Reggae or salsa, dreadlocks or a wig?
In the 1880s, a new shopping street in then-prosperous Brixton was a wonder to behold: it had electric lighting, which provided the name. Over time Brixton became a working-class area, and was still marked by wartime bombing in 1948, when West Indians appeared in white south London: Jamaicans from the Windrush, the very first immigrant ship from the Caribbean, who had temporary accommodation in a deep bunker in Clapham and found their way to the employment exchange in Brixton. Today, about a quarter of the local population has Caribbean or African origins, and newer arrivals from many other countries have joined them.
Info
Address Electric Avenue, SW9 8JX | Public Transport Brixton (Northern, Victoria Line) | Hours Daily, various times: see http://brixtonmarket.net | Tip A great variety of cheap, delicious food from Jamaican curry and Peking dumplings to sourdough pizza and gourmet burgers, is on offer in the Brixton Village market hall and the container village around Pop Brixton urban farm (the other side of the railway from Electric Avenue).
Brixton is shaking off the bad reputation it had a generation ago as a haunt of drug dealers and young blacks with no good prospects. A lively young scene for clubbing and the arts makes the area increasingly popular. Cocktails and street food in the market hall and a mini-village of shipping containers beyond the railway tracks from Electric Avenue attract a fashionable crowd, but warnings that gentrification will spoil the atmosphere still seem premature.
The dreadlocks, headscarves and flowing African robes of traders and customers around Electric Avenue leave no doubt about its multicultural character. The wares include yams, plantains and manioc, dried fish from West Africa, religious items from Haiti, Chinese medicinal herbs, huge cooking pots, and bins filled with mops and brooms. Designers’ shops and vintage fashion add hipness to the mix. In the gaudily painted market hall, salsa music booms from a Columbian butcher’s stall; outside, reggae and soul send vibrations through the railway arches. In Reliance Arcade, a row of tiny hairdressers’ salons, women have their hair plaited in elaborate patterns. An alternative style is close at hand: a wig shop tempts customers inside with the promise that they, too, could look like Beyoncé.
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