Sinclair is a major cafe fan and cafes often figure in his novels. He is a regular producer of tracts and incendiary rants. A Psychogeographical Association newsletter is produced randomly by Home cultural industries and he was an inveterate user of the old beloved Valotti cafe ex of Shaftesbury Ave. Psychogeography posits myriad imaginative links between types of places, bringing out the unexpected parallels in families of Space Oddities . With cafes, a sort of dowager atmosphere comes to the fore apparently drably familiar yet full of secrets.
Cafes are vitally about atmosphere and kindled memories.
We've seen how the cafe developed from the Italian coffee bar and its binding family function in continental street life. Cafes show Britain looking beyond itself - combining cultural bloodlines that played a part in making modern British life a little less constricting by yearning for the more open social lifestyles of Europe. A riot of coloured materials, mosaics, menus, frames, Deco steel, seaside pinks and limes. A soundtrack of third-programme light orchestral follies and period easy listening jingles tinkle just out of range. The visual focus is the mix of traders underground record biz whizz-kids and sombre Orthodox Jewish jewelers.