IT IS A WAR OF WORDS, and if Democratic Party member Kam Nai-wai wins, the swinging neighbourhood that has won a distinct identity as SoHo just might be renamed the 'Mid-Levels Themed Dining Area'.
To him and others, the word SoHo apparently evokes images of noise, seedy brothels and streetwalkers clamouring for attention, not a cluster of bustling streets brimming with boutiques and restaurants.
The argument is simple: according to Kam, long-term residents just don't associate the name SoHo (for South of Hollywood Road) with Manhattan's fashionable and arty SoHo or the cosmopolitan tourist trail that is London's Soho. To them, it harks back to the red-light district and sex industry of London's yesteryear. Until the Mid-Levels escalator opened in 1993, SoHo - a loose square criss-crossed by Shelley, Staunton and Elgin Streets, and with its boundaries marked north-south by Hollywood and Caine roads, east-west by Old Bailey and Peel streets - was a quiet, residential area with a number of small businesses, largely printing companies and porcelain shops. It has now grown into a home for 200 or so commercial ventures, from antique, art and design shops, to about 50 restaurants and bars of every shape and creed.
Robert Tai, who runs 2 Sardines restaurant on Elgin Street, is chairman of the SoHo Association Ltd, which he founded about two years ago with a group that included Jean-Paul Gauci, who has four restaurants, and Lori Granito, owner of The Bayou on Shelley Street.
Gauci was one of the first SoHo restaurateurs, opening Casa Lisboa in 1994. He believes that some of the area's negative attention is down to local politics. 'The politicians needed to show residents that they can complain and that they'll do something to stop the restaurants,' he says, adding that the area started to attract attention when it began to grow rapidly around 1997.
Tai voices agreement: 'Some of the politicians are trying to get more votes, so they say SoHo is going to turn into a red-light district. Just because it has the name SoHo does not mean brothels will be opening up left, right and centre.'