I’ve long been told the thing to know about Soho is that it was always better before. Much more entertaining in the Eighties, with the poets and the pissheads, and, er, the crap trattorias and early closing times.
Of course, in the Eighties everyone thought the Fifties were the golden years, with the coffee shops and demented painters and, er, Maltese gangsters.
I mention this as the question of pedestrianising Soho recently came up again, and I instinctively recoiled. During the pandemic, I championed forbidding traffic to help W1’s 550-odd venues with the death rattle. But the summer after, when the plague had been packed away, the streets were still gridlocked with tables. Yuck, I thought, look at all these people having fun. Can’t they stick to Shoreditch?
So those calls for a more permanent curtailing of cars? No thanks, I thought, thank God we’re back to the good old days. I can shamble home in peace, though I do have to look out for cabbies about to take me out at the knees. I’m not going deaf from clinking glasses, even if the pollution’s playing hell with my sinuses. And look, I can always get a table anywhere, though I hear places keep shutting down.
It seems obvious the thing to do is to hand the roads to the walkers and let restaurants expand their terraces
I think you see what I’m driving at. The hours for morning deliveries aside, it seems obvious the thing to do is to hand the roads to the walkers and let restaurants expand their terraces. They’ll profit, so council can claim a rate, and use it to keep Soho in good nick. A busier, more prosperous W1 can only be a good thing.
True, a few of the 2,500 or so permanent residents may complain, but last time the scheme resulted in 16,000 extra covers for bars and restaurants. And, for God’s sake, you moved to Soho. Stand on the tracks and you expect to get hit by a train.
What people are really objecting to, I suspect, is change. But so much of the old guard battles on regardless of what comes and goes — the Coach, the French, the Academy and Andrew Edmunds, even that strip club on Dean Street.
There have always been grumbles about what’s new. Soho was better before, remember? Was it bollocks.
