Prince St. (between Sullivan St. and Thompson St.)

Prince St. gets a little busier between Sullivan St. and Thompson St., and it's dotted with quite a few bag, jewelry, and accessory shops. Most of these are stores that exist only in SoHo.

On the southeast corner of Prince St. and Sullivan St. is the spacious Lords News International (186 Prince St.). As you can see from the printed signs, they do film processing, provide WiFi, take passport photos, send and receive faxes, sell cold soda (and beer!) and candy, and have an ATM. They also do picture framing. Mainly, though, what they sell is magazines . . . hundreds and hundreds of magazines. Their windows on Prince St. are updated regularly, but I find the tall displays overwhelming . . . it's a blitzkrieg of media, and it's hard to focus on any one magazine cover.

Another of Lords News International's windows on the Prince St. side. I only subscribe to the New Yorker on purpose, so the vast array of periodicals here befuddles me. Who reads all these magazines? Mysteriously, I also get Time Out New York (I don't do anything they suggest), Food & Wine (because I watch Top Chef?), and Genre (deeply lame and slight) in the mail, although I ordered none of those. As a sort of joke, my mother gave me a subscription to Reader's Digest for Christmas, so I am able to follow the current frightened obsessions of the elderly and chuckle at Humor in Uniform.

At 178 Prince St. is the Ward-Nasse Gallery, displaying this arresting Jesus painting. I feel a deep fondness for the remaining galleries in SoHo, since most of them have fled the mall for the newer gallery district in Chelsea.

Hans Koch (174 Prince St.) sells handcrafted, one-of-a-kind bags, purses, jewelry, and other accessories, with an emphasis on strikingly colorful and inventive leatherwork. Everything in the store is created by Bauhaus-trained Hans Koch himself and his assistants.

Another angle on the Hans Koch window, showing more of the unique bags and clutches and the jewelry hanging on the side wall.

At 181 Prince St. is Meeka Meeko (clicking that link takes you to an obsessive slideshow video of the store's wares). This is a difficult store to categorize . . . on one hand, it's a jewelry and accessories shop, overflowing with rare, idiosyncratic, and vintage items. But the store also has gifty craft items and odd object that remind me of items you usually see in shops with names such as The Whittling Fig on tourist beach town main streets that have turned quaint in order to survive.

The western window of Meeka Meeko. I kind of like the girly pink sale scrawl on the window.

Closeup of Meeka Meeko's western window. It does give the impression that you may discover a treasure amongst the clutter.

Another closeup of Meeka Meeko's eclectic and eccentric western window.

At 172 Prince St. is by boe, another bag and jewelry store. I give the display some points for the intriguing long-necked busts showing off the accessories in front of that green panel, but those points are quickly taken away because of the crappy printed "sample sale" signs.