Soho: The One With A Cake Shop
22:30
Soho, standing for South of Houston (Street) is perhaps my
favourite neighbourhood in NYC. Located downtown, and surrounded by Little
Italy and Chinatown, Soho offers a different, and yet quintessentially, New York
experience. Every other wall is covered in graffiti that rivals Banksy, the
streets are filled with a mixture of hipsters and models (and increasingly more
tourists) and the shops that line the thin brownbrick backroads all offer a unique purchase.
With the sun behind the clouds and the cold
wind making any outdoor activity virtually impossible, the only thing to do in New York
this time of year is eat. So, on my first day back in the city after going home
for winter break, a friend and I decided to make the somewhat lengthy trip (35
mins by subway) to Soho for brunch. In
order to pursue our New Year’s resolutions to explore the city more, we decided
to eat at Jack’s Wife Freda, an infamous restaurant to New Yorkers and the more
cultured tourist [see my review here].
Unfortunately we weren’t the only ones with
brunch on our minds on the chilly Martin Luther King day (a public holiday in
the States), and there was queue, or should I say ‘line’, of an hour and a
half. Whilst the weather was off-putting, my friend and I decided that it was
worth the wait and to kill time began walking around the local area.
Unlike some of the tourist traps of the
city, Soho offers a cute café or a vintage shop on every corner. We took a very
organic walk around the neighbourhood, with no destination in mind, and taking
it in turns to chose a direction. As both art enthusiasts, but neither good
artists, we were in awe of the plethora of artwork that lined the streets. With
our cameras in hand, and instagram on the ready, we may have got a bit snap
happy, but it’s so hard not to!
To avoid getting hypothermia, we would
venture into whatever shop caught our eye. Whilst they give of the exterior of
vintage thrift shop, and cheap earthy purchases,
most are in fact quite upmarket, and quite expensive. The stores themselves
offered an aesthetically pleasing experience, and we both took the air of woman
who were actually interested in buying the products in order to stay in the
heat for that little while longer.
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| Outside the Little Cupcake Bakeshop |
Every street that we passed seem to hold a
blogger famous spot (as my friend constantly pointed out what blogger had been
where) and it’s not hard to see why. My favourite backdrop was near the Little
Cupcake Bakeshop, where I pretended to be an artsy blogger and conducted a
little photoshoot in front of. There were so many tempting cafes and
restaurants that would have succeeded in enticing us in if we hadn’t already
booked in somewhere for brunch. I think
Soho is one of those few areas where you can go with no plan in mind and just
wander till you find something, and it will very easily be something great.
Soho
vs Soho
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| Soho, NYC Soho, London |
One thing I’d like to address about Soho is
its comparison to it's London counterpart. I have to say out of all the boroughs of
New York that share their name with London, Soho is probably the
most similar to the current London Soho. Aside from Soho (London’s) longheld
status as the red light district, they are both similar in their proximity to the
centre of the city, the cutesy places
that align their streets and the hip and young population that occupy the area.
2 comments
Hi there! Enjoyed your post on NYC and wanted to connect via email to ask you a couple of questions. Could you let me know where to reach you? Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThank you, you can reach me at jouja.maamari@hotmail.co.uk
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