Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Strolling Through Soho
The restaurants and boutiques here and on adjoining streets (such as Greek, Dean, and
Wardour streets) are trendy and creative, the kind that attract high society when they feel
like slumming it. Bars with burly, well-dressed bouncers abound. Private clubs, like the
low-profile Groucho Club (a block over, at #45 Dean Street), cater to the late-night rock
crowd.
Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club
(#47 Frith Street) has featured big-name acts for more than
50 years. In 1970, Jimi Hendrix jammed here with Eric Burdon and War; it was the last
performance before his death in a London apartment a few days later.
Frith Street hits
Old Compton Street
at the center of the neighborhood. This street is
a fixture of London's gay scene. Stroll a block to the right on Old Compton Street to take
in the eclectic variety of people going by. You're surrounded by the buzz of Soho.
At the corner of Dean Street, look for the pagoda-style arch down the street. South of
here, on the other side of Shaftesbury Avenue, is London's underwhelming
Chinatown.
With Gerrard Street as its spine, it occupies what was once just more of Soho, with the
same Soho artsy vibe. In the 1960s, the Chinese community gathered here, eventually
dominated this zone, and non-Asian businesses moved out. The Chinese population
swelled when the former British colony of Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, but
the neighborhood's identity is now threatened by developers eyeing this high-rent real es-
tate.
