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New fashions, seasonal menus, and, at corner markets, pumpkins waiting to be carved -- autumn has definitely arrived in Soho. Whether an Indian summer awaits or the chill of fall is here to stay, the historic neighborhood south of Houston, north of Canal and west of Crosby is as lively as ever, with visitors, workers, and residents out in force at all hours.
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Soho -- history, fashion, art and more
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Soho
Once known as the South Village, the area was transformed from farmland to an upper-class neighborhood in the early 19th century. It has gone through subsequent incarnations as a shopping district and later as the "Cast-Iron District," when warehouse and loft spaces of similar construction became common throughout the area. Beginning in the 1960s, it began to attract more and more artists, who were drawn to the area's cheap rents and ample work spaces. That's when, taking a cue from the artistic London neighborhood of the same name, the area looked to its northern boundary and truncated its location "South of Houston" to become Soho.
The area continued to evolve, and is now known for its trendy restaurants and stylish boutiques as much as anything else. (As one store window puts it, "Apparently there are things in life more important than fashion. Yeah, right.") Shoppers can visit national sellers like Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and J.Crew; cutting-edge stores including Miss Sixty, French Connection UK, and Dolce & Gabbana, and small neighborhood boutiques such as Alexia Crawford. After a day of shopping, diners can visit well-regarded restaurants such as Balthazar, Aquagrill, and the Cub Room.
Amid the distinctive cast-iron buildings, the pulse of the neighborhood endures. Following is a look at the Soho that may not be apparent at first glance.
Best Soup
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| Jennifer Latham adores the tomato soup at Fanelli Cafe |
Tracing its lineage back to 1847, Fanelli Café claims to be the second-oldest "continuous food and drink establishment on the same site in NYC." Taverns in Gramercy Park and the East Village may offer competing claims, but Fanelli's is nothing if not a local institution -- a fixture that has endured with little apparent alteration even as the neighborhood around it has changed radically.
Sasha Noe, Fanelli's owner, grew up in Soho and recently took over the bar-restaurant's operation from his father. The personable restauranteur, now in his mid-30s, says he has seen Soho change a lot in his lifetime. The difference "is pretty intense," Noe says. "This neighborhood was dead when I was a kid."
Noe has recently reopened an outdoor stall attached to Fanelli's exterior, from which it sells a variety of soups prepared in the restaurant's kitchen. Janet Olivera operates the booth and moves more than 100 containers of soup every day, offering cheery greetings to loyal patrons and newcomers alike. "Oh, yeah, the regulars keep coming back," Olivera says. "People love me and the soup."
The revolving roster of soup includes varieties like chili (beef or vegetable), cream of tomato, and Cuban black bean. Among the customers is Jennifer Latham, who works in the neighborhood and praises the stand's tomato soup as the "best in the world" -- and, she adds, a great hangover cure to boot.
Eat up, Olivera says: "Soup is good food!"
Fanelli Café, 94 Prince Street, 212-226-9412
Most Artful Postcards
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| Untitled sells books and cards |
Occupying a narrow retail space on Prince Street, Untitled is "either a card store with books, or a bookstore with cards," says Bevan Davies, husband of owner Michele Davies. The shop, which opened in 1970, offers a variety of art postcards and a wealth of art books. Untitled caters to the specialist as well as the generalist -- the store's window, for instance, spotlights a book that is solely about the typeface Helvetica.
Mr. Davies, a photographer, said he and his wife lived in the neighborhood for 35 years before moving to Queens only recently. In the early 1970s, he explains, nobody expected the real-estate market to take off. "People bought their places to work," he says, and the neighborhood was "quiet at night, except for gallery openings."
Davies recalls a time when the bookstore was one of several in the neighborhood; he has seen a lot of neighborhood businesses come and go. A couple of decades ago, he says, "It was a nice mix of galleries and small boutiques. There were no shoe stores."
Untitled, 159 Prince Street, 212-982-2088
Best Spot to Take a Load Off
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| Relax in Father Fagan Park |
Father Fagan Park commemorates Father Richard Fagan, a Franciscan priest who died in November 1938 from injuries sustained in saving two fellow priests from a fire in a nearby church rectory.
The paved park has numerous benches and is a popular spot for dog walkers, students walking home from middle school, and parents and nannies with children. Even though it's only a few blocks off of Soho's main drags -- and on Sixth Avenue yet -- it offers a welcome, remarkably quiet place to sit down and watch the world go by.
Father Fagan Park, Avenue of the Americas between Prince and Spring Streets
Best Place to Check Your E-mail
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| Check your email while you shop at the Apple Store |
There's a constant stream of people in and out of the former post office that now houses Apple Store Soho, a relatively new addition to the neighborhood and the only store in the city operated by the California computer company. Apple offers a variety of software and has specialists to help you choose the right computer for your needs, and the dramatic, two-story space even features a mini-auditorium for instruction. Most significantly, dominating the first floor are about 50 display models, which have quickly become Soho's go-to spot for people to log onto the Internet for a quick inquiry at no charge. They're not selling coffee, though -- at least not yet.
Apple Store SoHo, 103 Prince Street, 212-226-3126
Best Art Not Seen in a Gallery
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| Billy Russomano sells his artwork on Prince Street |
Four, five, six, or seven days a week, Billy Russomano can be found on either Prince Street or West Broadway, selling his original artwork. The Sunset Park-based painter's signature work is a white coffee cup against a brightly colored background; you might have seen one at downtown's Klatch café or at an Andrews Coffee Shop location at West 34th Street or John Street.
The self-taught Russomano's catalog also includes the neighborhood-inspired skyline Soho Sunrise; colorful objects including a hammer and Swiss-army knife, and an homage to Piet Mondrian called Mondrian's Morning Coffee. Consistent throughout most of his acrylic canvases are the bright colors and clean black lines on canvases of various sizes.
Russomano, who identifies his work as "neo pop art," does a reasonably brisk trade retailing his paintings for $40 to $400. "It's funny -- all people want is something to go with the couch or walls," he says.
Russomano will show his paintings at downtown's Klatch (9-11 Maiden Lane) in January. Some of his work can be purchased at this website.
Look for Billy Russomano on Prince Street between Mercer and Broadway, or on West Broadway between Prince and Houston.
By the Way…
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| Broome Street Bar -- a favorite for sports lovers |
If you've watched the baseball playoffs this year, you've almost certainly seen the credit-card commercial featuring Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and star shortstop Derek Jeter. One of the hot spots that Jeter supposedly frequents is Soho's Broome Street Bar. No surprise, then, that the bar has two television sets on which to watch the Yankees as the 2003 World Series stretches into late October.
Broome Street Bar, 363 West Broadway, 212-925-2086
West Soho
West Broadway is the dividing line between what is traditionally considered the Soho neighborhood and what some call "West Soho."
Best Place to Catch an Indie Flick
Film Forum opened on the Upper West Side in 1970 and has occupied a number of locations since moving downtown in 1975. Prior to moving to its present location on West Houston in 1990, the theater occupied space on Vandam Street and later Watts Street.
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| Catch an off-beat film at the Film Forum |
Karen Cooper, Film Forum's director, says the nonprofit theater's "ambitious program of repertory selections" offers "more esoteric, more challenging" films than most commercial theaters. She says the core audience comes from Soho and the nearby West Village along with other neighborhoods on the west side and in Brooklyn.
Cooper has been with Film Forum since 1972 and has seen a lot of changes in Soho.
"I've always associated downtown with small artistic [efforts], whether they're galleries or small mom-and-pop restaurants. It's always been synonymous with the cutting edge and culture," says Cooper.
"New York is a very dynamic city, it's never going to be the same from decade to decade," she adds. "I think what I like best about it is that certain institutions hold on, and there's a certain resonance to walking down any block. There's always going to be change, and there's always going to be continuity as well, and I think Lower Manhattan will continue to be an important cultural resource for New Yorkers."
Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, 212-727-8110
Best Old-School Atmosphere
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| The Ear Inn -- one of the oldest bars in Manhattan |
If you like historic establishments, check out the Ear Inn. Within a stone's throw of the West Side Highway and Hudson River, the bar and restaurant dates back more than a century; over the years it served thousands of dockworkers who labored nearby. The pocked wooden bar and buckled floor serve as a testament to the bar's age; the mismatched chairs and bar stools and "cell-free zone" sign on the front door offer insight into its character. There are poetry readings on Saturdays, music Monday through Wednesday and a menu of pub food and more. The Ear Inn does a lively lunch trade, and on Friday and Saturday nights patrons spill out the front door. Consider also stopping by on Halloween -- the bar is reputed to be home to a ghost.
The Ear Inn, 326 Spring Street, 212-226-9060
Best Rockpile
Tucked away on a side street, The Compleat Sculptor is an unusual -- perhaps one-of-a-kind -- supply store for artists. "The sculpture industry has certain kinds of media classifications, and different stores specialize in different media," explains owner Marc Fields. Fields's store is rare in that it offers sculpting supplies in media ranging from stone and clay to rubber, metals, and wood.
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| Marc Fields specializes in scultping supplies at Compleat Sculptor |
Fields caters to working artists as well as other professionals -- like façade-repair specialists and movie-set designers -- and has worked with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Opera, and American Museum of Natural History, among others. Over the summer, Fields reports, he did a brisk trade responding to inquiries related to memorial proposals for the World Trade Center site -- so many, in fact, that he memorized the specifications of materials requested by the LMDC.
The 20,000-square-foot store has two levels, and a trip to the basement reveals a quarry's worth of different kinds of stone -- imported Italian alabaster, American sandstone, and limestone. The store also offers sculpting classes in clay and stone. Fields studied marine biology and psychopharmacology but is pleased to have wound up here: "It's a neat niche, I have to say."
The Compleat Sculptor, 90 Vandam Street, 212-243-6074
Also of Note
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| An intimate theatre experince on Greenwich Street |
Time Out New York's Eating & Drinking Guide lists a mere five Portuguese restaurants in the city, and one of them is at the corner of Spring and Greenwich. Pão specializes in Portuguese style seafood like bacalhau à bráz, a sautéed cod dish, and pork and clams in roasted pepper sauce. Plus they serve Portuguese beer. Pão, 322 Spring Street, 212-334-5464
An off-off-Broadway playhouse, the Greenwich Street Theater offers eclectic fare in an intimate setting, with the program changing fairly often. Through November 9 you can see The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World. Intrigued? Tickets are always reasonably priced, so check it out! Greenwich Street Theater, 547 Greenwich Street, 212-352-3101
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