This film is part of Free

Citizens Banned

Punks find their turf invaded by New Romantics in the final part of Captain Zip's seminal Video Trip.

Amateur film 1981 12 mins Silent

Overview

The last in Phil Munnoch aka Captain Zip's series of 8mm portraits of the London punk scene captures the movement in decline - and Chelsea's last gasp as a bohemian enclave. Zip's extended family of young punks - including Katie Thunder and Wobble - are still a close-knit bunch, defiantly living it up on the Kings Road. But by 1981 they were a tourist attraction, posing for photos with curious straights for a few quid.

This final chapter in Zip's Video Trip also captures an important transition in outsider fashion, the punks competing for pavement space with a new breed of 80s dandy later dubbed the New Romantics. Punk fashion queen Vivienne Westwood's own style was shifting too, away from ripped t-shirts and bondage-inspired gear. The film includes a glimpse of her famous shop at 430 Kings Road, by then dubbed World's End, with its familiar whimsical crooked shopfront. Look out too for Chelsea Old Town Hall and Dovehouse Green - a favourite spot for drinking and glue sniffing, the police never far away.