Weekend: eat, drink and be merry

Today marks the beginning of the Manchester Food and Drink Festival. I've never been to any of their thangs before (probably because the festival coincides exactly with peak foliage week in Northern New England) but you can get the full rundown here. The event that sounds most enticing to me right now is the Beans n' Buddhas dinner at Earth Cafe, "celebrating the warm, tropical and aromatic cuisine of Thailand and Indonesia." As Homer would say "mmmm, Buddhas."

Look '07 is a yearlong celebration of photography across different NW venues. Never heard about it before? Neither had I. No worries, though, there's still several months of photographic goodness in store until May. You might want to check out the Rene Burri exhibition at the city art gallery, or the Trace photography open at Cornerhouse. And in a couple of weeks there's yet another photography exhibition chronicling the glory days of Manchester's most legendary nightclub, The Haci... zzz. wha? sorry, guess I nodded off there for a minute.

Friday, traveling night Rain or Shine spreads its countrified love all over the fabulous restaurant and bar Kim by the Sea on Old Birley Street in Hulme. The headliner is Jawbone, "a one-man-band sonic assault from Detroit that has a sound that strips the blues to its bare-bones with a primaeval stomp that's the missing link between Lightning Hopkins, Zoot Horn Rollo and The White Stripes." My my.

Getting into next week, if you've ever wanted to drink tea in a drafty squat but missed out on all the Okasional Cafe fun last time around, some members of Manchester's anarchist cafe society are putting together Lost n' Found, an "autonomous social centre" that's going to occupy a disused building somewhere in Mancland between Oct. 11 and 27. Short film festivals, junk fashion shows, art exhibitions, bicycle repairs, cabaret, reiki, hot meals and oodles of earnestness will be on offer.

You can follow that up by getting your dance on in yet another disused industrial space (it's all right, we've got loads of 'em) at the Warehouse Project, which kicks off two months of madness this Friday at the old Boddingtons Brewery. Look out for De La Soul Oct. 28, The Long Blondes Nov 2, Roni Size/ Gilles Peterson/ Daddy G Nov 4, Larrikin Love/Noisettes/Ladyfuzz Nov 17 and Horace Andy with the barking Lee Scratch Perry Nov 22. And that's just a bit of what's to come, but it is of course selling out fast.