After about a 15 minutes walk you reach Loughborough Junction with its train station and fast food shops. In daylight the junction is just a junction of four roads but by night it turns into the Wild West and you are on your own! There are a lot of small alleys where dodgy things go on and as a woman it's best to keep as close to the traffic as it's safe to do.
When you have passed Loughborough Junction it's almost as you have reached a warmer climate and find yourself in the Caribbean. Dreadlocks walking on the road and dancehall queens struts their booty. The cars have sexy lights and filmed windows and you can hear the base beat long before you actually see the car. As the car passes you, the reggae music hits you so hard that you can actually feel the beat on your skin. People dress in brighter colours and life suddenly feels happier!
Shortly after the junction, on your left hand side you will see the Brixton Sports and Social Club. The name make it sound as it's some health club or something but actually in the daytime it's a day care centre. Sometimes they hold family days in the front garden with balloons and inflatable moonwalk jumpers for the children. But in the night it turns into a bar and night club. In the entrance hall there is a closet with two big doors that open up and turn the whole thing into a bar. The name Brixton Sports and Social Club, reminds me of my brother in law’s club that is called Gubbängens Art and Swim Society, which in reality is a bunch of men meeting regularly to take a sauna and drink beer. It has nothing what so ever to do with sports!
After the sports club you come to the big brown estate, called Southgate House that looks a bit like a huge turd of shit. But actually, the flats are rather nice on the inside. However, the local gang of youths lime outside the main door or rather they used to but they have now been dispersed by the police when they started to post an officer there 24/7. Nowadays the boys move around on their bikes instead and have become a mobile menace rather than stationary.
In front of the turd there is a bit of grassed area with a low wall around it. The wall is perfect for sitting on and in the summer you have huge groups of men, and a few women, sitting on the walls drinking beers and smoking ganja. Across the road there is a William Hill where gamblers bet their money and there is usually a big lime going on outside. Music roaring from a parked car and a cloud of ganja smoke fills the street.
After the betting store there is a sort of wine bar or something, My Father’s Place, that looks very secretive and do not really invite you to pop in and have a drink. It gives a feeling of a member’s only club. God knows how they make their money!
In the corner you have Angel Bar and Restaurant, which in the summer hold parties that have a tendency to spread out to the street and give it a feel of carnival in the air.
Then suddenly, in the middle of all that there is a newly built block of luxury apartments that nobody local can afford to live in. I wonder who it was attended for, Cameron and his rich friends?
If you walk a bit further down Coldharbour Lane you come to Brixton Village where the smell from the jerk chicken BBQ fills the air. The chicken is made on a huge metal pan made into a BBQ grill. Reggae music is played all over the place. Behind the Brixton Village is the large in-door market with all its food stalls and vintage shops. In Brixton market you can buy anything, if it's not there it does not exist!
Then you come to the coolest fruit and vegetable stand in Brixton, Natural Valley that is managed by a Rasta family and they have great paintings on the outside. Jah man!
Then you cross Railton Road/Atlantic Road and to your left you can see the old Weather Man shop that used to play Nation of Islam’s anti-white propaganda on big speakers outside the shop. The shop is now, thankfully, closed. You can hear the music from the shops at Atlantic Road.
In the corner you have the famous pub Dogstar that is a popular waterhole on weekends.
After that you come to the part of Coldharbour Lane that I like to call the Barber’s Corner because of all the barbershops. The barber shops are the main hang out place and they are always filled to the brim with men and women liming and fixing their hairs. As an Anthropologist it would be a great fieldwork project to study the linage system between the different barbershops, they make the heart of Brixton. Except for the Chinese nail artists there are only blacks in the shops and it seem to be some tension going on between the Caribbean shops and the African ones. In the midst of all the barbers you will find Blacker Dread record shop. Sadly, for a white woman to enter the shop is a bit like it most have been for a black man to enter a white only bar in southern states of America in the sixties. All activity stops and all heads turn and stare at you in silence, very uncomfortable. This means I have to buy my records in the market instead.
Across the road there is a huge squat of some kind with a big horse head over the door. One wonders who actually owns the huge house and if they forgotten that they own it.
Then you have to squeeze pass the roadblock of people waiting for bus P5 before you come to The Prince Albert, mainly white pub and Satay Bar across the road for mainly black people. But towards the end of Coldharbour Lane you finally find a bar that has a mixed range of people, The Prince.
On the other side of the road you find Ritzy cinema that I visit as often as I can afford. You then come out to Brixton town centre with all the bus stops and KFC, McDonalds and the big Lambeth Town Hall with its tower clock. In the end of Coldharbour Lane they now have a police officer protecting law and order.
I might be mad but I love Brixton!
