Let There be Neon

Robert Weinreb, a SoHo old-timer, has spent the past 50+ years photographing his environs and the world, most significantly the Himalayas, documenting changes in the region over a 30-year period. The following is a sampling of Weinreb’s SoHo photos, taken in the early 1970s. They capture the moment in time when SoHo’s buildings housed a mix of artist studios and factories and the streets were both gritty and glorious. Read more>>

We would not have such a rich visual record of SoHo in the 1970’s (or of American culture for that matter) were it not for this outrageously talented, not to mention ubiquitous, photographer.

The other day, I was going through issues of The SoHo Weekly News for a research request and I came across the very first issue, Volume One Number One from October 11, 1973. I thought it merited a closer look, that it could tell us something about what our neighborhood looked like 44 years ago and also give us a glimpse of what the startup newspaper and its editor, Micheal Goldstein, had in mind at the very beginning.