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Nothing says a certain era of late ’70s London life like Sting and Phil Daniels on mopeds, tearing around the city and scooping up bagfuls of ‘blues’ – all while listening to a soundtrack of The Who tunes. Franc Roddam’s ‘Quadrophenia’ is still indelibly associated with its seafront home of Brighton, but it is on the once-mean streets of Islington that its legacy lingers on in intriguing ways.
The location 4-6 Essex Road, N1.
The scene Jimmy Cooper (Phil Daniels) joins the mods, hoovering up drugs and chanting songs by The Who. His gang park their scooters outside this greasy spoon, plotting how to beat up the rockers over fried egg sandwiches.
Then Built in the Georgian era, this Grade II-listed building has a striking ’40s art deco shopfront. It was called the Cosa Nostra Café between 1920 and 1949, before being renamed Alfredo’s, until it closed in 2000. ‘Although confrontations between mods and rockers in the 1960s usually happened in seaside resorts,’ says architectural historian Edmund Bird, ‘Islington had its fair share, too. It was still largely a working-class borough, before gentrification began to gather momentum.’ Franc Roddam’s 1979 film was honouring history by filming at this café, which had barely changed aesthetically since the ’60s.
Now For the last 11 years, the former café has been a bistro called Meat People, specialising in Argentinian steaks and empanadas. Jimmy wouldn’t recognise it, but look close enough and it’s easy to imagine a sea of flat shoes and green military parkas.
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