I haven't lived in NYC since 2001. I bought my first folder from Gotham Bikes on West B'way. Are they even still there? It got stolen from my GF's apt. complex (now wife) bike storage area. She felt so bad about it that a year later she bought a replacement to surprise me with. From NYCE wheels. When we were shopping for a tandem I got talking with Bicycle Man upstate, and he said things are crazy down in the city. He was talking to the people at Gotham Bikes and they asked him how much he pays for space. He said $5,000. They said, 'that's what we pay'. He said, that's what you pay a month, I bought my building for $5,000!
I haven't been back to the city but I know that everything I knew has been priced out and I'm shaking my head at recent posts that refuse to acknowledge the FACT that greedy property owners in NYC know how to MAKE money on real estate that is not earning rental income. Not just NYC, everywhere in America. I believe there are something like 118M registered households in America and there are an EQUAL number of vacant homes! Houses should be cheap with that kind of vacancy rate. Are they? Commercial real estate, family dwellings, people in the know (or their tax attorney's) don't have to accept what the market will bear. They have no incentive to sell a property or rent it to make money. They can monetize their loss somehow and that makes more and more of them just hold onto vacant property all over the country even while new construction goes up right across the street.