we headed immediately! I wouldn’t say it was your typical cheesey pop goodness, and had some more dancey and hip hop songs than anything. This was alright still, and we managed to dance like idiots all the same.
The main thing I noticed about this floor was that the bar had just one person serving for a good amount of the time — I asked her if she’d been left on her own and she did say there’s usually at least 2 people, so presumably it wouldn’t usually take quite so long to get served.
We ventured down to another room later on, but I don’t actually recall any change in the music really, so I’m not so sure about the claims of different genres on each floor.
The toilets were a bit of a mess, but I’ve seen worse. But the staff all seemed friendly and were willing to have a quick chat when they weren’t too busy.
I wouldn’t make a beeline for the Factory again, but it wasn’t all that bad. I’d say it’s somewhere to try if you fancy somewhere you haven’t been before, but there’s better in Manchester.

From personal experience, definitely my favourite place for a night out. 3 floors of varying types of music for everyone to have a class night out; normally top floor being Hip-Hop/R’n’B, the middle floor being the Indie/​Alternative floor with the ground floor thumping out the chart all through the night.
The queue for this club is usually exceptionally long after midnight with it being so popular with the student fraternity so guestlist is definitely worth a shout unless you feel like waiting for up to half an hour at the back of the queue. The bouncers can sometimes be varying in their friendliness let’s say with some being kicked out for no apparent reason before they’ve even entered the club itself.
KONG on a Wednesday is definitely one reason to go, with £2 entry before midnight and 80p drinks throughout the night which means the queues can be twice as long both outside and for all the conveniences inside.
Most nights the bar queue is exceptionally long due to them being largely understaffed and too small on each floor, the toilets space is ludicrously tiny for such a large venue; i.e. a very thin corridor that stinks with sweaty students waiting for about 20 minutes for them. The interior of these toilets leave much to be desired with broken locks/​broken doors/​holes in the wall/​numerous graffiti and unusable cisterns being very common problems.
Live gigs here are frequent towards the end of the student year with bands such as the Reverend and The Makers and the Subways having played here recently. These nights are usually epic and can sometimes be free meaning that they are definitely worth a go to if you are prepared to queue.
For me, most consistently one of the best nights out in Manchester.

Before I make any judgements on this club, I would like to point out first that I despise clubs to the absolute extreme. I hate to come across sceptical on the matter, but I just don’t seem appealed by anything they can provide… That and I hate fake and classless women (especially that orange skin. I mean… Comon’ how unnatural of a skin tone do you desire?)
But anyway!!! Onto my point.
This club offers 3 floors, which while we were there offered a different type of musical «genre» on each one. Sadly, there labelled «Rock» floor offered very little «rock» music (but I will let that one slip for a club) and a Reggae genre floor.
Me and my friend found ourselves on the top floor in the end, which was supposedly the «Neon» floor… It wasn’t as neon as I would have expected, but it had a couple of lights, a bar, and a dance floor and one padded raised floor used for seating. Sadly, if you haven’t all ready guessed I’m no dancer. and instead sat there with my manly man drink (Baileys, which I was judged for ordering by the staff) and watched the orange women rush in. In the end me and my mate sat there until about 2 in the morning having a casual chat, which involved me moaning the majority of the time.
Best part of the night, had to be When I noticed a very other enthusiastic Asian man who persisted to hit on passing women and dance with them… it’s safe to say he failed in doing so, it was highly amusing: D
as for the staff, far from entertaining or friendly. And presume they all «despise» their jobs… Poor guys.
I can see how this might be… some what entertaining for people of my age but I just can’t see it. I presume it’s okay if you like clubs and fake women… I do not.

Had an absolutely amazing time here. I love how every floor is a different genre of music. We came here for an event (please don’t ask who… I don’t remember) and ironically ended up spending a vast majority of the night in other rooms. The room of the headlining act was beyond unpleasant (if the music’s good, you don’t care, but it was better elsewhere). There were people puking, sweating, smoking, drinking, spitting, groping… yeah, that’s okay. I know you’re probably wondering if the four stars are a mistake at this point, but they’re not. It really is a cool place, and luckily it’s big enough that you can find your own «niche.»

Really loved this club — a vast improvement on the usual Manchester Indie clubs 5^th Ave and 42s… really good music… reasonably priced and three different rooms. really good. highly recommended…

Saturday nights are normally reserved for chav factor in town, for the majority of the venues anyway. However I was pleasently surprised with this venue. It was a great night. The msot important thing for me always after the obvious things like music and price factor is the crowd. If the crowd is good then, you’re onto a winner. I am pleased to report that despite it being Saturday night, the crowd was chav free!!! Result…
What’s more with three floors and different types of music playing on each it really was great banter. Mo-​town music on 2^nd floor was jamtastic, loved the old school tunes belting out. Atmosphere was phenomenol albeit it was hotter than a mother. The drinks were fairly priced and the entry fee was only £6 cannot complain. I’d recommend Factory on a Saturday night… good night!

There’s always a really really big queue outside of Factory so it’s taken me a while to decide to just brave it and not walk away. It’s been hyped, it’s been flyered, it’s been flooding my facebook inbox and inviting me to new groups as each become oversubscribed. So it’s popular but how goes the new Hacienda and Peter Hook’s new venture?
Waiting in a thirty minute queue isn’t a great start to the night but Bulletbroof awaited us on the other end. That’s the Friday club night with three rooms of indie rock and roll, 80s indie and alternative «Rub-​a dub-​dub» dubstep electro. A brilliant mix if one room failed we thought. With £1.80 drinks and £1 shots you can’t go wrong right?
Overall it was an average experience. The place had an underground feel, nothing too special and can’t deny that me and the girls had a good dance, the music hit the spot, the crowd was pretty laid back and it was a good clubbing experience.
I’ve not had experiences of any other night and there’s always live nights with impressive acts to check out but must admit I haven’t got the urge to quite brave that queue again.

I was really excited when FAC251 opened, directly opposite my hall of residence. Shame it didn’t really live up to my expectations. I tried to love it — I really did! Close — but no cigar.
The Factory is dark, dingy and almost entirely dull. There is nothing in the factory that isn’t seen elswhere in Manchester, other than the music that is scheduled for the clubs frequent live events, which are, in my view, the venue’s saving grace. The bottom floor is always overcrowded and quite often is littered with pools of sick, alcohol and other nasties. As much as I love paddling, I don’t normally mix it with clubbing!
The second floor, however is somewhat nicer. Comfy seating, better music and a quieter bar. That is, providing you get into the club in the first place. The Factory is a difficult place to get into. Guarded by huge numbers of bouncers, and normally trailing a queue which stretches down to the corner of Oxford Road, getting into the building is a feat in itself.
The Factory has a wide range of music, good, cheap drinks and 3 separate areas over 3 floors. Despite this, I cannot say that it particularly piqued my interest as it is just a clone of something that wasn’t very good to begin with. Sort out the floor, sort out numbers and clean it up. There is potential here. Perhaps once it has become more established and settled, the club will find its groove.

Yes, yes, I knowwwww, this place has not opened, so this is more a preview than a review. Yes, yes, I knowww, how can I give something a score when I’ve not even been?
Sheesh. Well, I’ll tell ya.
As a bit of a hater of what passes for ‘indie’ nowadays, I was a little annoyed when I heard that Princess Street, already home to the scabrous meat market that is 5^th Ave, was getting *another* indie club. And opposite my rather-​loved Josh Brooks, too, meaning it’d be full of indie schmindies doing their pre-​drinkage. Actually, that still annoys me a bit. Anyway, this is all conjecture, but let’s look at the facts.
FAC 251 will be a 350 capacity club and live music venue, housed in the old HQ of Madchester’s Factory Records, «the building that started it all, and ultimately destroyed it all», according to their website. Weird, I thought the advent of Ecstasy started, then destroyed, Madchester. But I was a baby then, so what do I know. Anyhoo, this new incarnation of Madchester isn’t just in the epicentre of its past, it is run by New Order’s Peter Hook.
«Woah woah woah! Wait a second» I hear you splutter «Didn’t his first club The Hacienda famously lose more money than it ever made, and Madonna got bottled off stage, and it closed down in ’97, and is now a block of posh flats?» Yes, yes, yes and yes. The Hacienda was a bleedin’ disaster, and Mr Hook has admitted that he had no idea what he was doing (probably all them drugs, Hooky). Let’s hope he’s got a good accountant and a better business model this time round.
So, for concept alone I’m giving this club 3 stars. I mean, come on, Hooky has *admitted* he can’t run a nightclub, and yet, here he is, giving it another go. That’s pretty spunky, and could add up to a real spectacle of a club. Of course, there will be cynics who say «wait, everyone from Madchester is dead, apart from the Gallaghers and Hooky, and one of the Gallaghers is a fashion designer these days. That’s not cool. This scene is dead, man» Well, yes, probably. But whether Hooky’s giving us a taste of the old Manchester he loved, or simply pulling a cynical stunt because he’s skint, you’ve gotta admire the balls of this project.
It’s set to open on Feb 5^th. Watch this space for my update, as once again I brave indie clubs. For Hooky, for Madchester, for Unilocal