‘GBH to the eyes’: Can a vape shop ever be at home in the Northern Quarter?

I’m in MCR1: A 24-hour minimarket once known only for its vape supplies, but which recently achieved a possibly less desired fame for its signage. The signage in question, a yellow-back light-up beehive apparently responsible for plunging this corner of Stevenson Square into perpetual light, is now the subject of a formal complaint, a petition and an almighty backlash. It is described by one Mill interviewee as “GBH to the eyes”. 

I’m trying to convince the cashier to talk to me, but the cashier is shaking his head. The boss isn’t in, he tells me, and he’s under strict instructions not to talk to anyone at all about the light-up signs. Not a word on the official complaint about the signs either, nor the subsequent press coverage, nor the backlash to the complaint (and to the press coverage), nor the passersby now treating the shop as a tourist attraction, snapping selfies outside.

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Well, ok, I concede, but before leaving I write down my name and number, just in case he changes his mind. He reaches beneath the till and grabs a handful of something — paper slips, with the names and numbers of all the other journalists who have already been in written on them, in case he changes his mind.

So why are journalists falling over each other to get an interview at a vape shop? Well, last month MCR1 opened on Stevenson Square, on the corner of Hilton and Spear Street. You know the kind of shop. It’s the kind that sells pre-sugar-tax cola and American ice teas in colours surely no longer legal in the UK. They’ve got chargers for discontinued iPhones and they sell every flavour of Walkers imaginable except ready salted. They also sell vapes. Therefore, MCR1 is a vape shop.

And this is what MCR1 looks like:

And to be completely fair to the complainers — this is what MCR1 looks like at night:

Last week, a complaint was filed against the shop by one Fiona Moinuddin, to Manchester City Council, for its signage not being in keeping with the Northern Quarter’s industrial aesthetic. A separate petition was launched against it too — it has so far amassed 71 signatures. Both the complaint and the petition themselves were fairly straightforward; they just wanted the signs to be a little less garish. However, the knock-on effect, namely a large-scale online backlash against the shop has, to use an appropriate expression, shone a light on two things. The first is that the Northern Quarter is changing, and there’s no consensus as to which direction it should go. The second is that the general UK public really, really don’t like vape shops.