Salah’s Cafe, open Even During Works

Overview

Once an industrial centre at the junction of Roubaix and Tourcoing, the Union area is undergoing radical change as a result of an ambitious urban renewal project. Everything has been demolished, with the exception of "Chez Salah", a café that opened in 1965 and is the ultimate relic of a district inhabited mainly by workers. Its owner, Salah Oudjane, refuses to sell the worn-out two-storey building where he has spent most of his life. In spite of himself, he has become a symbol of resistance to gentrification (the renovation of a working-class neighbourhood for the benefit of wealthier social classes), and is the unlikely hero of this chronicle in which, as the seasons go by, we see bulldozers clearing the area around his café, which stands like a beacon whose glow seems to attract former residents of the district.