Make Soho seedy again My neighborhood traded character for commercialism

Maybe, it’s because I live in the very eye of the storm that I haven’t been noticing, until reading about it in the papers, that Soho’s business owners are at war with the Soho Society, a residents’ group that does what any good residents’ group should do, namely looks after the interests of residents. Listen to the business owners and the Soho Society is a bunch of aging killjoys bent on squeezing the vitality out of Soho. It’s my view — and I speak as an aging killjoy myself — that if anything is squeezing the vitality out of Soho, it’s the cream-cake and bubble-tea shops which together outnumber the good old strip-joints by about twenty to one and the skateboard apparel outlets which attract queues of underage trainer-wearers on what are known in the business as “drop days”. Once you could only enter Soho if you loped in wearing built-up brothel-creepers. The advent of the “drop-day” trainer tells you all you need to know about how low Soho has sunk.

One of the Soho Society’s first concerns is the level of noise to which residents are subjected and will be subjected to still further if all the outstanding planning permissions are granted. I have had, and lost, a few fights with the planning and licensing arms of Westminster council on my own account, having failed to convince them that another all-night rooftop bar 20-feet from my bedroom will have an adverse impact on my sleep. “What you fail to grasp,” I try to explain, “is that rooftop drinking is noisier than any other sort. The twin exhilarations of being close to the moon and keeping other people awake will turn the most sullen and taciturn street-level drinker into a howler and screamer whose every laugh lands on your pillow, still sticky with craft beer and spittle.” They see me for what I am. An aging killjoy who shouldn’t be living in Soho at all if he cares about what lands on his pillow.

That I shouldn’t be here is a slur I find more than a little hurtful. I was a Soho aficionado long before many of those who see it only as a business opportunity had even started their Diplomas in Management and Profiteering. I came here in my brothel-creepers — I’m not saying where I crept I them — as a hopeful lad, not knowing if I had the courage to avail myself of all Soho had to offer, but in a state of heated curiosity — a scholar of hedonism and sensuality with a notebook in my hand — eager to understand its allure, and that allure had nothing to do with noise. If not exactly silent, Soho in those days was broody with the quiet of anticipation. You didn’t shout what you wanted. Your being here was a secret. You frequented empty alleyways. When you looked up to the solitary red light burning in a window, you didn’t yell what was on your mind. You didn’t know what was on your mind. It would reveal itself to you in good time, in silent nods and hushed whispers above which you could hear your every heartbeat, even those your heart missed. Be still, be still, you told yourself.

We have lost the clandestine arts. We get our idea of sex from film and television where love-makers imitate either the Malayan jungle or Jeremy Clarkson’s farm, screeching, wailing, snuffling. Orgasm was once an occasional secret shared by two. A small confidential triumph when attained. It is now proclaimed democratically on Dolby sound from any of the rooftop bars the council has given another license to. How else do we know we’re having a good time unless we shout about it? The word we once found too gross to use and were never sure how to spell has grown commonplace. The whole world c***s and wants you to know about it.

Pre-sex, unless it’s post-sex, unless it IS sex, the drinkers of all genders take to the self-pedaling bars, drunk on their own hilarity. They aren’t having a good time. If they were having a good time they would be savoring it more stealthily, letting a small light shine from eyes that shyly meet, communicating soft secrets through the darkest velvet. What we have instead is blatantly obedient, ersatz merriment. Simon says get bladdered. Simon says scream. Simon says guffaw. Howard says shut-the-f-up.

The hen-nighters have taken to the discotheque tuk-tuks, singing Kylie favorites. I have a soft spot for Kylie. I was once made honorary Australian of the year at a do where she was voted real Australian of the year. After I told how I had loved being called a bastard by Australians in my years in Sydney she leaned across the dinner table, parted the artificial vegetation and said, “You bastard, Jacobson.” It’s hard to forget a moment like that. But I am not obliged to abandon what I believe for nostalgia’s sake. Please no more tuk-tuks, no matter what Australiana the piss-pot passengers are belting out.

After midnight the cars engineered to sound like tank divisions take to Soho’s Streets. Exhausts go off like rifle shots. When a door is closed you think a skyscraper has been hit by a missile. Some of them are still blowing off their exhausts in the early morning. On days I haven’t slept at all, I get up and run after them. “I hope you crash, you infantilized moron!” I shout and look to other fraught pedestrians for support. I get none. Since I am on my own, I act alone, running down the middle of Wardour Street shaking my first. Two motorbikes, both defying the one-way system, converge on me. They too have been souped up in hell to sound like the annihilation of the world.

So, is this the original raucous Soho which the business owners demand the Soho Society leave alone? They make an obvious and fundamental error. They think a racket is synonymous with authenticity. They think a love of life can be measured in decibels. Let me tell them what I want, and it isn’t staid sobriety. I want fewer shops selling sneakers, less bubble tea, no more fake jollity imported for the weekend from heartless towns in the West Midlands. I have lived here for 25 years and watched the life drain out of what was once gloriously louche and seedy. I’d like Francis Bacon back. And Brendan Behan. But the artists and writers have disappeared, as have their studios and attics. Words have abandoned the streets to grunts. The brothel-creepers languish unwanted on eBay. That’s what’s really gone wrong — Soho is in danger of becoming like everywhere else.

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