I live near this area but only since 2010 so don't have the same history many others do. That being said, I've never really understood the area of the West Vil

I live near this area but only since 2010 so don't have the same history many others do. That being said, I've never really understood the area of the West Village west of Seventh. As far as high end fashion stores go, Meatpacking for awhile a bit of a reputation for this but really it seemed to me that if you wanted this kind of fashion, that was what SoHo was all about (on Prince and Spring streets primarily). Could it be that fashion has simply moved there? Was SoHo as big for this 10, 20, 40 years ago as it is now? This I don't know. The areas of Manhattan aren't static, this much I know. Over the years the commercial heart, now in Midtown, has been drifting north (we're talking over 200+ years). Now this part of the West Village does have reasonable proximity to what was the Fashion District (above 23rd). Could it be that the end of that textile industry is responsible for the shift? Come to think of it, the restaurant culture downtown has probably been drifting east. Like I compare what's in the West village and food-wise at least the East Village is so much better. The West Village seems far more of a sleepy residential neighbourhood now in comparison. Also remember that Williamsburg just across the East River has boomed in recent years, probably as people get priced out of the East Village. So maybe that's it: people are simply priced out of the West Village? I knew an Israeli guy at work who told me about gentrification in Tel Aviv. There's apparently some popular neighbourhood that's dead now as it's super expensive and the rich who buy there don't live there so it's dead. That's just what he said. I come from Perth, Western Australia and can tell you that the lively areas of the city 20+ years ago have really changed. Northbridge is still there and still seedy. But Subiaco, once a lively cafe strip at nightspot, is now pretty dead. Gentrification seems to be a bit like algae. It thrives on the "oxygen" of what makes these areas popular to begin with but ends up starving everything else out then itself.