On January 1, 2011, I started writing this blog without a clue about where it would lead. I began almost grudgingly, thinking that someone ought to be preserving SoHo's important and endlessly interesting history, but not me. Five years later, I am very happy that I took the plunge, as this project has only reinforced my conviction that preservation in all of its forms is not only important, but essential to how we situate ourselves in the present and how we envision our future.

A couple of years back, I did a roundup of responses to my SoHo Memory Survey that ended up being one of my most popular posts (see And the survey says, ....). Today, I am revisiting the survey, as many people have submitted profiles since 2013. Reading through the responses, I felt myself transported to another time, when things were most certainly quieter, dirtier, colder, friendlier, and more surprising.