Tom - I live in Brooklyn and have flipped a number of bikes here, several to hipsters. For the most part, my biggest successes have been single-speed conversions: redished, flipped and chopped bars, etc. That's been the biggest profit margin, but it also required the most labor on my part, so where time=money, the profit has been less. The bright side is that I keep a lot of nice derailleurs and shift levers and rear brakes (and dork discs) in the process.

I know from obsessive CL combing that the guys like 'by the ferry' are often listening the same scrap heap for a few months even. So who knows how much that dude actually sells [not to mention the amount of flak he catches from angry CL posts about his prices and selection].

Don't count out Ebay either. Some smaller stuff will go unnoticed on a CL flip, but might bring in some change on the 'Bay.