ClassicCafes.co.uk
Title
Classic Cafes | London's vintage Formica caffs!
Description
Classic Cafes is a seriously sentimental celebration of the 'classic' Italian-styled Formica cafe/coffee bar dating from the early and middle part of the 20th century. Places that cultural critic Richard Hoggart described as: "full of corrupt brightness, of improper appeals and moral evasions... a sort of spiritual dry-rot amid the odour of boiled milk." (The Uses of Literacy, Chatto & Windus, 1957)
"The architecture and ambience of [classic cafes] is fast being levelled in a kind of massive cultural, corporate napalming by the big coffee chains... they will not rest until every street in the West is a branded mall selling their wares. Orwell's nightmare vision in 1984 was of a jackboot stamping on the human face forever. If the coffee corporates have their way, the future is best represented as a boiling skinny latte being spilt in the lap of humanity in perpetuity." (Adrian Maddox, The Observer, Aug 1 2004)
Though the French café and US diner have both received substantial attention over the decades, the classic Italian-run Formica cafes of the 1950s have never been given their due - despite their manifest contribution to the (sub)cultural life of post war Britain.
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