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Dave Haslam: Manchester, England – The Story of the Pop Cult City (Fourth Estate)

Andy Beckett, London Review of Books, 17 February 2000

ON TIB STREET in the centre of Manchester, in the part of the city keen to promote itself as the Northern Quarter, a new delicatessen recently opened. According to its website, Love Saves the Day is "an integrated, licensed, food and grocery store for urban living'. It has a mostly glass façade, and two different logos, and packages its goods with almost fetishistic attention. One brand of coffee comes in a metallic silver bag, with the following information printed down one side in varying sizes, colours and typefaces, as carefully laid-out as a magazine centrespread: "Northern Quarter Blend ... Slack, smoky, complex, 24-7, domestic bliss ... A cosmopolitan blend of coffees from each of the major growing regions, combining rich Indonesian complexity with sparkling Latin American fizz, and sunny African fruitiness, truly the world in a cup."

Total word count of piece: 2720

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