As with so many other beloved businesses lately, Silk Road Cycles (76 Franklin St.) will soon shut its doors for good.
“The past 2 years have been too hard financially for us to continue. Unfortunately the bike industry is struggling all across the world since the Covid bike boom. Please support the amazing local bike shops we have left!” they wrote on Instagram.
And aside from supporting bike shops, the team encouraged folks to support all local businesses: “Every time you see an Amazon truck it is killing your community’s small businesses and extracting money and jobs from your community.”
They invoked a recent comment left in the comment section of our Instagram, that our page has become “a small business obituary column.”
We don’t like writing these stories any more than you like reading them. Over the past year or so, it feels like the closures have escalated at a rapid clip. Much of this can been chalked up to the usual suspects (increased rent, increased cost of doing business, shady landlords) but certainly there’s a part we can all play in supporting our local small businesses. And take it from someone who refuses to use Amazon, it’s actually quite doable!
The shop will close in September, and until then, they’re offering 20% off all in-stock items.
You can blame “shady landlords” all you want but the reality is that inflation has run amok under the Biden administration and Democratic officials who control every single lever of NY government have done very little (if anything) to support small businesses. You’re starting to see the homogenization and destruction of our cities for this reason but yes, please continue supporting the current party in power! The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting a different outcome.
Never Trumper but never woker here.
Re inflation, a great deal of it (not all) was caused by Trump trillion dollar corporate welfare tax cut adding trillions of dollars onto the debt which is one of the main causes of inflation.