This has to be astoturfed or something. There is literally a Costco in Manhattan and several in suburban Queens and Staten Island. Nothing stops you from going to Costco and just getting a cab back for a once a month trip.
You got me, I'm totally paid off. Real New Yorkers love to go five miles (just for the closest one to me, in Manhattan seven avenues over and around 100 streets north), take a cab back from shopping, then haul costco-sized boxes up the stairs. I only pretended to not love that to get the sweet check from daddy Bezos (good thing he didn't notice my aside criticizing the e-bike trailers breaking traffic laws, though I guess that was subtle if you haven't been following the controversy about them here)
Also, I just want to step back and actually give Costco some props here for their brand loyalty. Inshallah, when I have a 400 Billion market cap company and someone writes a fawningblog post about how awesome I am from a social-benefit perspective and how socialist mayors should learn from me…it’ll be the skeptical comments that will be suspected as paid shills for my $2T competitor!
As someone who used to live in lower Manhattan... yes there is. The smaller apartment sizes, the 45min - 1hr each way travel time, the difficulty loading and unloading out of a car that's not yours. Costco is totally a suburban, car dependent location phenomenon, while Amazon/FreshDirect/bodegas are much more convenient in a city.
Costco is popular in Japan as well. I also think about the bike infra[0] to Ikea in Netherlands— a similar store that may be more associated with car/suburban culture.
This doesn't seem at all unlikely to me. I think we sometimes forget the ease (in terms of scale and cost) of standing up a massive astroturfing campaign.
That said, I don't think this particular comment has the flavor, tone, or message I'd expect, and it does seem to be a genuine HN poster.
You are absurdly naive if you think they’re incapable or unlikely to do such a thing. Half the comments and threads on this site are ads at this point.