Working in the area, with its plethora of designer coffee spots, high-end fast food and concerned looking meeeedja types pacing the streets talking LOUDLY into BlackBerry Bolds, it’s difficult to concieve that London’s Soho was once so seedy. I used to listen to my dad’s tales of being robbed in clip joints by burly characters after being promised a superior striptease experience than Raymond’s Revue Bar, including the crudest sting i ever heard of, with a friend’s old man conned into entering a satin curtain into a piss-smelling alleyway where he and his boys were promptly knocked to the floor and relieved of their wallets.
There’s still an undeniable edge, but the overt seediness seems to have made like Le Corbusier and gone upwards, marked by crude signs and grimy doorbells, operating above those respectable retailers. The sleaze that gives Soho character seems to be in full effect, just 10 feet above your head.
GWARIZM 