The act of casually eating high-priced cornflakes got unexpectedly intense at London’s popular Cereal Killer Cafe this weekend, when a crowd of anti-gentrification protesters menaced staff and customers by hurling paint on the windows and, it would appear, pacing around in pig masks.
Since opening last year in one of London’s historically poorer neighborhoods, the spot has been criticized repeatedly as a “hipster-priced cafe in a poor area.” The rioters were part of something called a “Fuck Parade,” an event billed as a way to fight gentrification with “street parties, furious fire eating & fireworks.”
Alan Keery, one of Cereal Killer’s twin-brother owners, says nobody got hurt, but customers and staff still quickly barricaded themselves inside once hundreds of participants wandered up Night of the Living Dead–style dressed as “Hipster Police.” He told the Evening Standard: “There were children there — they were terrified. The staff were absolutely terrified. It was an angry mob throwing paint at the windows. They had torches and pigs’ heads.”
Somebody shooting video inside managed to capture the exact moment a pig-faced protester walked up and scrawled that backward scum (seen in the top picture) on the window — which naturally wasn’t backward from their perspective:
