Calling Morningside Heights ‘SoHa’ is the most ridiculous kind of gentrification

The first time I had ever heard any mention of the area south of 125th street be referred to as SoHa was when a friend of mine was telling me about a new craft beer bar that featured art installations that opened next to Ham Del on 116th & Amsterdam. “The fucking name of this place is Arts and Crafts SoHa,” my friend said to me. “Like SoHo, but only SoHa stands for South Harlem” he continued. I stood there looking at him incredulously for about a good 3-5 seconds before I guffawed at the news. At the time, I had just assumed that a bunch of hipsters had opened a bar across the from school and were trying to draw in Columbia students with a catchy name. No person from Harlem would earnestly call this area SoHa. I thought it was hilarious at first, but then I started thinking about the themes at play as to why they would decide to use that name to denote their location.

The “SoHa” location for Arts and Crafts. Lulz…..but actually no, this is some fuckshit

So, I hit up the Google machine to see if I could find any more references to the name SoHa. The very first references I found was a NY Times article from 1999 that talked about a bar on 108th and Amsterdam named SoHa that was owned by an entrepreneur from the UES named Matt Olds. I found a few more articles about the moniker and started to notice a trend. These names were being used by developers to attract a….err…. lighter shade of people to the area. That’s when my amusement at the name morphed into indignation.

Harlem, the birthplace of the Black cultural scene in America. Also birthplace of the chopped cheese

Harlem, a name originally given to the area by the Dutch who lived there hundreds of years ago, had become and remains in many cases, the epicenter of black American culture. It is not a secret to anyone who has ventured down 125th street recently that efforts to gentrify Harlem have been moving along with great success and expedience for years. But at least when you heard about a Banana Republic opening next to the Apollo Theatre, there was no doubt in your mind of its geographical location. Names like SoHa and C-Ha and WeHa that are being hocked by developers are more insidious than one may imagine and are an indictment to the society we live in. A society that says that generations of vibrancy, history, and culture of an area can and will be thrown away at will to serve the economic interests of those who are trying to attract a richer (whiter) clientele to inhabit the area.

There’s even a web series called “So SoHa” about three white girls living in South Harlem and I so fucking cannot.

Max Soha W. 123rd & Amsterdam

Former Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer went on record back in 2007 to express his displeasure with the name. He said “now I love SoHo, but I like it downtown. We have got to recognize that by changing the name you are changing the culture and you are changing the city. And we can’t let it happen.”

The SoHa on W. 118th St & Fredrick Douglas Blvd. A two bedroom will run you just over $1 million. In 2014 it had a unit listed at just over $4.3 million. The median income of that neighborhood is approximately $37,000 annually

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Harlem becoming more diverse (more white). As a matter of fact it is the diversity that gives the area its distinctive character. But for fuck’s sake, have some respect for the generations of people (of color) who make and have made this neighborhood what it is today. By deliberately changing the name they are attempting to erase this. It’s truly sad that our society has shown city developers how lucrative a strategy this is. Find ways to attract people to Harlem because of the culture, the food, the music, and people. Not because you’ve tricked them into forgetting where they are.

@geneaiken03