London’s Soho District
Soho is a small, hip multicultural area of central London. In the past it was dominated by sex shops and similar establishments, but today this one-square mile area is home to a wider variety of cultural and entertainment venues, as well as industry, commerce, and a well-established residential neighborhood. There is still a heavy reliance on the sex industry in the western end of Soho, and London’s main gay village is on Old Compton Street.
Soho is also home to many different spiritual groups, ranging from the Hare Krishna community with their temple right off Soho Square and a Muslim community that worships in a small mosque on Berwick Street to the more traditional Anglican and Roman Catholic communities that gather at St. Anne’s Church on Dean Street and St. Patrick’s Church in Soho Square.
Chinatown currently occupies the south end of Soho around Gerard Street. It contains a number of Chinese restaurants, souvenir shops, supermarkets and other Chinese-run businesses. While there are plans underway to redevelop the eastern part of Chinatown, many businesses are concerned that the redevelopment will put many historically Chinese retail stores out of business and forever change the ethnic make-up of the neighborhood.
Soho has been at the center of London’s sex industry for over 200 years, and that reputation has survived all the way up until it began to abate in the 1980’s and 1990’s with the crackdown on unlicensed sex shops and efforts to convert the neighborhood by installing a fiber-optic network to encourage the growing post-production industry with British film studios such as Pinewoood Studios and Shepperton Studios. The Westminster Council recently planned to install a Wi-Fi network across Soho to further encourage technological growth in the area and to attract new businesses.
Soho is also very close to London’s main Theatre District. The famous Waldorf Hotel London is less than one mile away from south Soho, so the Waldorf hotel is within convenient walking distance of Chinatown’s many street festivals.
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