The Review - RESTAURANTS Published: 22 November 2007
Map Studio Café owner Chris Townsend (centre) with staff members Svenya Schincketanz and Haeida Teti
Fifth Columnist redraws Map
Chris Townsend, a founding member of a legendary punk T-shirt company, has turned his attention to running a community café, writes Sara Newman
MONTHLY parties, art and photography exhibitions, a recording studio, hand-made clothes, locally sourced food and games evenings – Map Studio Café is like a hippy’s dream. Straddling the corner of Inkerman Road and Grafton Road in Kentish Town, the two-bedroom house was once the home of Chris Townsend, founder of punk T-shirt printers Fifth Column which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2008 with a music event at The Forum.
Earlier this year Townsend opened his doors to the Inkerman Road Residents Association and the wider community when his home was transformed into a café, retaining the studio out back where the Ordinary Boys and Ms Dynamite first recorded.
Artists and musicians strut through the front of house, past Michelle Banarse’s handmade clothing range, through the café selling locally homemade pastries and pies at cafe prices, and into the recording studio.
I tried the broccoli quiche made in a home on Ryland Road with a terrific brussel sprout, prune, carrot, onion and tomato salad. Usually a decidedly grim vegetable, a brussel sprout in Svenya Schincketanz’s capable hands was reborn as haute cuisine.
Townsend employs eight members of staff in the café. Everybody is paid the same and one day, when he recovers his investment, he says he will offer them shares in the business.
He regularly accommodates work experience students from care homes and schools.
He said: “This is not about money and profit. It’s about the community and giving young people a chance. I believe in evening out the classes a bit.”
Upstairs, there is a peaceful sheltered roof garden with Australasian artefacts and a bucket for fag butts. You can kneel on cushions in the conservatory or play pool on the second floor. At their monthly parties, the pool table becomes a platform for the DJ’s turntables.
A self-proclaimed workaholic, Townsend now lives in Hampstead with his partner of eight years, Victoria Pierre.
He left Hampstead School in Westbere Road at the age of 16, more interested in socialising than academia.
Grandson to a dentist knighted for fixing soldiers’ jaws after the First World War and son of a professor teaching sociology at the London School of Economics, he had a lot to live up to.
While working in the building trade by day, he took an evening course in silk screen printing at Kingsway College on Gray’s Inn Road.
Townsend set up his T-shirt business with two partners in 1978. Working on designs in his mother’s Hampstead kitchen, the trio ran stalls selling their wares in Camden and Portobello markets.
He said: “It was very Luddite. We painted everything by hand which was long and laborious and very hard work.”
The T-shirts became some of the best known of the 1970s and 1980s, featuring subversive images of Margaret Thatcher with the slogan “we are all prostitutes” emblazoned on the front. Fifth Column also produced merchandise for punk bands The Jam, The Clash,The Damned, The Specials and Madness.
With this track record and his network of media contacts, it seems likely this latest venture will be a huge success.
