Fancy a “fuckoffee” on Goswell road?
By Svetlana Nartey
Finally Alone — Mac DeMarco sings softly in your ear and yet, you have company. You sit in a bustling coffee shop, not giving one, but instead, drinking a Fuckoffee. It’s a specialty coffee, it’s fairly traded from Papua New Guinea, it’s contained in a recyclable cup that you will dispose of the green bin later but for now, it perches on a pink table made from recycled toys. This is not the only recycled thing. The sofa upon which you sit is also recycled. It is also pink. And yet, the one next to it isn’t. It’s all about variety you see?
Goswell Road Coffee’s owner Fiona Jones sits across from me relating the difficulty of surviving alongside the Pret and Costa stores down the road. Sitting here surrounded by graffitied walls with fluorescent lights seductively asking ‘my heart is yours, do you want it?’ I’m astounded why anyone would choose the slick and corporate over this #bimbleworthy explosion of personality.
Operational for the past sixteen years, Goswell Road Coffee is the seventh of Fiona’s coffee-shop business ventures. Now the last one standing, Fiona is reluctant to expand her business: she neither wishes to dilute its distinctiveness to that of “ubiquitous” chain-stores, nor to place herself under financial strain which would make it hard to stay true to her principles of fair-trading and fair treatment of baristas through ensuring they get the London Living and not Minimum Wage.
The youthful and enthusiastic baristas make-up the joyous, indie ambiance of the café. Music queued by the baristas opposes the mundanity of mainstream pop-culture; it is also catered to customers depending on the time of day. Fiona describes how the mornings are filled with “upbeat” music, motivating the early-risers and how this diffuses into a soft-rock/ alternative vibe as the day progresses. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously” Fiona says, recommending that instead of conforming to the norm, you go bananas! with the banana bread and the banana peanut butter smoothie being her top picks of the café-food bunch.
With Goswell Road being minutes away from my own home, I can side with Fiona when she voices that as far as entertainment goes, the road contains “nothing much.” Goswell Road is off the main road leading to Farringdon and Old Street stations and is downhill from the hurried Angel shoppers, meaning that it is little frequented by tourists who stick to the path more trodden. Instead, what Goswell Road Coffee embodies a sense of community; being the go-to spot for locals, students at the City University and artists of the nearby design studios; all loyally pledged to the café with a daring loyalty card playing on the versatility of the word FUCK.
It seems that this sense of community is what Fiona seeks to uphold through her café as she relates her post-pandemic hopes of resuming events and cultural activities, and as she answers my next question:
Why did you name your shop after the street? I ask, did you not want something more personal? “No”, replied Fiona, “I wanted to keep it simple, it says what it is and where it is.” The café is, and belongs to Goswell Road. It is a great little place, for the great local people who do not make up the masses flocking to chain café’s and therefore, it belongs on Bimble.
