Special Report - Day 3: Fort Soho

New York Diary: Day 3--Fort Soho
September 13, 2001
by John Bloom

NEW YORK (UPI) -- I enter Fort Soho from the east.

I know Soho is under siege because the previous night I've seen scattered bands of refugees, fleeing north from their million-dollar lofts, pulling burnished Louis Vuitton bags on wheels, the nanny trailing behind with the zippered fleece-lined pet carrier, whole families wearing identical masks of crisp white cotton.

The white cotton mask has become the universal accessory for people living in southern Manhattan. There's a unique smell that can only be called "World Trade Center" and when the wind blows from the south, it irritates emotionally as much as physically. It's just something you don't want to smell.

They're still fighting fires and waiting for buildings to topple on the west side, so I have to approach indirectly. I snake through the Lower East Side, finding places where the cops aren't so thick, pass through Upper Chinatown, and am stunned when I get to Mulberry Street--and the Phantom Carnival.

It just gets curiouser and curiouser. The main thoroughfare of Little Italy is decked out in green, white and red bunting, the colors of the Italian flag, and carnival booths line the empty street: "Bobb's Speed Racers," "Rolla-Ball!," "Pete's Zeppole & Calzone." To the southwest is the ominous ever-present smoke cloud, but here they are waiting on party guests who will never come. It's all set up for the 75th annual Feast of San Gennaro, but there will be no feast this year.

A deserted sideshow attraction advertises "The Angel Snake Girl," right next door to "World's Smallest Woman! (Only 29 Inches): Special Today 50 Cents." But the snake girl hasn't shown up for work, and midget-gawkers will be disappointed. It's odd to be in Little Italy when the tourists have gone away, when the only language spoken is Italian, and when the only activity is the card game being played by four old men at a sidewalk table outside the Ristorante Sorrento.

And yet there's a deja vu here.

Of course! In every Italian gangster movie, when the parade of San Gennaro begins, with choir boys carrying crosses and brightly-jacketed Italian politicians marching in their ceremonial sashes, the scene inevitably ends with gunfire, screams, chaos, carnage. It's another kind of carnage this time, but it's more vivid than any movie.

I press on a few more blocks to Soho, the fashion, art and design center of New York, a small neighborhood just a few blocks north of the World Trade carnage that lost most of its power two nights ago when an entire grid was cut off to aid the firefighting effort. This tiny neighborhood of cast-iron buildings, the place where the "loft" movement began 30 years ago, has 400 art galleries, but today they're just empty locked rooms. It has German furniture companies that sell $10,000 chairs, bars where supermodels and financiers hang out, ceramics stores where fruit bowls go for $500. Madonna lives here. It's not a place where people are used to waiting for the lights to come back on. Today, Thursday, the main party night of the week, it stands as still and silent as an alien-takeover sequence in a fifties science fiction movie.

I walk past dozens of famous international brand names-- here's a store for Movado, there's Chanel, across the street is Helena Rubinstein--all locked and dark. I find a restaurant open, the ultra-trendy Boom, but the only people dining are four robed Franciscan Friars. They're technically residents of Soho--their monastery is here--but they describe themselves as being from "the Province of the Immaculate Conception." Their little theological conclave, in a restaurant normally filled with shopaholic mistresses and power brokers, makes as much sense as anything else in this oddest of all times.

Emporio Armani, Shabby Chic, Gant, Yves St. Laurent--all dark. Then another sign of life: Fanelli's, the old-style New York pub that's been there 130 years, has a few diners at the bar. And inside everyone is smoking. One thing the disaster has done is suspend the smoking laws. It's still illegal to smoke in a restaurant, but New Yorkers understand that sometimes you just have to smoke. J. Crew, closed. North Beach Leather, closed. Phat Farm, dark. Club Monaco, nothing. I pass by the Vesuvio Bakery, a famous old Italian place that has ten or twelve loaves in the window and a sign taped to the door:

"WE NEED: Masks w/ respirators, Hard hats, Kleenex, Goggles, O2 Tanks, Benzoine Spray, Baby Powder, Neosporin, Anti-bacterial soap, Atrovet Nebulizer, Tooth Brushes, Otoscope, Antibiotics, Albutinol/MDI Inhalers, Ice: BRING TO CHELSEA PIER 59"

Other people stop to peer over my shoulder, trying to read the sign. An old man says, "What is that?"

"Things they need for the relief effort," I say.

"What the hell's it doing on my building?"

New York, alas, is still New York.

I walk past the Cub Room, where the Beautiful People normally drink and dine, but there are only three people inside, and they're not having the bright red "Summer Cocktail" advertised on the menu; instead they're all staring at the TV. Betsey Johnson on Wooster--closed. Anthropologie on West Broadway--closed. The Helmut Lang Shop on Greene--nothing going on. I do see some slight activity at the Mercer Hotel, where movie stars normally stay, and there's a handsome man in an expensive designer suit out front, bemoaning his lack of airline choices.

And then the siege is lifted. I find all the remaining denizens of Soho in one place: Dean & Deluca. This gourmet grocery store, known for its caviar, exotic breads, pastries and rare cooking ingredients, has decided to throw open its doors on the afternoon of the third day, and the locals are loading up their baskets with $8 pre-packaged pasta salads and Spanish tangerines.

As I move north, satisfied that Fort Soho will survive the night, I pass more ghost retailers--Rampage, Issey Miyake, a designer named Jenne Maag who only sells black dresses and skirts--and then the street names start to sink in on me. Greene, Mercer, Wooster, Sullivan, McDougal--Soho's streets have military names. All the streets are named after generals in Washington's army. Soho strikes me, on the one hand, as the citadel of western excess--just the sort of place Osama bin Laden would like to do away with--and, on the other, as a place that, once you scrape away the silliness of its trends and fads, remains an organic part of New York and America, not so far removed from the time of those life-sacrificing generals. An hour later, on the Upper East Side, I see a woman studying the menu of an upscale Italian restaurant on Third Avenue. I don't want to ask her who she is, but she appears to be about 29 inches tall. I'm glad to see her there. No one wants to be downtown tonight. It just gets curiouser and curiouser.

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