Electric Avenue, Brixton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Electric Avenue is a street in Brixton, London, built in 1888.[1] It was the first market street to be lit by electric lights.[2][3] Today, Electric Avenue has national retail chains (Boots, Greggs, and Iceland), as well as various local food and housewares retailers. It also hosts a part of Brixton Market, which specialises in selling African, Caribbean, South American, and South Asian[4] products. It is located just around the corner from Brixton Underground station (1972). The street originally had cast iron Victorian canopies[5] over the pavement, which were damaged in World War II and removed in the 1980s.
The road is referenced in Eddy Grant's 1983 single "Electric Avenue", which reached No. 2 on both the UK and US singles charts.[citation needed] The song itself was inspired by the 1981 Brixton riot.[6]
On 17 April 1999, the neo-Nazi bomber David Copeland planted a nail bomb outside a supermarket in Brixton Road with the intention of igniting a race war across Britain.[7] A market trader became suspicious and moved the device to a less crowded area of Electric Avenue, where 39 people were injured in its explosion.
In 2016, Eddy Grant was invited to switch on a new illuminated street sign installed as part of a £1 million refurbishment.[8] Afterwards, Grant was given one of the previous signs as a keepsake.[6]
