Soho, Needless to Say …

A cold, crisp and sunny winter’s day is an invitation to take a walk, whether you are out on the hills or tucked up in a city. I’m in London at the moment and so a city walk it was.

According to the financial press this week has seen a collapse in retail sales and it seems this is true. Mid-morning and the streets of London were as quiet as an old fashioned Sunday morning.

Foyles bookshop is something of an institution. To be fair it used to be an institution but the chaotic style of management just drove me nuts and about ten years or so ago I stopped going there. But in recent years the shop has been refurbished and is now a pleasure to stroll around once again. In truth Foyles is not as idiosyncratic as it once was but on days like these, when you’re not fighting your way through the aisles, an hour flashes by in an instant.

Outside Soho was at its best. The charm of this area is due — in no small way — to the its compact street pattern, something it shares with Paris’ Marais another rather special area from a bygone era. Traditional shop frontages and low rise building provides a human scale environment. Every now and then the flaneur comes across a hideous new building or huge hole in the ground surrounded by billboards heralding the imminent arrival another monster of glass and concrete. But despite the crimes of urban planner the charm of Soho still shines through, these narrow streets providing the critical mass needed for the radiance of such charm. Still, one wishes could learn from Paris. There’s little chance of the Marais being dominated by a new thirty floor business environment.

Quite streets allowed Soho to shine, and Soho residents to parade themselves with all their famed eccentricity. Today’s Soho is more prosperous and more varied in its offer, but the old and new coexist rather well. Everywhere you look there are fine eating places, all shiny cutlery and crisp, creaseless table cloths. Some of these seem to be expensive to be the point of ridiculousness but there are some gems here. A week or so I ate at the new Hix restaurant on Brewer Street a place that excels in wonderfully simple food made with the very best of ingredients at — for central London — reasonable prices for such fine surroundings. But the gastronauts do not dominate. There are still plenty of small family run cafés and restaurants about, many of them with the fine ambience of the old London caf.

On Old Compton Street I dropped into the Amalfi Café for a bite of lunch. The Amalfi seems to have been there forever. The darkened wooden floor is well trodden and worn, rickety and sloping all over the place. On the walls fine, genuine, black and white prints of yesteryear’s actors and actresses of both stage and screen take me back to Saturday afternoon films. Some — like that from Humphrey Bogart — seem to have been personally signed. Look harder and you can see other fine Soho residents, journalists, writers and all manner of other bohemians. Oscar Wilde has pride of place on one wall.

I took a seat in the window so I could watch the street life roll on by. On busy days Soho’s characters are lost in a mass of tourists and language students. But today they stood out with pride. These Soho types seem to have lasted as long as I can remember. There are the actors and theatre types of a certain age, with fine hats and overcoats, shuffling along the street in a hurry. Younger Soho Queens parade along the street at a mode sedate pace, snug and warm inside strikingly loud winter coats. Inside the restaurant an elderly American theatre person entertained not only his companion but the entire restaurant with a series of thespian stories which name-checked all manner of famous names, the shameless name dropping I’ve heard in years. Magnificent.

Back on the streets I realised that Soho may retain its character, its eccentricity and its love of excess but somehow things have a better balance these days. The sex industry is still a major player here but somehow is more restrained, less seedy and more mainstream. I’m not sure anyone could really take any exception to Soho on days like these. Never fear though, if you still want a flavour of Soho’s wilder side just come by night. A couple of weeks ago I strolled down here with a friend from Manchester who was somewhat thrown by the two transvestite dancers taking a fag break in the warmish evening air. Myself and the other regulars and residents had simply missed the sight, it simply wasn’t remarkable but normal.

I started by praising the street landscape of Soho. Bruce Chatwin was fond of saying that landscape was nothing without people and I do tend to agree. Despite the charm of Soho’s environment it is the people that really stand out. Soho’s life seems as rich as ever.

This has been captured beautifully in photographer Catherine Garcia’s new book Soho Lives in which wonderful portraits are accompanied by lovely paragraphs explaining why Soho is so loved.

It was a wonderful morning, my only regret being that I didn’t have my own camera with me. Seldom are the streets this quiet that the street scape — and Soho’s characters — can be picked out so easily.

Soho ain’t the Scottish Highlands —but it can be just as wonderful.