Once a shipping warehouse, the building of Cruz 101 had been stripped of its interior and replaced with a nightclub like nothing Canal Street had ever seen before. The retirement of Chief Constable of Greater Manchester James Anderton in 1991 - who once described gay men as ‘swirling in a cesspit of their own making’ - only helped with that optimism. Just six years earlier, the bars neighbouring Cruz had been raided by police on an almost-weekly basis in attempts to catch gay men and arrest them for gross indecency.īut the 90s came with new ambitions and a better hope of equality. When Cruz 101 first opened its doors on Canal Street on May 22, 1992, it was heralded as the next big thing.
