SoHo Originals are protesting a planned Business Improvement District (BID) because, well, they don't want to improve business.

The proposed improvements would be things like better sanitation and making the neighborhood prettier, but also marketing the neighborhood better, and locals are not keen on anything that might bring more tourists.

It certainly isn't why the locals moved here, many of them in the 1980s, when the area was desolate and the loft-living were for the brave. But these days it's a magnificent shopping mall, a place where people ring overflowing garbage cans with trash in a sort of tribute to the garbage pail, said a local politician quoted in the NY Times.

No one says SoHo doesn't have problems with things like sanitation, but residents are worried that a BID would make them all the worse--opening the door to even greater tourist-oriented development at the expense of the residential aspects of the neighborhood..