Posted on 02/20/2006 9:26:51 PM PST by raccoonradio
Love it or hate it, the Queen City's other name has stuck.
We're smack in the middle of New Hampshire's largest city, where half-naked boys are killing a scorching afternoon on the dirty concrete slopes of the local skate park.
Here, down the street from the city's old baseball stadium, a Memorial High School freshman smears a cracked paintball on the ground while, nearby, two Central High School teens flirt beside a graffiti-covered wall.
The kids here have been living in Manchester all their lives, but not one of them ever calls it that. Because these days, when you're a teenager in the Queen City, "Manchester" is just a word you write on envelopes and school forms.
No. These are the children of Manch Vegas.
Baby.
"That's all I ever call it. I never call it Manchester," says Aaron McGuire, 19, balancing on a skateboard with an unlit cigarette in hand.
A few yards over, a 14-year-old named Troy Estabrook considers the matter while straddling a small Haro bicycle. And now that he thinks about it, he can't come up with anyone who uses the city's proper name.
"No one that hangs around here, anyway," he says.
The signs on the interstate may welcome drivers to the Queen City, but it's strictly Manch Vegas at downtown bars like Milly's Tavern, which brews its own ManchVegas IPA.
"It seems like one person picked up the slang and it just hasn't stopped," said Becky Boisvert, a bartender there.
Where did the nickname come from? Surely, quiet little Manchester has nothing in common with Las Vegas, the so-called "Entertainment Capital of the World" — the great American Mecca of quickie weddings, quarter slots and exotic dancing.
"Somebody said to me, 'Manchester's just like Las Vegas. That's why they call it Manch Vegas,' " said Lee Johansen, owner of ManchVegas Properties LLC. "I thought, 'Well, that couldn't be further from the truth.'
"Manchester kind of rolls up the sidewalks at 11 o'clock. I really saw it as an oxymoron."
So maybe Manchester, N.H., isn't the place to go for trained white tigers and Celine Dion. But things are changing, especially these last few years. Today's Manchester lays claim to a midsized arena, a minor-league baseball and hockey team, Arena2 football and plenty of night life options.
"Manchester's on the rise," said Ron Pappas, who hears the nickname all the time at his Elm Street restaurant, Pappy's Pizza. "It's a destination. People are coming for the action."
Elias "Skip" Ashooh puts it like this: "We really are Manch Vegas now." Snide origins
Manchester was a different city 40 years ago, when farms dotted South Willow Street and the nearest major mall was in Massachusetts.
Back then, teenagers cruised up Elm Street, turned around, then cruised back down. They hung out at ice cream parlors and looked forward to Thursday, when the downtown shops stayed open until 9 p.m.
"This was when the Beatles were all the rage and they had all those teenage nightclubs over in Europe, and of course Manchester had nothing," said Lisa Angelini, a 1969 graduate of the old Immaculata High School.
It was around this time, in the late-1960s, that Angelini and her friends added "Manch Vegas" to their local lexicon.
"The whole idea was it was diametrically opposed to Las Vegas, with a lot of night life and carousing," she said. "Manchester had none of those things." Know when to hold 'em
What the city did have, in abundance, was underground gambling.
"There was always gambling going on while I was on the police department," said Lou Craig, the former city police chief who joined the force in 1963. "There was off-track betting, illegal betting. There were card games at numerous clubs in the city — big card games. I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of dollars."
The problem reached full boil in the late-'80s and early-'90s, when police cracked down on video poker machines that were generating millions of dollars at clubs, coffee shops, Laundromats and restaurants throughout the city. Another round of raids came in 1999.
"When I think of Manch Vegas, I think of gambling," Craig said. "I think of nightclubs. I think of increased drinking, increased drugging, of longer hours for clubs."
Not unlike a certain city in Nevada, some might argue. Claiming credit
It's hard to say who coined the city's nickname, though a few individuals have tended to receive credit — whether they deserve it or not.
There is, for instance, Rick Kelman, who hosted a late-night radio show on Rock 101 in the early-'80s called "The Midnight Bong."
"He was the one that really talked about, 'Hey, what's happening in Manch Vegas," said Sarah Lindquist, the station's former general manager.
There's also John Manning — aka DJ Midas — who claimed to have popularized the phrase in 1989 while promoting his audiocassette, "Bad Pigs."
More recently, some have traced the term to Greg Kretschmar, host of Greg and the Morning Buzz on Rock 101. Kretschmar and his co-hosts use the phrase regularly, and they even wrote up a musical tribute: "Viva Manch Vegas." The song, performed by a skilled Elvis impersonator, starts like this:
"The Queen City's gonna set my soul
Gonna set my soul on fire.
I drive in from I-93 with money to burn
And for beer The Rover's my supplier."
But Kretschmar, who may deserve some credit for popularizing the nickname, isn't the source. He heard it years ago, in his early-20s, he said.
"I think it came across on a scroll, didn't it?" Kretschmar said. "I've heard it forever, but I could never quite say where the credit goes." Geniuses of Manch Vegas
Kate Amara, who investigated the term's origin for WMUR-TV's "Chronicle" program in 2003, reported her friend from college first heard the term on the Webster School playground in 1983. Amara later asked — rhetorically — whether comedian Adam Sandler, who graduated from Central High School the following year, might have been the "genius" behind the phrase.
That's unlikely, since Sandler was still in elementary school when Dick Anagnost heard his classmates saying "Manch Vegas" in the early 1970s. Anagnost, who graduated from Central High in 1973, liked the phrase so much that, in 1984, he opened a bar on Hanover Street called Club Vegas.
"When I was in high school, it was called Manch Vegas because there was really nothing for kids to do," he said. "You've got to admit: Manchester in the '70s and early-'80s was a ghost town."
Anagnost suggests the meaning has changed in recent years. The man responsible for that, he said, is Union Leader columnist John Clayton.
Clayton, who claims to prefer "Manch Vegas" over the stuffier "Queen City," may well have been the first to put the phrase to print. His momentous first reference appeared in August 1993, when he welcomed harvesting season with the declaration that "We in Manch Vegas are up to our armpits in agriculture."
He's been using the name in his columns ever since.
"He mentioned Manch Vegas, and it's always mentioned in a positive light," Anagnost said. "So when it's used nowadays, it's definitely in a favorable light." Manch-hattan?
Not everyone likes the term as much as Clayton does. Mayor Bob Baines, for one, doesn't claim to be a fan.
"I've been joking with people: Instead of Manch Vegas, we're becoming Manch-hattan," he said.
Cotton, a restaurant and bar in the millyard, recently added a "Manch-hattan" to its menu. The drink, invented by bartender Kerri Sawyer, is a mix of Southern Comfort and Amaretto Disarono.
"Don't you love it?" Sawyer said of the name. "It takes the whole Manch Vegas thing and just makes it a little more classy."
To this day, Sawyer said, there are locals who continue using "Manch Vegas" in a disparaging way. Just like the city kids of 40 years ago, some people still complain Manchester is dull. "Manch Vegas," they say, makes that point. It's an age thing
Somehow, though, the nickname just won't seem to go away.
"I still think it's an age thing," said Ryan Gilmartin, who sells "Welcome to Fabulous ManchVegas" T-shirts at his store, Metro Sports, on East Industrial Park Drive. "It's a younger crowd that uses it, and when you get older, you stop using it."
Angelini, the 1969 Immaculata graduate, put the nickname to rest several decades ago. And then, one day, she heard her sons using it.
"I said, 'We used to call it 'Manch Vegas' in high school,' and they couldn't believe it. It's hysterical," she said.
Later, Angelini decided to buy a couple of those "Manch Vegas" T-shirts for her sons. Wherever they go, she said, the shirts tend to get noticed. But they also attract some strange looks.
"People who aren't from Manchester don't get it," she said, laughing.
Of course, she said, it's hard to explain.
"You say, 'Well, never mind. It's a long story,' " she said.
Ah, Manchester..."Manch-Vegas", as the locals call it. Where Ed Muskie cried, or was that snow melting on his cheeks? (Are you crying? There's no crying. There's no crying in politics!)In nearby Nashua, Ronaldus Maximus: "I am PAYING for this microphone, Mr. Breen!"
Manchester, where they tried to name the new minor leage baseball team the New Hampshire Primaries (see logo) but there was such an outcry it was scrapped and they became the Fisher Cats
I worked in the Millyard for several years, in a software development company. Most of the buildings in the Millyard are owned by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway.
The main street was dead back when I worked there (late '80s - early 90's), and it didn't look any livelier as of 6 months ago. One of the restaurants they mention, "Cotton", unfortunately replaced a better Italian restaurant.
The brick row houses near the Millyard originally were worker's homes. Now they're mostly split up into tiny apartments.
The illegal gambling goes on in the private "ethnic" clubs, such as the Franco-American clubs. Used to be lots of French-Canadians in Manchester; haven't heard that accent in years.
I also know ex-mayor Bob Baines (Democrat) from our previous lives as teachers.
Don't go out of your way to visit Manchester. Nothing special and slightly run down. However, there are some very nice homes in adjoining Bedford. And I love the convenience of Manchester Airport.
a mix of Southern Comfort and Amaretto Disarono
It's Amaretto di Saronno, made in Saronno, Italy
>>Millyard
As a radio buff, I noticed a year or two ago that 96.5 FM
(now classic rock) re-dubbed themselves "The Mill"
Seemed to me like there were at least some good restaurants and some nightclubs, and it's good that Verizon Arena seems
active (they were supposed to have some Disney on Ice
show there yesterday). I noticed "Cotton" while driving
and walking.
>>Used to be lots of French-Canadians
While I was eating at Strange Brew Tavern, I noticed one TV had sound down (may have mentioned this) and it was apparently a Canadian TV station via cable or satellite
(from Sherbrooke--graphics in French. What's the weather
in "l'Estrie"--the Eastern Townships...?)
As for being run down, maybe so in spots (some old mill buildings haven't been rehabbed yet) but it looks like
some signs of life. I enjoyed a Fisher Cats game there last year. And my one time using Manchester Airport worked out
well ($8 a night to park!). It was a hour's drive from
Beverly MA where I lived, and I caught a cheaply priced
Southwest flight to go to Nashville (and then drove to
Memphis). Easier to deal with (and cheaper parking)
than Logan.
>>and it didn't look any livelier as of 6 months ago
and now that you mentioned it I went into an indoor mall
on Elm St. (connected to a building with IRS, etc.) and while there were some shops and a post office, there _were_ a lot
of empty shops. But maybe Manchester can get some more
businesses in. Who knows; it was a nice sunny day yesterday
and I was in a good mood, so maybe I had rose-colored-glasses on if you know what I mean. But still kinda funny how the
sarcastic "ManchVegas" nickname came about, and some could
hope that maybe with time there will be more reasons to
visit the Queen City...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.