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SoHo, New York City. SoHo stands for "South of Houston" (Houston is a major street in lower Manhattan) SoHo lies South of Houston Street and is bound by Broadway to the East and by Canal Street to the South. The only logical western boundary is the Hudson River, however, many would tell you that "West SoHo" - the part of the neighborhood located West of Sixth Avenue - is completely different in character. These purist are partially right - it is different - more industrialized and less crowded, but still SoHo.

People inhabiting SoHo in the 60's, 70's and 80's were artist attracted by large and vacant industrial spaces (good for hanging your paintings). These artist squatted in empty buildings and in the 60's pretty much all buildings were empty. After a 1962 report described SoHo as an enormous slum, the beginning of gentrification began. In the next 5-6 years plans for demolishing most of the neighborhood and building a highway was actively discussed. Luckily, that never happened.

Today, most of the area is populated with Wall Streeters whose only distinguishing characteristic is that although they could have settled in a $1M + apartment, they instead chose a $1M + loft. Even though they are nice people, there is hardly anything artistic about them. There are very few "residential" buildings in the area, but they do exist - mostly on the western side of SoHo, along Sixth Avenue. There the mix is more democratic, although none exactly poor has been spotted for a long time.

SoHo is one of the most expensive places to live in all of North America (behind only TriBeCa and possibly some areas of San Francisco) and yet, with luck, one can still rent a moderately priced (<$1,700/mo) studio apartment and have a full dinner for $14 dollars.