Brixton as shown in film/music/arts/etc.

[urbanspaceman]

The Treatment by Mo Hayder

Pedos in Brockwell Park - truly creepy horror/crime thriller

 

[twistedAM]

Lest we forget the episode of The Bill shot at Brockwell Lido

 

[urbanspaceman]

Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

Yakuza, SSTs, voodoo gods haunting cyberspace, AI PDAs, cloned industrial aristocrats in orbital villas... and Brixton tube station.


She spent ten minutes watching passengers surrender their yellow plastic tickets to the automated turnstyles, took a deep breath, and ran. Up, over, behind her a shout and a loud laugh, and then she was running again.

When she reached the doors at the top of the stairs, she saw Brixton Road
waiting like a tatty Shinjuku, jammed with steaming foodstalls.

"You seem lost," the noodle seller said, in Japanese. Kumiko guessed that he was Korean. Her father had associates who were Korean; they were in the construction business, her mother had said. They tended, like this one, to be large men, very nearly as large as Petal, with broad, serious faces. "You look very cold."

"I'm looking for someone," she said. "He lives in Margate Road."

"Where is that?"

"I don't know."

"Margate," the noodle man said, when the woman was gone. He took a greasy paperbound book from beneath the counter and thumbed through it. "Here," he said, jabbing at an impossibly dense little map, "down Acre Lane." He took a blue feltpen and sketched the route on a coarse gray napkin.

In Brixton, the coral-growth of the metropolis had come to harbor a
different life. Faces dark and light, uncounted races, the brick facades washed with a riot of shades and symbols unimaginable to the original builders. A drumbeat pulsed from a pub's open door as she passed, heat and huge laughter. The shops sold foodstuffs Kumiko had never seen, bolts of bright cloth, Chinese handtools, Japanese cosmetics. . . .

 

[editor]

I work central during the day. Let me know when you'll be in the Albert and I'll give you the DVD...

I'll be doing an Offline night at the Albert on Saturday. Pop in!

 

[Bazza]

I may do just that Ed, although my mood will be solely dictated by the Cup Final.

 

[London_Calling]

Don't forget this little corker.

The IMDB isn't a lot of help, either.

 

[oryx]

A few novels: The Colour of Memory by Geoff Dyer is set in Brixton, as is Tim Pears' A Revolution of the Sun. Both excellent books which I mean to re-read.

Dyer's even more excellent Paris Trance has a scene set in Brixton, where one of the protagonists finds his old drinking/work buddy from Paris holed up there, a depressed casualty of too many good times. It's a heart-rending, haunting scene.

 

[Guineveretoo]

Here's Michael Caine as Alfie in Brixton in 1966.



Full story: http://www.urban75.org/brixton/history/atlantic6.html

I know this is horribly pedantic, and some people will just "tsk" and others groan, but it's not 41 years from 1966 to 2005, as stated on that site.

Sorry, but I sometimes can't help myself

If you would like me to point out other typos/errors in your text, just let me know

*slinks away*

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

I know this is horribly pedantic, and some people will just "tsk" and others groan, but it's not 41 years from 1966 to 2005, as stated on that site.

hope not otherwise I'm older than I thought I was

 

[Bazza]

Mo Hayder has written a book set in Brixton. Can't remember what it's called but it was most amusing when she referred to cleb spotting outside the Satay Bar on CHL! What the fuck.

Edit: I see it has been referenced above.

 

[bluestreak]

when i pointed out that the bill's production crew were parked up on kellett road last summer all the long-term brixtonians sneered at me for being surprised!

and popular beat combo 'little man tate' recently filmed their video mostly inside a house on milkwood road, though i suspect that counts as herne hill. but seeing as a handful of urbanites live there i think it kind of counts!

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

when i pointed out that the bill's production crew were parked up on kellett road last summer all the long-term brixtonians sneered at me for being surprised!

Well they have been filming in Brixton for years. I remember them all having a drink in the George IV when it was still an Irish pub and then they went on to film at the Elf Petrol Station, now the burned down Tyre Centre

 

[Gramsci]

The recent film by Mike Hodges "Ill Sleep When Im Dead" used Loughborough Junction as a location for several scenes in the film.Including the inside of the old disused pub on the corner that used to have its own micro brewery-the Warrior i think,the alleyway by the arches and a flat in a nearby road.

Couldnt find any shots of LJ but heres the website,

http://www.iswid.net/

Apparently they used LJ as Brixtons now not scruufy enough.

 

[tescorewardcard]

In 'The Long Good Friday' (1982), 33 Villa Road (by Max Roach Park) is the house of Errol the Grass played by Paul Barber (who also played 'Horse' in 'The Full Monty').
Also, rather more tennuously, the C4 animated series 'Crapstone Villas' is in part inspired by one of the big houses opposite Brockwell Park Lido on Dulwich Road, where the writer was living...

 

[OpalFruit]

There's a play on at Soho Theatre now, called Christ of Coldharbour Lane. Haven't seen it - but I know the writer to be good.

 

[ska invita]

Also, rather more tennuously, the C4 animated series 'Crapstone Villas' is in part inspired by one of the big houses opposite Brockwell Park Lido on Dulwich Road, where the writer was living...

Somewhere beyond Peckham lies a place known as SE69. It doesn't have a name, it has never seen a local government initiative for urban renewal and it knows that the Jubilee Line extension will never reach it! Within this run down postcode is 'Crapston Villas'...

I kind of remember watching this, but I never realised what a famous voice-cast it had, including Jane Horrocks, Alistair McGowan, Felix Dexter and Alison Steadman.

 

[ska invita]

There's a play on at Soho Theatre now, called Christ of Coldharbour Lane. Haven't seen it - but I know the writer to be good.

There's a snippet from the play here, actually filmed in Brixton:
http://www.sohotheatre.com/pl1277.html
then click on "here for video"

 

[boohoo]

The Bill filmed at the squats I use to live in (but that's stockwell) Stockwell Road can be seen in Blow Up.

 

[boohoo]

Just been reading a pretty good graphic novel about a bunch of layabouts who, pissed off in a post-criminal justice bill parrallel world, end up restoring an old pub function room. Although it never mentions Brixton by name (apart from the pic below) it is clearly fulll of Brixton landmarks!

The comic is called "The End of the Centruy Club" by ILYA - drawings are good - text is okay - still it does kind of capture some Brixton atmosphere in the mid-nineties.

Here are a couple of scans:

Outside the tube station I would guess:

And this is the pub that they renovate the function room of - clearly based on the George IV:

Some secondhand copies going here for 40p!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Warp-F...030818?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179217881&sr=1-11

]

I like that comic - had it for years. I believe the party at the beginning is set in the original cooltan building.

 

[editor]

]

I like that comic - had it for years. I believe the party at the beginning is set in the original cooltan building.

The Barrier Block's in there too!

 

[peterkro]

In 'The Long Good Friday' (1982), 33 Villa Road (by Max Roach Park) is the house of Errol the Grass played by Paul Barber (who also played 'Horse' in 'The Full Monty').
Also, rather more tennuously, the C4 animated series 'Crapstone Villas' is in part inspired by one of the big houses opposite Brockwell Park Lido on Dulwich Road, where the writer was living...

Holy thread resurrection,33 V road was the house I lived in,film crews are cunts to a person.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Holy thread resurrection,33 V road was the house I lived in,film crews are cunts to a person.

 

[Orang Utan]

A much needed bump as surely new members will know more and more have arisen.
Anyone?

 

[bluestreak]

i mentioned this to boohoo years ago but there are a few editions of a story in Crisis comic (lefty adult comic spin off from 2000AD in the the 80s - early 90s) that feature a future Brixton which has sealed itself off from the rest of London and is run by Black Liberationists. I promised her that I'd scan the comics and never did. A lot of the buildings are recognisable, the rail bridge of course and the co-op on the corner of coldharbour and atlantic.

 

[peterkro]

The '77 film Black Joy is filmed in and was about Brixton,it has a bit in the long gone Infinity Gardens (now Max Roach park).

 

[bluestreak]

and a few seconds of googling reveals why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mitchell_(comics)

 

[Dan U]

The scalp hunters in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy - haven't read Smileys People yet - are based in Brixton

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy/objectsplaces.html

Brixton
Scalp-hunters, whose official name is Travel, is a part of British intelligence. They handle surveillance work that is too messy for other agents. They are headquartered in a Brixton school house.