SoHo has become NoGo.
YoGo trucks, Halal food carts, and companies promoting hair gel to online hookups have invaded the sidewalks, straining the historic enclave to a breaking point.
Hawkers squeeze in illegally placed tables, chairs and wares along a stretch of Broadway lined with shops from Hugo Boss and Steve Madden to H&M, and Old Navy.
Peddlers and pedestrians spill onto the Prince Street bike lane the community never wanted. Smoke from grills wafts into fancy stores. Trash and cigarette butts blanket the streets as bins overflow.
And residents are angry that the city is doing nothing to stop it.
“It’s a horror. Everybody wants to make money down here, like we’re whores,” said resident and filmmaker Camille Billops, 78.
Adding to the crush, the mayor’s office gives fee-producing permits for street events and promos — 22 in SoHo so far this year.
Kate Spade sent a hot-pink bus with fashion models, a diesel generator — and music blaring. Pantene bought a glass-enclosed truck, spread furniture on the sidewalk, and offered blow-outs. Badoo, a social Web site, held a three-day photo shoot on Mercer Street.
Street traffic clogs, too. Bike and bus lanes leave single lanes for cars, which bottleneck when someone turns.
“It’s a mess,” a resident said.
Sean Sweeney, a local activist, said SoHo, a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places, rings up among the city’s highest property and sales tax revenues, but is treated like “a playground.”
“SoHoland — where tourists walk five abreast, peddlers rule the sidewalks, and residents are captives in their own homes,” he said.
Tension can be thick. Last Sunday, a YoGo seller with his truck parked alongside the Prince Street subway stop and on the crosswalk — vendors must be 10 feet from both — shoved his iPad camera in a resident’s face and ranted about “harassment.”
The sidewalk was so clogged last Thursday, a 52-year-old New Jersey man in flip-flops bumped into two women going the opposite way. They exchanged words. The women punched his face, causing a cut below an eye, knocked him to the ground, and kicked him.
Three plain-clothes cops jumped in to bust the women.
The crowds make perfect prey for pickpockets. One of the artists who live in their SoHo studios said a thief lifted his teen daughter’s wallet and keys on her way home two weeks ago: “She was caught in the maelstrom.”
On weekends, residents have counted more than 79 vendors just on the three blocks on Broadway between Houston and Broome streets alone.
But city Department of Consumer Affairs rules — which bans them within 20 feet of a building entrance — leave legal spots for only about three on each side of each block.
“The biggest problem,” said a cop, “is that you write them a ticket, and the next day they’re back.”
Residents call enforcement, especially on weekends, lax because the 1st and 5th precincts are spread thin and diverted elsewhere, such as Occupy Wall Street protests.
Vendors complain about a “crackdown.” Fines start at $50 and escalate to $1,000 for the sixth violation.
“Why do they want to prevent people from making an honest living?” asked tobacco pipe peddler Willie Davis, who beat a ticket by arguing the cop wrongly measured his distance from a door. Davis noted that alert vendors foiled a terror attack in Times Square in 2010.
But SoHo is stretched beyond limits, said Bob Gormley, district manager of Community Board 2.
“It’s overwhelming congestion,” he said. “Eventually, someone is going to be forced out onto the street, and get hit by a car or killed.”