The Sandbar

The Sandbar is on Grosvenor Street, just off Oxford Road, and has been serving the university area and local independent music crowd for years. It is an alternative bar in the traditional sense – cheap beer, a pool table, regular live music and DJ nights covering indie, punk, post-punk, metal and related territory, and a crowd that is not particularly interested in whether the place looks good on Instagram. What it does offer is a genuine music-focused atmosphere in a pub that charges honest prices and doesn’t require you to dress up or spend £15 on a drink to get through the door.

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The live music programme runs through the week and covers everything from established touring acts in the independent scene to local bands playing to small crowds. The back room has been the first stage for a significant number of acts that have gone on to larger things. It is the kind of venue that is necessary to a city’s music ecosystem and that tends to get overlooked in features about Manchester’s nightlife because it is not new or photogenic or particularly concerned with its own brand. That is precisely what makes it worth knowing about.