Picture the center of the city. Now, imagine a postage-stamp-sized neighborhood crammed between Oxford Street and Shaftesbury Avenue. That’s Soho. It’s wrapped by Regent Street on one side and Charing Cross Road on the other. You can walk across it in ten minutes—if you don’t get distracted.
Spoiler alert: you will get distracted. That’s the whole point.
It’s not a square. It’s a snarl of streets
Forget neat grids. Soho is a tangle of alleys, courts, and tiny lanes with names like Bateman Street and Frith Street. They crisscross like dropped spaghetti. You’ll turn a corner and find a neon sign for a record shop, then a Thai restaurant, then a tiny bar that smells like gin. It’s chaos, but it’s friendly chaos.
Historically, it was a hunting ground. Literally. “So-ho” was a medieval hunting cry. Now, the only thing hunted here is a good coffee and a late-night snack.
