Angry, Torch-Lit Mob Attacks Hipster Cafe

Customers hide as protesters attack Cereal Killer Cafe
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 28, 2015 7:28 PM CDT
Angry, Torch-Lit Mob Attacks Hipster Cafe
Cereal is cool in some parts.   (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

An angry mob vented its rage against East London hipsters over the weekend by attacking a cafe and scrawling "scum" on the window. But the establishment wasn't just any cafe—it was a cereal cafe. As in, cereal in a bowl. "It’s senseless violence, isn’t it?" Gary Keery, co-owner of Cereal Killer Cafe, tells the Guardian. "We’ve had some letters through the letterbox saying 'die hipsters' and stuff but nothing to this extreme. It just doesn’t make sense." He says terrified customers and their children hid inside while protesters (who carried torches and pig heads) threw cereal and red paint at the windows. After customers found safety downstairs, members of the mob managed to break in and throw furniture and a smoke bomb inside.

Roughly 200-strong, the protesters explained their anti-gentrification stance on a Facebook event page, reports the Independent. "Our communities are being ripped apart—by Russian oligarchs, Saudi Sheiks, Israeli scumbag property developers, Texan oil-money twats and our own home-grown Eton toffs," they write. "We don't want luxury flats that no one can afford, we want genuinely affordable housing." Their protest also left a police officer injured (flying bottle to the face) and a nearby real estate agency damaged. By Sunday, though, Cereal Killer Cafe was back in business, selling over 120 kinds of cereal with more than 20 toppings and 30 kinds of milk, for up to $6.50 a bowl, the CBC reports. (In the US, hipsters' $4 toast has an interesting back story.)

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