The bike shop fellow Bromptonaut Hugo mentioned to me is in Washington Heights, on Bennett Street, between Broadway and Fort Washington. I knew of a larger shop on Broadway (see below), but had no idea that Manny Bicycle Shop existed. It’s tucked on a small side street.
There’s no website, but this profile in New York Magazine seems just about right to me. Here’s a squib from their article:
. . . he [the owner, Eduardo Fernandez] runs the one-man operation like his own garage, tinkering with the latest drop-off in the back while brushing off neighborhood kids, fleets of whom occasionally skid up to haggle over a brake-tightening or ogle the skull-and-crossbones valve caps. As to the diversified phalanx of bikes that hang overhead, there’s everything from Mongoose BMXs for youngsters to racing and mountain bikes for commuters.
This is a nitty-gritty bike shop, meaning that it’s not a retail store (though it does sell bicycles, too). It’s a place where tinkering is done, and serious mechanical stuff. I would have guessed that my chances of finding Ergon grips there were slim, but Hugo had gotten his there, and he said that they had one more pair.
I liked the idea of buying the grips at an LBS, even if it wasn’t at my LBS, so I stopped in. Sure enough, among a lot more basic gear there was one more package of Ergon GP1-S grips. I bought them, stuffed them into Basil’s S bag for the trip home, and installed them on my Brompton at the first opportunity. Bike shops can be amazing places — and you never know what you’ll find at an independent one unless you stop in.