Stories behind Hong Kong districts: SoHo before the escalator

Neighbourhoods don’t take long to become established. Just about everyone in Hong Kong knows SoHo as a popular destination for eating and drinking, but its history as an entertainment district reaches back only 20 years, when a few pioneering restaurateurs staked a claim on the streets near the newly built Central–Mid-Levels Escalator – initially in and around Staunton Street.

The name SoHo is often attributed to restaurant owner Thomas Goetz, who coined it in 1996 as a branding device for the area south of Hollywood Road. It certainly wasn’t original – cities around the world were caught up in an acronym craze in the 1990s, inspired by trendy New York neighbourhoods like SoHo (South of Houston), Tribeca (Triangle Below Canal Street) and Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).

But it was effective. “SoHo makes a name as action escalates,” read a cheeky headline in a 1997 edition of the South China Morning Post. The article, by Kate Whitehead, described a hypothetical bar crawl that began in Lan Kwai Fong, passed through Wyndham Street, travelled up the escalator and ended with a nightcap on Staunton Street. “Sounds inconceivable?” asked Whitehead. “We’re almost there: this is the future.”

Whitehead was most certainly right. But what was south of Hollywood Road before SoHo – before the escalator opened and changed everything?

For most of its history, the area was rather anonymous, a point of transition between the bustling market district around Graham Street and the genteel mansions and apartment houses of Mid-Levels.