Parallel Life Unknown to the Tourist. Soho with Writer Zinovii Zinik

The most popular (and vulgar) image of SoHo is that of a secret quarter of vice and debauchery, like the red light district in Amsterdam or, at one time, the Pigalle district in post-war Paris. Now that all kinds and forms of sex can be found on websites, SoHo's former sex industry has become something of a museum piece, an exotic excursion into the forbidden past for tourists. The SoHo crowd doesn't notice that kids walk to school in the mornings or that churches don't close their doors. Here are the editing studios and screening rooms of major film studios, as well as the offices of impresarios and literary agents and design firms. It's a parallel life in SoHo: the local paper is published here, charity events are organized, street vagrants are helped to survive, the streets are kept clean, monuments are protected and racial harmony is fought for. Old-timers say, "Soho ain't what it used to be." Indeed. Zinovii Zinik tells us what's left of his youthful neighborhood today.