Junkyard Golf Club Manchester
Polly Checkland Harding
Junkyard Golf Club: good fun, if you don’t think too hard about it. The three funkily-designed nine hole golf courses that make up the ‘club’ are tucked away at First Street – but once inside, you’ll find little that’s shy or retiring. The music is loud, the golf balls are multi-coloured and the decor of the two courses is an exercise in fluorescence and kitsch props, with a distinctly DIY feel. There’s a bar that sells drinks including fizz in mini bottles (with a straw), and a food stand for hot dogs, bagels and the like, which are as unhealthy as they are tasty.
The ‘golf’ aspect of the place is gloriously, unapologetically all about entertainment: there are plastic, full-size statues of cows to navigate around, a shipwrecked boat and what looks like a miniature Mayan temple, replete with skulls. Equally, the holes themselves strike the right balance between being achievable, and hilariously frustrating. It’s a shame, then, that the decoration does err towards the distasteful at points. Take the ‘live pole dancing’ ‘Piggy Azalea’ hole, helpfully illustrated by a graphic of a provocatively posed woman with the head of a pig. Or the ‘Girl from Chipanema’ hole, which is accompanied by a ‘head in the hole’ painting of two overweight women in bikinis. Both feel needlessly unkind in a place that otherwise does a great job at being fun.
