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brixton culture tour

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Brixton Culture Tour

Rode Sunday 4 October 2026 — a HF Cycling group ride with Casey and Peri on a street-art route through Brixton: BOOK STOP BRIXTON, the “WE CAN BE HEROES JUST FOR ONE DAY” Bowie mural, and Electric Avenue.

Activity source: Komoot — open the tour

19.2 mi (31.0 km) · 1 h 55 · 10.0 mph average · 375 ft of climbing — easy, social pace, ~2 hours of steady cardio.

Photos

  • — in front of the “SAY IT LOUD” mural

    Say It Loud went up in Blenheim Gardens in 2017, painted by the South African artist Breeze Yoko for the WatchThisSpace programme and drawn from his character Boniswa (Brixton murals). It also pays homage to Olive Morris — the Jamaican-born Brixton activist, British Black Panther and co-founder of the Brixton Black Women’s Group, who died in 1979 aged 27 (Olive Morris). The title quotes James Brown’s 1968 Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud, and she is holding the activist’s instrument: a megaphone. The jersey in shot reads London Cycling Campaign — a different cause, the same tradition (LCC).

  • The same wall, one rider. Look at what is layered on top of the mural: years of tags across the paint, “LOVE EACH OTHER” among them. Unlike the Bowie tribute, this wall is not behind glass — people keep writing on it, which is what a living Brixton wall looks like.

  • — the Bowie wall: We can be heroes, just for one day

    The lyric from “Heroes” (1977) in 3D graffiti lettering, with the small red lightning bolt that is Bowie’s Aladdin Sane mark. Bowie was born in Brixton — 40 Stansfield Road, 1947 (David Bowie) — and the district’s better-known tribute is the Aladdin Sane portrait the Australian artist Jimmy C (James Cochran) painted on Morleys in 2013: it became the unofficial memorial after Bowie died in January 2016, and is now protected behind glass (Aladdin Sane).

  • — BOOK STOP BRIXTON

    The lettering names the project: Book Stop Brixton gives books away free, started in 2014 by Boyd Hill with a stand and shelves on Somerleyton Road beside the Moorlands Estate — he was homeless himself at the time and could not watch good books go to the bin (bookstopbrixton.com). “Readers today, leaders tomorrow.” The mural wraps the shopfront: a young figure whose hair grows into bare branches, a blue-skinned face in a flowered headwrap, small fish and floating skulls, and the name repeated in a speech bubble.

  • — the full gable

    The whole gable end, which the shopfront crop cuts off: two figures in painted water — a woman in profile wearing a fox-like headdress of orange hair on the left, the blue figure in the striped turban on the right, a winged creature between them carrying the bubble that reads “BOOK STOP BRIXTON”. Same message as the front wall, taken to roof height.

  • — the group, back in the park

    The gathering point: about a dozen riders, helmets and gloves and high-vis, autumn leaves on the grass, a few bikes propped. This is a social loop of south London — 31 km (19.2 mi) at a 10 mph average, conversational rather than competitive.

  • — Electric Avenue (click or the song this street inspired) SW9

    Electric Avenue, SW9 — the first market street in Britain to be lit by electricity, back in 1888, which is where the name comes from (Electric Avenue, Brixton). Eddy Grant’s 1983 single Electric Avenue — the song linked above — reached No. 2 in both the UK and the US, written after the 1981 Brixton riot erupted in these streets. Today it is the pedestrianised heart of Brixton Market.

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