Eighties' Sheffield was not for the faint-hearted

With the socialist Town Hall at war with the Thatcher government and Arthur Scargill masterminding the Miners’ Strike from the NUM building 400 yards up the road, the Sheffield of the 1980s was not a place for the faint-hearted.
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Two fashion institutions helped accommodate the alternative lifestyles of the city’s youth as they dealt with recession and sky high unemployment and drowned their sorrows at venues like the Limit, The Leadmill, Marples and Rebels.

Rebina Shoes and X Clothes were hugely popular in the era.

The former operation started in Leeds before opening its first Sheffield outlet on Leopold Street at the start of the era. Punks, goths and rockers frequented it in their droves and it was the place to buy ‘Crazy Colour’ – the Day-Glo hair dye no assuming alternative fashionista could ever be caught without.

Queuing for cheap cigarettes on Orchard StreetQueuing for cheap cigarettes on Orchard Street
Queuing for cheap cigarettes on Orchard Street
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Rebina, just off High Street, became a footwear institution for the entire region. Winkle pickers, brothel creepers, pointed buckle boots, patent leather, cool carrier bags – it could seemingly do no wrong. Just rack after rack of the coolest shoes in the entire world.

X Clothes ended up moving to bigger premises at 17 Market Place, directly above the legendary Hole-In-The-Road.

Unfortunately, the once-gleaming subterranean shopping precinct and pedestrian underpass that won a clutch of civic awards in its Sixties and Seventies infancy had now become little more than a magnet for tramps and warring youth factions, especially at night.

The air of urban decay hung above it for the entire decade as the escalators packed up one by one and the graffiti artists gave it a makeover.

Gateway supermarket, Buchanan Road, Parson CrossGateway supermarket, Buchanan Road, Parson Cross
Gateway supermarket, Buchanan Road, Parson Cross
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Jarvis Cocker said of it : “The Hole in the Road had a reputation for late-night violence which made it a scary place to walk home through in the early hours. This was not helped at all by the fact its construction gave rise to an effect similar to that of the Whispering Gallery in St Paul's Cathedral - meaning it was extremely difficult to work out where any menacing noises were coming from.”

Despite the recession and Miners’ Strike, the 1980s were still a buoyant time for the record shops. Even though half of Sheffield’s music-buying community seemed to be on the dole, traders could take solace in the fact music ranked nearly as high as booze and cigarettes in the priority stakes.

By the mid-1980s there seemed to be a proliferation in record shops in Sheffield.

Rat Records, near The Leadmill, majored on punk and hardcore; Castle Market’s Revolution was punk and new wave Mecca; Bradley’s seemed to be the place for chart and heavy metal; Virgin was hippy central; Kenny’s on the Wicker for rock ’n’ roll; Violet May for imports and rarities; Impulse for music and clothes on Cambridge which seemed to go on for about four miles and HMV for everything. The list went on and on!

Taken from the ‘Dirty Stop Out’s Guide to 1980s Sheffield’ – available from www.dirtystopouts.com for £13.95

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