The Queen Of Hearts

I don’t know what it is with me and Tarts, but I never seemed to catch it at a good time. There were nights when loads of our friends were there, but by the time I got there with a couple more friends, the place was exploding at the seams and they stopped letting people in. Another time, we came on a Friday night and it was crickets… one of those twilight zone moments where you’re left wondering if zombies took over the rest of Fallowfield.
I wanted to like you, really, it just didn’t work out.

To be fair, now that I live around the corner from this place I’m willing to give it a bit of a break. First of all I’ve become more than accustomed to wading through masses of students in bunny costumes and that denim-hotpants-with-tights-and-grandma’s-jumper combination that seems to be so popular at the moment (even I’m known to rock it from time to time), so I’ve built up something of a resistance — thus equating to more of a happy indifference towards a place like Tarts.
But do you know what really swung it for me? Walking by here on a bright sunny day, touring my mum around my new neighbourhood, and her finding it so endearing that revellers were cheerily playing on the Ping Pong tables in Tarts’s admittedly large and impressive beer garden. You can’t argue with a bit of friendly competitiveness, and this activity made the place seem far less scary than I remember from my first visit.
It’s not going anywhere and I still have to walk by it every time I get the bus, so I might as well get used to it.

Queen of Hearts (Tarts to its patrons) is… Well, it’s a Scream pub, innit. Entirely beyond redemption, it’s pretty much the Lidl version of Tiger Tiger: boys grope, girls puke, and the night invariably ends with a resounding singalong to Take That’s ‘Never Forget’. Of course!
To be fair, it’s incredibly popular amongst the student race, so it can’t be all bad. And with enough of the £3 double vodkas inside of me, I can have a good time. If I try. And close my eyes and think happy thoughts when I visit the ladies room (I’m not joking, the toilets should not so much come with their own health warning as with their own complimentary tetanus jab).
Its just that Tarts at night is so… so not worth it. I, more than anyone, love a good cheesy, in-​yer-​face club. Hell, the bouncers at Zoo recognise me. But I just cannot get into this place AT ALL (I mean psychologically, of course. Its dead easy to physically get in if you’re a girl because, as Becca D rightly says, Tarts is meat-​market central).
The main pull of this place is that, pretty much, you can’t go wrong. It’s cheap, it plays mainstream music, and it’s always, always packed to the rafters (there’s many a night out been ruined by an empty club with no atmosphere). So if you’re organising something for a group of mates and want a guaranteed ‘alright’ night out, then here’s your place.
To be fair, it’s actually quite nice in the daytime, when no-one’s wearing their drink and you can sit in the cute little garden with your gang and have a natter. The food’s not amazing but is certainly edible, and definitely filling. And they do the lovely beer-​and-​burger deals which is always a winner (there’s a veggie options as well, don’t fret!)
This is why I seem to have gone against the grain a little bit here and given Queen of Hearts 3 stars (unlike the Marmite gang underneath me). Its, you know… alright. Not amazing, but I’d rather go here than say, nowhere at all… Just remember to call it Tarts. You don’t want to look like a loser, now.

Ok, there’s a lot of different reviews about Queen of Hearts aka ‘Tarts’ and to clarify, this place is fantastic if you want a cheap night out that’s pretty much guaranteed to be busy and you’re not fussy about it being a really nice place.
Full of students and you literally have to fight your way to the bar after 12 but it’s £3 for a double vodka coke and £2.40 for a Jäger bomb so standard do-​able. I can go out on a tenner and be fine here usually. £5 to get in, £4 with a student card.
The dance floor is tiny and gets ridiculously hot but the smoking area outside is huge and they have heaters which makes it sometimes more enjoyable to cotch outside for an hour or so chatting.
The sofas at the very back and upstairs are alright if you need a chill between dances but always look a bit grimy to me and you have to put up with all the ‘lads’ playing pool.
Coat check is £1 but try to pick up your jackets a bit before the end to avoid the massive queue.
A lovely doorman called Mark works there as well so look out for him and say hello!

QUEENOs smash queenos smash. Often frequented by me and my chums queen of hearts is a disused church that’s been converted to a thumping club. Music is generally speaking of a high calibre with some cheesy tunes thrown in for the crack. The drinks are reasonable and you can find some great nights, confessions on a Thursday night being the highlight in my opinion. Some bottles sit in the one pound mark so are excellentay. The site is split over two floors with some sofas upstairs and downstairs along with a big bar. One of the best bits about this club is if you can’t be arsed getting rowdy you can blow a tenner on big buck hunter, a multiplayer game in the corner where you get plastic shot guns and shoot as many things as possible. Apart from the cows, don’t shoot the cows.

I survived four years at university without setting foot in the Queen of Hearts. I’d heard people talking about the dreaded Tarts, but the more I heard the less I wanted to go. I mean, how could a place called Tarts be in any way enjoyable?
I thought I’d made it. I thought I’d escaped. But with a couple of weeks of my university life to go, my flatmate decided that she would be spending her birthday at the Queen of Hearts and announced that my attendance was required. As I couldn’t pretend to have been struck by a mysterious stomach bug or have too much work to do (my flatmate knew me well), I went.
We decided to get there early to avoid the queue, as my Fallowfield friends told me it often got busy in there. We went in, flashed our yellow cards and found a sofa. It wasn’t half as bad as I was expecting. OK, so the music really wasn’t my cup of Jack Daniel’s but the atmosphere wasn’t bad — lots of large-​ish groups of students sitting around tables and having a few drinks.
However, as the night progressed things went from tolerable to worse. It reminded me of the club in the Midlands town that I come from — shit music, overcrowded, lots of people who didn’t want to be there, lots of girls who won’t remember that they were there come the morning and lots of boys preying on that fact. I gave up trying to get to the bar as the risk of being manhandled along the way was soaring in line with the amount of Snakebite and Sambuca consumed. Yuck yuck yuck.
The thing is, the Midlands town’s club was the only one in the town so you either went there, stayed in or trekked for 12 miles into Birmingham. In Manchester we are simply spoilt for choice, yet people still frequent Tarts. I’m baffled.

I imagine if Dr. Frankenstein was not using the unearthed bodies of the dead and brains of serial killers in his quest to reanimate life, but instead substandard bars and over-​rated clubs he’d have created Queen of Hearts. It stands a macabre vigil over the crossroad at the centre of Fallowfield, luring in freshers with its flashing lights and decadent ways.
As a pub, about the only good things it has are a large beer garden and several pool tables. Other than that the drinks are sort of cheap and the seating sparse. It does food as well though I’ve never tried it. You can get a Yellow card for £1 which cuts the price of some to frustrating amounts like £2.37 and the like, guaranteed to weigh you down with shrapnel. Since it is part of the It’s a Scream group, you can use that card elsewhere should you really desire, although mine has been gathering dust now since I banished it to the farthest recesses of my pockets.
As a club is where it really holds its own. I may not like it, but it does consistently pull in the crowds. It plays the standard array of current chart hits, alongside other old favourites that never die. If you do fancy attending, then it’s best to be early, as queues can get perplexingly long. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays are the worst/​best depending on your frame of mind and blood alcohol level. Just beware that getting to and from the bar is a task worthy of Hercules himself, and you may end up with more on you than in your glasses by the time you break free.
To be honest, you’ll never go for the pub, only the club. And even then it’s difficult to say whether you’ll love or hate it. A lot of people seem to love it in first year, and then go through a slow withdrawal process as they age. I’ve currently been mostly clean for three years.

Nooooo! Noooo! NOOOOOO! Not Tarts, anything but Tarts!
This place is basically the epitome of Meat Market Manchester. Where the girls wear hardly anything and the boys wear stripy shirts and too much Lynx, and everyone is getting off with each other and singing along to Aqua.
I worked one shift here in first year. One shift. In that time I was felt up more times than I can remember, almost sicked on TWICE, and had my (admittedly hipster-​fake) glasses stolen. I never returned. Not even to collect my pay. I was mortified.
Admittedly, during the day Tarts is alright. The beer garden with ping pong tables and several large (and heated) tables is really good for those of us who are stinky smokers, or for those who like a little al fresco action with their £2 pint. This is Tarts’ only redeeming feature.
Well, the cheap drinks are also a redeemer… at around £2 for pretty much anything you could want, you can’t argue. And you could always get a Scream card if you want to announce to the world at large that you have zero taste in bars…
As a night out, Tarts is basically hell on Earth. Unless you’re a person who loves shit music and thinks that an Apple Sourz Tower is the height of sophistimacation. In which case, dive right in, just try to avoid the sick…