Hints and tips:
...But personally I prefer El Born, a smaller, older neighbourhood that has a New York SoHo vibe, with alternative brands and little shops....
...Among the Durslade farm shop’s wares are £19.50 pots of lemon verbena and black pepper-scented Somerset bee balm....
...In fact, Parsloe believes they were sourced by Lyne from a custom furniture shop in SoHo, New York, when he was living in the neighbourhood....
...This kind of rhetorical huffing and puffing is akin to a smoke machine trying to create an air of mystery in a dingy rock club....
...Paul Raymond’s Soho is all but gone, but I think that he’d approve....
...I used to smoke a lot and I feel panicky now if I don’t have a pencil close by, the same way I once did about cigarettes. They’re a good thing to fidget with....
...When Paul Smith walked me through the launch of his range of candles at a Soho townhouse last year, rooms had been styled to represent each aroma....
...I indulge in a breakfast at a Hong Kong-style café, usually Cheung Hing Coffee Shop in Happy Valley....
...Richard Young is now a well-known photographer, but in 1965 he was a teenage sales assistant in what was, he says, “the most elegant, campest menswear shop in London” — Sportique on Soho’s Old Compton Street...
...The current store, which opened in the early ’90s, is in a classic SoHo loft building, with an open-plan industrial atmosphere and staff who are real New York characters....
...The coffee shop by one of the gates has reopened. So has one local bar, Troubadour, which is serving welcome pints of draft beer to take away....
...Sip wine in Soho Balans, 60-62 Old Compton St, Soho, London W1D 4UG Website | Directions Balans in Soho is open virtually 24/7....
...We fired up the Stanley for the first time and shoved something in for supper, smoke started filling the room and soon after the hot water gave up....
...The window had no screen, or else we could remove it, because we climbed out on the neighbouring building to smoke and store our takeout....
...Old Huang smokes and drinks his worries away with fresh tobacco and home-made liquor — “earth liquor”, as villagers call it....
...His Pop Shop, open between 1986 and 2005 in SoHo, sold Haring-adorned apparel, toys and posters and might well be considered his masterpiece....
...Now Soho smells of smoke and spices....
...Walking back to each of them through the kitchen garden, with the smoke from a dozen grand chimneys coiling up to meet the stars behind me, I feel a stirring of dormant emotion....
...In 1996 a bright young chef called Ed Baines took over an old French butcher and traiteur shop on Brewer Street, installed a big rotisserie and founded an institution....
...It might be found objects from the street, the thrift shop, a radio, a pair of office cooling fans; all of which he incorporated into his works....
...Too confusing, too old-fashioned, too complicated: the category is today seen as an anti-millennial dinosaur in a retail climate in which people shop online and want brand purity....
...In London’s Soho alone, there is Sri Lankan cuisine at Hoppers, “fish and masala chips” at Cinnamon Soho and Indian street food at Imli Street....
...The city’s industrial eastern half is rapidly ditching its decrepit, dodgy and dangerous reputation thanks to places like Soho Factory....
...The interior now feels more Soho House than Swiss chalet....
...In Mr Batten’s shop across Harnham Bridge I would be handed the horrible book so that I, to whom it was issued, might enjoy the important responsibility of passing it personally to the ancient grocer....
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