Hong Kong Doorways: For Rent
Hong Kong is an entrepreneurial place. Even when a shop goes out of business, it isn’t out of the game: as soon as the shutter comes down, the broker signs go up. In most cities, a landlord might try to rent the space out himself, or hire to a single broker to do the job. Here, brokers compete for the space. Shuttered shops become symbolic battlefields on which brokers fight for a commission equivalent to a month’s rent — no small sum of money in a city where ground-floor shops go for thousands of dollars per square foot.
With retail on just about every street, many neighbourhoods have their fair share of vacant shops, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. On the next street over from my apartment, where this photo was taken, a restaurant found the sidewalk in front of an empty store the perfect place to set up a couple of tables and some stools.
Tags: Doorways, Hong Kong, Kowloon, Mongkok, Signs, Street Furniture
C. Szabla says:
So…do people just call a random broker? They don’t seem to be advertising anything about themselves other than the size of their phone numbers.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:07 pm