The moving sign arrived in the window Saturday at the longtime cycle shop at 332 E. 14th St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue...
Per the sign, Danny's — with a dozen locations in NYC and Connecticut — is moving to Sixth Avenue and 15th Street. However, regulars count this as a closure as opposed to a move — the Chelsea location has been there for a number of years.
According to several customers of Danny's (formerly Metro Bikes), the closure/move comes as the result of a rent increase via the landlord. (ID'd as the Brusco Group, an afflilate of Westside Management Corp.)
There are also approved permits on file with the Department of Buildings to "add horizontal extension at floors 1-5" that will increase the overall square footage of No. 332.
Photos via Edmund John Dunn
10 comments:
Definitely a closure. Before Danny's took over the Metro Bikes branches, they'd had a shop on 23rd Street between Second/Third Aves. The same "moving!" sign appeared when they shut down the 23rd Street shop... no new bicycle shops had opened, they were just redirecting customers to existing shops nearby.
It doesn't really help them to spin it like this. East Village customers have much closer options than Sixth Avenue.
Not good news.
About a week and half ago, I went to see them with my road seat post, it’s a Bianchi that has a limited suspension. They fixed it for free. A lot of times minor repair stuff like that was a freebie there. I used them and before they closed, Continuum. Now, I will go to CC Cyclery, one of the former owners of Continuum Cycle, Jeff Underwood, has that shop.
http://evgrieve.com/2014/08/cc-cyclery-and-company-now-open-on-east.html
So the story isn't really that a bike shop is closing, the story is that another landlord raised the rent so fucking high that it's impossible to sustain a business. Life in NYC is rapidly becoming unlivable when everything that WAS affordable is forced to close. When your bike is broken, what are you supposed to do, take it on the subway to Flushing to get it fixed ?? C'mon, this is getting ridiculous.
They fixed something for me for free, too. So nice! They just said, give the guy a tip if you feel like it, which I did. Man, all these businesses leaving is so hard to take.
This is the way I think it happened -- When it was metro bicycles the owner owned the whole building. He died not too long after he sold the business to Danny's. Whoever bought the building (probably not Danny's) now has no interest in keeping a bicycle store there.
They should have applied for a liquor license. And changed their name to Drink and ride.
"Moving" is an optimistic spin. The 6th Ave. and 15th location has been open for decades. It was a Metro Bikes until the merger.
The owner of Metro also owned the buildings where the bicycle stores were located, including 6th & 15th. Whether he also sold the real estate I don't know. So if Danny's didn't buy the buildings, the Chelsea location isn't going to last too long either, that's prime real estate.
So when our own EV longtime local Bikes by George gets forced out onto the street there's all this nasty vitriol about him, but when a big corporate bike chain that has been snapping up local stores and real estate left and right consolidates and closes down a couple of stores with all these fake "moving" signs, people feel all bad for themselves. Now I get it.
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