Permanent Wave

Shoreditch is full of people (smart, creative, well-intentioned people) who strive after quirkiness. Think Labour & Wait or Monster Supplies: wonderful stores, but just the slightest bit try hard. 

The Hornsey Road is Dickens to Shoreditch's Trollope, Destiny's Child to its Leona Lewis, Bernini to its Borromini; the Hornsey Road doesn't have to achieve eccentricity, it blazes it. It's the kid who storms out of A-levels swearing at the teacher where Shoreditch is the cutie who smokes and never gets caught. 

Take the hairdresser's at number 418. There's a white shopfront with a net curtain:

Walk inside and it's the 1970s in a catholic country:

The lady who runs it has been there 43 years, and has customers who have been coming for decades. The place, in other words, has a role. It tells its customers that they are still welcome in London, still part of London; the city is infinite and forgiving.