SoHo – From Boho to Bobo: The Business Establishments of West Broadway

In the last 50 years SoHo has evolved from a decaying industrial zone to an upscale residential and commercial area. Over this period SoHo passed through stages from illegally occupied residential area to officially-endorsed artist enclave to expensive residential neighborhood – from Boho to Bobo. Boho refers to its bohemian incarnation in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s when artists were the dominant residential group. Bobo, an abbreviation of bourgeois-bohemian, encompasses the 1980s-1990s when the population no longer consisted mainly of working artists, but wealthier professionals with bohemian attitudes married to bourgeois lifestyle and ambitions. 2011 thesis paper by M. Lynch.