Word: soho
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...Challenge and response" was a catch phrase that Historian Arnold Toynbee used to explain the rise of civilizations. When Granddaughter Clare Toynbee, 21, was challenged by her bank to pay a $240 overdraft, her response was to become a weekend stripper in a Soho nightclub for $72 a session. Confronted by a reporter, she confessed ambiguously, "Oh well, I suppose I couldn't keep it under cover forever," and admitted that the family took a dim view. "At first I felt ashamed to strip completely in front of all those men," added Clare, an Oxford graduate...
Splintery Stairs. SoHo's smaller lofts (2,100 to 2,500 sq. ft.) are just right for artists doing large-scale works in new industrial materials. And the continuing presence of workmen and small manufacturers encourages a rewarding combination of art and industry. Says Jewelry Maker Gale Picard: "The machinist across the street comes over to give us advice. The neighborhood carpenters and mechanics are all very helpful in working out artistic problems...
Galleries first came to SoHo two years ago when Paula Cooper opened her cosy aerie up three flights of creaky, splintery stairs. More recent arrivals include Max Hutchinson, a peripatetic Australian; Reese Palley, an Atlantic City Boardwalk porcelain salesman; and smooth-talking, Brooklyn-born Ivan Karp. Uptown dealer Richard Feigen maintains a downtown branch in SoHo, and two more uptown power houses-Castelli and Emmerich-recently announced plans to open outlets in the neighborhood...
Dealers come to SoHo for the same reasons artists do: modest rents and immodest space. But not all SoHo artists welcome them. "They're going after the market and going in for the whole promotional thing," says one. Others fear that galleries will touch off a cancerous growth of boutiques, coffee bars and hot-dog stands, turning SoHo into a honky-tonk tourist trap...
Another more pressing danger is eviction or demolition, or both. SoHo lofts are not zoned for residential use, but as long as health and safety standards are observed, the city tends to look the other way. Manhattan's inflated land values, however, make this last frontier of bohemia increasingly attractive to housing developers. If a rezoned SoHo, like Greenwich Village, starts sprouting high-rent, high-rise apartment buildings named for Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Cézanne, the artists who pioneered it will be the first ones forced to leave...