Tag: rocksteady

When the picture below popped up on social media, some commented that it showed a bloke called Bubbles and his crew from Brixton. Apparently, it was taken circa 1968/69 at the top of Granville Arcade (now known as Brixton Village), which is located at the junction of Coldharbour Lane and Atlantic Road. I liked the photo, but I couldn’t tell whether this lot were rude boys, skinheads, or neither. Clothes-wise, nothing strays too far from the original skinhead look.

Then it occurred to me that, although rude boys are mythologised in reggae songs and often mentioned in passing in retrospective accounts of the original skinhead era, they remain photographically under-documented – which explains my considerable ignorance of their style, and why I can’t really place the lads in the picture.