V

W hat I experienced in SoHo was a cultural hothouseunlike anything anywhere else or any community before in American life. I’d already known about “artist colonies,” to be sure, but this was an urban oasis created by hundreds of artists, if not more, acting independently. Most knew only a few others already in SoHo before settling there themselves. Eventually most of us got to know everyone in our buildings as well as many neighbors, as SoHo came to feel more like a residential university campus than a typical urban neighborhood. Most of us worked most of the time at our art(s) and never needed to explain to our neighbors that nothing should get in the way of our art-working.