Soho, so good (Soho)

Member Name: buffalo

Product:	Soho
Date:	07/09/00 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The vibe, the pubs, the restaurants

Disadvantages: The crowds

Soho has always been a place for misfits. This one-time hunting ground (Soho! being a huntman's call) was laid out in the late 17th century as part of the general 'Go West' development of the fast-expanding city. Successive waves of persecuted immigrants (Greeks, French protestants, Italians, etc) found cramped homes and some form of tolerance in the narrow streets circumscribed by today's Oxford Street, Regent Street, Charing Cross Road and Leicester Square. In the 19th century, John Galsworthy described Soho in The Forsyte Saga as '...untidy, full of Greeks, Ismaelites, cats, Italians, tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names...' Today, you'll still find the restaurants (in abundance) and the tomatoes (Berwick Street Market), and as for the queer names... it was largely thanks to the growth of Soho as a gay mecca in the late 1980s that the area regained some of its spirit and energy after the sordid sex-industry dominated 1960s and '70s.

The environs of Old Compton Street are still a vibrant, people-packed gay-friendly zone - with bars and pubs a plenty, and no shortage of good restaurants. The only problem is that there simply isn't enough room to accommodate all the fun-seekers. Soho on a Friday night can be a fearsome sight, with heaving pavements and log-jammed boozers. Head west of Wardour Street if you want to stand any chance of getting a seat.

On the western edge of Soho you'll find what has been artificially (though accurately) designated 'West Soho'. It is based around Carnaby Street, which went from hippest street in London in the 1960s to naffest in the city by the 1980s. There is still plenty of tat here, but you'll also find some of London's hippest clothes stores in the area, suggesting that the street might be slowly coming full circle.

South of Shaftesbury Avenue is London's compact Chinatown. Few of London's Chinese population now live
here, but it's still a real centre for the expat community, and you'll see plenty of Chinese faces in the area around Gerrard Street. You'll also have no problem finding some first-rate (and often very cheap) Chinese food.

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