Cities progress and their topographies change. Particularly this is the case for Manchester which is not a classical city, it is a modern city, it is the modern city.

In November, the Star and Garter, a pub-come-live music venue behind Piccadilly Station halfway into the city’s red light district and full of the vestiges of what defined Manchester’s industrial and cultural heyday was handed a compulsory purchase order by Network Rail on Thursday, the city moved forward. As it must.

Image: starandgarter.co.uk

The Star and Garter is a two-hundred-year-old former hotel, grade-II protected from demolition, but vulnerably open to the whims of major developers. In its most salient venture, it hosts The Smiths and Morrissey Disco, a monthly club night of Smiths and Morrissey records, which regularly sells out before midnight. Local bands are nurtured at the Star and Garter as the city’s perpetual punk and metal scene has been…