Soho and all its neighborhoods:
You are in Soho and across the street from Nolita, Little Italy, Chinatown. A few minutes walk and you enter Tribeca, Noho, Greenwich Village, Lower East Side, East Village, West Village. Welcome to all downtown Manhattan has to offer. You have all the things Soho promises and delivers in this neighborhood. This is the area of chic stores, loft buildings and Greenwich Village as it should be.
Soho and neighborhoods:
SoHo
SoHo—the name alone brings to mind chi-chi boutiques, fat wads of money, and intimate/expensive restaurants where wailing men serenade with accordions. Welcome to the neighborhood-where the fantasy is often also the reality. Here you’ll find sky-high rents that ensure, if nothing else, that you’ll have 24 hour access to some of the city’s best clubs, bars, shops, restaurants, and some might even say “ambiance.”
Once an industrial sprawl of lofts, photo studios, and warehouses, SoHo began to rejuvenate in the 1970s with the influx of artists who needed space to spread their postmodern palare. These artists, as is usually the case in urban sprawl, brought with them a tag-along supply of galleries who set up shop in the quaint little downtown nook, where rents were cheap and spaces were hardwood and inviting. After the galleries started moving and shaking the atmosphere, rents in the neighborhood went up, and with the smothering arrival of high-end boutiques in the 90s.
Soho Continued:
SoHo saw a dramatic transformation. Art had once again worked its charm, and made this area south of Houston Street into one of the most desirable locations in the city—replete with mammoth loft apartments, sidewalk art sales, and every clothing designer you could think of shoulder to shoulder on West Broadway. The attitude had arrived.
And rightly so. Nowhere else will you feel as connected, as branche, as ‘in,” as you will in an apartment in SoHo. If the downtown night flair is your thing, you can almost assuredly walk to your destinations or at worst take a very cheap cab ride. Famous lounges have come and gone (in popularity or in physicality) through the years—Spy Bar, Veruka, Lucky Strike, et al, but new ones are popping up all the time. If there’s one thing that’s certain in SoHo, it’s that anyone roaming the streets, at almost any time of day, will find something to satisfy his or her particular sartorial, eating, drinking, or hanging out appetite.
Golf:
Cont. Soho (there's a chelsea piers driving range but let's continue discussing Soho) Most apartments in SoHo are converted loft spaces with freight elevators or the teeny variety of studio walkups that you’ll find in other neighborhoods like the East Village. For its obvious draws, however, many have more luck seeing apartments on an artist studio tour, at which point they draw in deep breaths and say “Ahh, I wish I lived here too…” For those with the cash money to do so, however, the world in SoHo is your oyster. Exposed brick walls, huge windows, hidden fire escapes/balconies, and intricate hardwood or parquet floors are an interior decorator’s dream or the perfect way to showcase your Herman Miller collection.
If you can afford it, and if you don’t mind constantly being in the center of the action (i.e. all your friends coming over to meet before drinks, and crashing there afterwards), or if you can be hermit enough not to let them know where you live, SoHo might be the perfect little slice of paradise.
