There’s a fascinating phenomenon taking hold on YouTube. It is awash with walking tours. Tours by amateurs who walk and film in the most incredible and awful places. Sometimes they do so without commentary and so you can find yourself sharing a stroll along some of Philadelphia’s drug zombie streets, red light districts, bonkers ex-Soviet republics, and various places you probably wouldn’t touch with a barge pole.
Is it acceptable for us to have to put up with others smoking crack and cottaging in public?
In some ways they are simply voyeurism, a way to watch the suffering, pain and poverty of others from a safe distance, letting someone else take the risk. And yet they are compelling. There are plenty of YouTube walking tours around Manchester – the Venice of the North. I love Manchester. I spent a lot of time there. I love the music and the industrial heritage and the buildings. I went to the Hacienda once.
But when we watch these YouTube videos we begin to realise that something is amiss, not just in Manchester but more deeply in our society. The purveyor of this is someone calling themselves The Looking Glass. We don’t really know who this is, although there is an email on his YouTube site. We occasionally get a view of him, reflected back in the glass from a building with his bucket hat and sunglasses. He seems unremarkable but his videos are rather like a glimpse of everyday hell.
The Looking Glass obsessively wanders around some familiar places, most notably Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of Manchester. He comments with his dry sardonic voice, the odd sad chuckle and bursts of outrage – some of it unpleasant in nature. We see the crackheads, the professional beggars, the hate preachers, those who perpetrate very antisocial behaviour. Then there are the assaults and the gangs and the poor old security guards trying somehow to make sense of all this madness. The man behind The Looking Glass is not pleasant, and yet his videos are strangely affecting.
Most days you’ll find a new clip. His route takes in the Arndale and high street, where he comes up against people trying to stop him filming and various people selling their worldview. He pops down to the notorious cottaging site – the Cove, pointing out the condoms and the detritus of brief outdoor sexual activity. Along the way he points out the death threats against him scribbled on the walls. Then it’s back to central Manchester and inevitable minor bit of street fighting and robbing.
Frankly, The Looking Glass is incensed, even if you might struggle with some of his opinions, and I do. Where are the police? Why have we turned over this city to people who terrorise its inhabitants?
As I watch these videos, I wonder why we are so impotent when it comes to tackling things that no decent person thinks should be going on. The police seem overwhelmed with the scale of the problem, but are doing their best. We see familiar faces who make each day a misery for shop workers and pedestrians. The police know who they are, they take up huge amounts of time. But again and again we see them back on the streets very quickly. Where are the state services that might help those in need? Is it acceptable for us to have to put up with others smoking crack and cottaging in public?
I think that The Looking Glass is in some ways a modern-day William Hogarth, although he often behaves with a callousness not seen in the 18th century artist’s work. The name is well chosen because he holds up a mirror to the world that we live in and have become familiar with and accept. There is a sense of righteous indignation about his forays into the underpasses and drug dens of Manchester. There has always been this kind of thing, I know. But it is so blatant and The Looking Glass is a reminder that things are broken and that they need to change, even if you disagree with him.
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