SFRJ ZA POČETNIKE - Zlatni papagaj

“Zlatni papagaj” (“Golden Parrot”) was Belgrade’s first true modern café and a genuine cultural phenomenon. Before it opened, Belgrade essentially had only traditional "kafane" and “express” or “milk” restaurants – large, smoky places with simple furniture serving vinjak, mineral water and Turkish coffee. In September 1979 “Zlatni papagaj” opened and is presented as the first real café in Belgrade, arriving late compared with Zagreb or Sarajevo or even Mostar, which already had a lot of cafés. The venue was tiny, about 30 m², and explicitly modeled on Italian bar culture: people stood at the counter, drank espresso, cappuccino and frappé, and ate hot sandwiches.
People eagerly squeezed into the little room, enjoying contemporary music, the sound of the coffee machine and the novelty as such. It quickly became a fashionable meeting place for attractive girls, athletes, actors, high‑school pupils, diplomats, students and journalists.
The band Električni orgazam immortalized the café with the song “Zlatni papagaj”. According to the story, frontman Srđan Gojković Gile walked by, saw punks and šminkeri (posers/yuppies) fighting in front, and wrote a song about a snobbish crowd whose parents paid their bills and who came there every night just to be seen. According to many, “Zlatni papagaj” brought Trieste to Belgrade. It was a philosophy of the Italian lifestyle in which coffee culture and a famous cappuccino have dominated for decades. Already in 1980 the second Belgrade café, “Arkade” in Jovanova Street, opened, followed by “Crni petao”, “Galerija”, “Freska”, “Trozubac”, “KP”, “Košava”, “Cvetić”, “Klub 54”, “Nana” and others, marking the rapid spread of café culture in Belgrade during the 1980s.
(Kaldrma.rs; StillInBelgrade.com)