After graduating, he embarked on what could be called his first semester in New York, living in cheap storefronts and lofts on the Lower East Side and in the neighborhood now called SoHo and supporting himself as a house painter.
But in the past five years artists and other creative types have bought into the area's dirt-cheap storefronts and turn-of-the-last-century brick row houses, and opened galleries, boutiques and interior design shops along Butler Street.
Other online services make intra- and international wire transfers from bank accounts easier and cheaper than storefront transfers or through a bank.
There is still work to be done: epoxy-based paint to be stripped from limestone walls, cheap boxy storefronts to be removed from the north end of the lobby.
In Bangkok I looked for cheap transportation in the storefront travel agencies of Khao San Road.
On Saturday mornings, I drive past Chinese takeout places and storefronts advertising cheap divorces to a white-shingled office building in a middle-class neighborhood.
One of the most recent antiques success stories, it had the necessary prerequisites: proximity to a place with lots of potential customers (Manhattan a bit more than two hours away) and a depressed downtown with vacant storefronts (meaning cheap rents).
