Other street traders I knew in London were
"the mirrors sellers". Except for a few apart in some isolated places, the mirrors sellers were
mostly located in a narrow net of roads around the famous Carnaby Street, the
real commercial hub of London’s tourist and rolling on since the epic of the
Beatles.
A little already decayed, but still a great
attraction in the second half of the seventies. All the range of the consumer’s
symbols and the new western mythology,
which also might be found in the T-shirts sold as souvenirs in the many stores
that occupied the short road, the kingdom of cheap and quick tourist shopping ,
alltogether with the symbols of London, were reproduced on mirrors of different
formed and sold on the street in front of those stores, which also constituted
their store and warehouse.
From Marylin Monroe to Humphrey Bogart; from Gin
Beef Heart to Coca Cola; from the stylized liberty models to Union Jack,
passing through the Irish beers Scottish whiskey, rock bands and even the Royal
Family, everything was reproduced on those colored mirrors, gently framed and
sold from a minimum of 99 pence to a maximum of £ 20 depending on their size
and from the buyer's tourist wallet and
luggage.
The mirrors sellers of this area
were almost all Italians or Spanish people.
Young people who had come up to London in order to study English language and know the city. Or may be escaped from the economic and
political climate of reflux and, in any case, all invoked by the great
fascination that London's capital of Rock Music still exercised on the young
people of that poorer Europe and they sought, together with greater freedom, a
job that allowed them to live in a decent way, relying only on their
strength and without weighing on the family. Among the Italians stood the young
freak looking , distinguished by the seemingly cluttered appearance .
I called them the minor brothers of
the sixty-nine revolutioners. But among the mirrors sellers of Carnaby Street there was an authentic and
remarkable representative of the former young’s revolution whose name was Tommy.
12. to be continued...
