Cereal Killer Cafe attacked by mob

[spatchcock]

Apologies if this is being discussed elsewhere and I didn't see it.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/27/shoreditch-cereal-cafe-targeted-by-anti-gentrification-protesters

An angry mob with pigs heads? And flaming torches? This is insane. I am concerned about gentrification as many of us are, but attacking a small business where children were sat is so cowardly.

Why not take their concerns to Downing Street, or have a peaceful protest?

[spatchcock]

Sorry about non-clickable link, am too thick to work out how to find the brackets on my phone.

[claig]

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/27/shoreditch-cereal-cafe-targeted-by-anti-gentrification-protesters

[spatchcock]

Thank you claig.

[Sadik]

It's very surreal - I'm sure there has to be more behind it than is evident from the news reports. I've seen an equally bizarre discussion of the event on Facebook (a friend who lives in that part London had 'liked' a comment and been told to fuck off by the commenter for doing so )

[spatchcock]

Isn't it? Surreal I mean. I thought it was a spoof story when I first saw the headline (on Buzzfeed).

It does seem like there must be other issues bubbling away, but I don't live in London anymore and don't know the background.

[Cooroo]

Trying to be fair I ran this past my (working class labour-voting) DP and said "maybe they've got a point, if locals can't afford it?" His response was "I can't afford a Porsche but I'm not going to attack the dealership down the road". Very odd. Someone suggested it was a publicity stunt, which would make me hate them. Otherwise where's the problem? If I want cereal I buy it at Aldi but if someone wants to pay extra for unusual cereal in a cafe, why not?

[blacksunday]

I'm not defending this action. It's wrong, and the people behind it misguided.

The beef with the cereal cafe, however, is not that some particular people can't afford to eat there. The beef is the 'gentrification' of the neighbourhood.

Which is just a fancy way of saying social cleansing. London has become so irrationally expensive and a playground for the rich, that families who have lived there for decades or generations are being priced forced to move out.

[sparechange]

Look at the hashtag #fuckparade on Twitter.
It definitely wasn't a publicity stunt by the cafe owners, and an estate agent has their windows smashed as well.

The beautiful, beautiful irony is that they appear to have tried to use crowdfunding to pay for their anti-hipster, anti-crowdfunded cafe protests... Idiots, clearly.

[thehypocritesoaf]

Yay! Cereal shops out!

Empty charity shops, payday loan shops in!

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

They're going for the Jack the Ripper 'museum' next: metro link

[NewBallsPlease00]

What do they want though? Cheap London housing to buy? Or to rent? I don't live I. London partially because it's so expensive that I could swap my 4 bed detached cottage for maybe a 1 bed flat so choose not to, but I don't expect prices to be enforced lower for the option to do so
What is like to see is non Dom foreign owners not be able to bulk buy developments eg 3 in new build block for when they're in town- it's not about a second home literally a crash pad for a couple of nights a year meanwhile the rise in property prices serves them well
They can continue to buy the £100million ones it's a while before my salary will stretch to that ...

[Millionprammiles]

Its worth reading the two additional articles in the Guardian setting out opposing views. This wasn't exactly a protest set out to attack any particular cafe.

Whilst I'm sceptical about these sort of 'protests' I do find it frustrating that the government side steps any proposals to even out the property market - rent caps, greater protections for tenants, limiting or dis-incentivising property being developed, built, sold or bought for investment purposes etc.

Everywhere in London there are blocks of 'luxury' flats being built, unaffordable to the majority, many will be bought off plan by overseas investors who might never even see the property, let alone live in it.

Property in London is firstly an investment, secondly an income and a poor third, a home.

[Sadik]

I mean, I do sympathise with the general point about housing costs - the same people come and buy second homes here driving up prices to ridiculous levels (and then report people who are driven to live in caravans/huts to the planners). Some thrown paint and whatever the 2015 equivalent is of 'yuppies out' graffiti would obviously still be wrong, but more explicable, IYKWIM. But pigs heads and flaming torches? Really?

[Booyaka]

If you have a look on that facebook page they seem like deeply unpleasant people and some of them are quite clearly not mentally the full package. It must have been terrifying. And they are dressed up in all 'hipster police' outfits. I'm no fan of hipsters but the idea of targeting people because of the way they dress.

[LovelyFriend]

I've never had much interest in a cafe who chose a homophone for Serial Killer for a name.

It seems they are not as 'ard as they would like to make out. And not clever either.

I'm not at all defending the protesters, but I can see why this cafe might get on peoples tits.

[fearandloathinginambridge]

I used to live on Charlotte Road in the late 80's early 90's and my DH had a studio in the old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane when it was about £20 a week rent - unheard of now.

Spitalfields/Shoreditch etc was cheap as chips, a shit hole, dead throughout the week and even more mortuary like at weekends. It changed radically during the period we lived there and since we left, in 2003, and it has changed even more. Today it is unrecognisable to me and I hate going back, it's like a theme park or a caricature of the area I used to love.

Anyway that aside my question is why, when the area has been under-going gentrification for over 15 years and the proper locals were pushed out years ago, are these people deciding to get all aerated about it. Who are they and why couldn't they have done this a long time ago when maybe but probably not they could have made a difference. Doing it now, well it's a day late and a dollar short.

[Booyaka]

I went to my first rave in that brewery in the 90s. . I also lived in a council sublet in Turin Street in 2000-2001. Now that was not a pleasant experience and I would question if what the protestors want to save is even worth saving. I moved to Hackney afterwards, I've never been so happy to leave a place in all my life as I was to leave Tower Hamlets. Awful, lawless place.

[MrsJorahMormont]

The attack on that café was outrageous, as was the deeply unpleasant Channel 4 coverage when it first opened. Whatever you think of the beardy hipsters, they have sunk their own money into getting it up and running. If people are stupid enough to pay a fiver for a bowl of cereal, it's their choice.

Maybe some of the protestors could go and set up their own businesses. Oh wait, they'd rather spend their time terrorising people and then wailing about how unfair it all is.

[Catsize]

Love it how people see £3.20 for a bowl of cereal as outrageous. How much is a full English in Shoreditch?

[blacksunday]

If people are stupid enough to pay a fiver for a bowl of cereal, it's their choice.

It's not about that. You've missed the point entirely.

[MrsJorahMormont]

No blacksunday I haven't missed the point at all. I understand that they are protests against gentrification but as the beardy brothers themselves pointed out the protestors could have targeted Pret or Starbucks or some of the big 'evil capitalist' chains. The Cereal Killer café seems silly and overpriced to me but it's actually an independent business, which IMO seems better than huge chain stores.

Targeting a small business just makes the protestors look like an angry mob of thugs, rather than people with a real point to make. They should be protesting outside parliament about non-dom owners buying up London flats for investment purposes, not targeting people who are just trying to make a living in London.

BTW, I see lots of people crying about having to move out of London because it's overpriced. There are lots of people all over the country having to move away from home to find work because too many jobs are based in the SE. Londoners don't have any more right to stay in their home area than anyone else has to stay in theirs. DH and I have had to move away from family for work reasons, which has happily meant living in an area with more affordable housing.

[OhSoggyBiscuit]

I can't afford expensive designer clothes- should I burn down Harrods?
My budget only allows for the occasional McDs- should I burn down Pret?

Mob mentality yet again.

[SolidGoldBrass]

I have been rowing about discussing this on FB most of the day. The attacks on the cereal cafe are basically about bullying. There's a certain type of vicious puritan mindset that you get on both left and right ends of the political spectrum, which is all about attacking fun things first - before you fix anything else, make sure that you stop people enjoying themselves. The cereal cafe people have silly beards and are selling something that isn't necessary, therefore they are eeeeeevilllll!

The cereal cafe charges between £3 and £5 for a bowl of cereal. No one is compelled to eat their breakfast there. The local pub is likely to charge £2 -£5 for a pint/alcopop/spirit-and-mixer. Whether it's booze or weird imported sugar-coated corn starch, the nutritional value, necessity of consuming this particular stuff and the price are about the same.

Cafes selling healthy vegan raw organic food - or jellied eels and bacon rolls - will generally charge at least £3 for a snack and a drink, because they have to factor in the costs of heating, lighting, cooking, staff wages, premises rent and business rates on top of the cost of the ingredients. A lot of the paint-throwing dipshits are the sort of raging middle-class dickheads who have never actually been poor themselves but just hate everything - and think that 'working class culture' which consists of a high street full of bookies, pawnbrokers and dodgy unbranded burger bars needs to be preserved because giving the proles anything better would only upset them.

[sparechange]

blacksunday
It is entirely about that. Look at the tweets from the #fuckparade idiots - many of them picked up the moronic point made by Channel 4 that it was somehow wrong to charge £5 for cereal in a borough with high levels of poverty.

As others have pointed out, that is a total straw man. Brick lane and Redchurch street have plenty of shops and cafes selling things with a much higher mark up. Is it just as wrong that clothes shops in Shoreditch are selling coats for hundreds of pounds when many children in the surrounding streets don't have a proper winter coat?

What about the curry restaurants on Brick lane selling portions of rice for £5? Why don't they attract the same vitriol and twisted logic?

[thehypocritesoaf]

Agree sgb.

I'm surrounded by cupcake shops here that I loathe, and never once have I contemplated taking an axe to the smug, iced, bunting display.