By the occasion of such an amazing weather and the sun emerging from the shadow of forget today afternoon I decided to spend time recalling my old hobby: getting lost. Most probably right now there will be a choir of raised voices: why Soho? Who would ever like to get lost there, in a random crowd of tourists! This always amazes me what a little role Soho plays in an everyday Londoners' lives. We practically pass it unnoticed and if we ever refer to it then it's as a fake or at least unnatural place, something created for tourism and a bad taken idea of a global leisure. And we are, my dear friends, so wrong. There is not many such living places like Soho.
I remember Soho in my grandfather's stories, full of night clubs and obscure underground life. But my private history with this place started three years ago. It was a time when me and my friend, let's call him Andre, were mostly roaming around through busy streets of London. We liked especially Soho- because you see, there unlike everywhere else, a way once passed changes forever. It transforms behing your back, before you turn to take a final look only to realize that you'd already lost. You will never find the same road again. You will never go back.
What's the difference between My Soho and Your Soho, is that in mine I rarely see any tourists. I see second hand bookshops where the time has stopped years ago. Restaurants seeming to await a movie scene happening just right here and just for us. Buildings older than even some of the sees, abandonded by everybody's eyes and remaining there to be discovered once again. I love watching people passing by. In Soho, they pass by in a different manner than everywhere else, come on, nobody passes Soho just like that. More or less hidden, there needs to be a reason to be there, at that time. And do there was mine.
THE CORNER SHOP
I knew it was going to be there, on it's usual corner waiting for me. The first place I loved in London: Vintage Magazine Shop. It took me an hour to find it, aterall it's been almost three years, but I recognized it from afar. The two-floored delightful journey to the forgotten. I immadiately left the sunny afternoon behind and jump into the rabbit whole of the entrance. I was in heaven.
Nothing has changed there and even the old patterns of postcards waved on me like good old friends. The shopkeeper looked just like on the last time when I saw her, like she never left even to change her clothes. She was standing there, tall and slim with a gentle ivory skin and a string o pearls on her neck. Her huge ginger hair was like a kirky cloud on a blue sky and just like always she was easily mistaken with a manequin. I felt a smell of an old room full of treasure.
But this time a delightful journey was not my aim. As I said I had my reason and I jumped immediately to search for it. La Chat Noir. A large poster I falled in love with three years ago but I never bought it, only to spend days and nights imagining in on my wall, previous wall, this wall, imaginary wall. It was supposed to be a sign that after that, I'm home. But despite the warm welcoming Soho had been giving me, the poster was no longer waiting.
I was coming back through the same Soho but the streets were already different and the way to Piccadilly has lost it's charm. I was amazed by such a fool I was believing for all these years that exactly the same poster would be still there after three years. I was holding a poster I bought instead, portraying a scene from an old movie, the same one as Paolo O. Martin used to have in his bathroom, thinking that it's not suitable to my wall at all, not suitable to any wall, maybe only Paolo O. Martin's bathroom if he only still had one.
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