'it'll do until we get our own harvey nicks'

Britain's first gay shopping mall opens this week. Matthew Sweet talks to the locals

Where can Mancunian drag queens find something to fill their Christmas stockings? Where can the diesel dykes of Didsbury get a new pair of Docs and a change of oil? Where can Gorton's gay lads get stuffed olives after hours? From Friday, these consumer questions will have their answer in the form of the Phoenix Centre, Europe's first gay shopping mall and Manchester's best hope of filling the glamour vacuum created when Julie Goodyear left town. In an old textile mill near the city's Canal Street gay quarter, a team of 90 construction workers have sweated away to create three floors of gay-friendly business premises that will include a deli, florist, hairdresser, record shop and dry cleaner. What there won't be is a sex shop: smart, swanky and open late, the Phoenix Centre is going firmly for the bomber jacket rather than the raincoat market.

The building is the million-pound brainchild of entrepeneur Terry King, 28, a businessman with a mission "to provide something other than a drinking outlet or a sex shop for the lesbian and gay community. Everything's geared towards that and it isn't what large numbers of people want." In the past five years, Canal Street has moved distinctly up-market. Gone are the days when wags would remove the "C" from the street signs: nobody would stand for that now. As he lunches on seafood in the swish surroundings of the Prague Five restaurant, King admits that "it's been a bloody nightmare to raise the money". He's had a rough ride from the gay press (perhaps because of their dependence on advertising revenue from the sex industry he's excluded), but the hard work is paying off: during our conversation he receives a call confirming that Vivienne Westwood's clothes will be up in his windows. If the venture is a success, he plans to sell shares in his company and establish four or five such malls, with London and Brighton at the top of the list of likely locations. And how is he negotiating the issue of gay men's proverbial addiction to shopping? "I think," he replies, "the majority of people know better than to deal with such cliches. Everybody shops."

It's a pity he dismisses it, as gay shopping has a long and illustrious history. In 1872, the trial of cross-dressing good-time boys Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park revealed that London's fashionable Burlington Arcade was awash with browsing rent boys. Today, well, there's Dale Winton on Supermarket Sweep. And in Canal Street's stylish Manto cafe, computer consultant Chris Riston can already begin to feel his cheque-book twitch: "I'm sure it's going to be marvellous - anyway, it'll do until Manchester gets its own Harvey Nicks." Matt Chadwick, student, is less keen to conform to the cliche of gay male shopaholism: "It sounds fun, but I don't really know anyone who'd want a jar of olives after they'd been to the pub. We could do with some gay kebab vans as well." Playing pool over the road, Vince, unemployed, doubts whether he'd be wearing anything with the Westwood label. "I don't think the dole will stretch to it - but I'll go along and press my nose against the window."

And will straight consumers be tempted over for a look? On the covered walkways of the Arndale Centre, Manchester's biggest and ugliest shopping centre, opinion was divided. A-level student Zoe Flitch seems delighted by the idea. "I've read about this in the paper. I hope their door policy isn't too strict, because I wouldn't mind checking it out." A thought occurs to her: "How could they tell I wasn't a lesbian? Do you need a certficate?" Standing in front of a giant plastic model of Daffy Duck, secretary Margaret is unimpressed: "You're making it up," she asserts. And once I've persuaded her I'm not joking, she responds briskly. "Well, it'll keep them out of Littlewoods, I suppose. I saw some lesbians in there at the salad bar, and I didn't like it much." Poisoning the gherkins, I expect. At least behind the doors of the Phoenix Centre, gay customers won't have to put up with remarks like that.