The Times checks in on SoHo today and discovers that it's become a hellacious open-air mall:

If Madison Avenue is a Frederic Fekkai lady, groomed and pampered as a best-in-show spaniel, and NoLIta is a fake bohemian with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on her iPod and a platinum card in her Lulu Guinness bag, then lower Broadway in SoHo is a pastel-clad 13-year-old, giddily in the grip of a sugar rush.

Does that make the West 30s a lonely liver-spotted Italian man, his pants stuffed with cupcake recipes? And I suppose the Diamond District is just a Syrian fella with a .45 strapped to his ankle? Need we go on in this vein?
To Be Young in SoHo and Armed With Plastic [NYT]