Crosby Street

Crosby runs parallel to Broadway and absorbs none of its noise. It's SoHo's service alley grown beautiful: Belgian blocks, loading docks, fire escapes stacked six stories up, delivery trucks idling beside galleries and bookshops. Where Greene Street performs, Crosby just works — and the working texture is the appeal.

The street photographs like a film set precisely because nothing on it is staged. Steam from a grate, a hand truck against a cast-iron column, wet cobbles throwing back the sky. Walk it from Howard up to Bleecker and you cross SoHo's whole gradient, from Canal Street grit to Housing Works' book café at the top — a good place to land with whatever you've been carrying.