New Union Hotel

The New Union is the oldest surviving gay pub in Manchester — a traditional working-class boozer that predates the Canal Street branding and the TV attention and the tourist coaches. It is the pub where you go when you want Manchester's gay scene without the performance of it. Cheap drinks, a drag show on selected nights, karaoke most evenings, and a clientele that is genuinely mixed across age, class and disposition. The décor is 1980s pub without apology: carpet, banquette seating, a DJ booth in the corner. The New Union has outlasted dozens of more fashionable venues on Canal Street and will probably outlast a dozen more. Located at the Princess Street end of the village, it is the starting point for nights that end at Cruz across the road. The annual Manchester Pride Bank Holiday weekend brings an enormous influx; the rest of the year it is a neighbourhood pub in the best sense.