Chelsea Dog Show

When I walk out of the front door of Rabbit Hutch Towers, there are usually one or two dogs outside the building. They're usually also, by the way, pretty cute. By the time I reach the end of the block, I'll have passed another half a dozen. And in the space of a ten minute walk, I'll probably pass thirty dogs. Here in Chelsea they are typically nice looking dogs, often sporting a natty little dog jacket, or at least a stylish collar and lead.

I'd say on average, for every two people, I see one dog. I wanted to take photos of them all. I had in mind an experiment where I took a photo of every dog I saw within one block of our place. But TLOML's camera is on the blink so that will have to wait.

Instead here is some more evidence of canine population density:

This is a map of my immediate neighbourhood, roughly a 10-15 minute radius around Rabbit Hutch Towers. Every red dot on this map is a pet shop. Allow me to count them for you.

 Twenty two. That's right, there are 22 pet shops within a ten minute walk from my front door.

This is a shop down the road in the West Village, which is run by a lady who paints pet portraits. And that is her business. Incredible. I get that someone could make a nice supplementary income painting pet portraits, sure. But enough to run an actual shop off the back of it? They wouldn't buy it on Dragon's Den (aka Shark Tank in the US), that's for sure.

And yet right here in New York, where apartments are famously miniscule and shop rents presumably pretty damn high, there are enough pet dogs to make Mimi's shop a perfectly viable business.

So my question of the day is, given that people are living in rabbit hutches, where on earth do all these dogs live?

I know of a luxury building (in MiMA funnily enough) where they have a dog gym complete with treadmill. Perhaps New York's dirty dog secret is a large battery-hen-style facility where all these dogs live, being picked up to parade through Chelsea once a day. If not, perhaps that will be my Dragon's Den idea... there's definitely a market for it.