Canal Street, New York

Roll the tape back to the 1980s, when Canal Street was every tinkerer’s paradise. Popular Electronics dropped its latest DIY project each month, and hobbyists would march straight here, list in hand, knowing they could find every resistor, capacitor, and mystery widget tucked into the cluttered counters of its electronics shops. Fast-forward a few decades, and the silicon dreamscape has given way to racks of industrial plastics and an impressive economy of knockoff handbags, fragrances, jewelry, watches, and designer fashions—almost all made in China and arriving by the container load.

Even with the tech era long gone, Canal Street still knows how to put on a show. Vendors line the sidewalks with coconut drinks, durian, vegetables, homemade noodles, and all kinds of Chinese snacks that perfume the air from one end to the Manhattan Bridge. Nearly every doorway is hiding something—sometimes a shop filled with handcrafted Asian ceramics, sometimes a tiny cash-only souvenir store where prices are a fraction of what you’d pay in Times Square. And since no merchant enjoys seeing a customer leave empty-handed, haggling isn’t just welcomed—it’s practically a local sport.

A few steps away, at 200 Canal Street, the NEW KAM MAN Supermarket (working from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.) spreads out across three floors of temptation. Groceries, pottery, cast-iron teapots, chopsticks, Japanese lunch boxes, cosmetics, teas, herbs—you name it. And up on the renovated upper level, Hello Kitty has staged a full takeover: stationery, trinkets, sake sets, skincare, blankets… essentially every cute object known to humankind.

Food lovers won’t go hungry, either. Canal Street and its side streets hold a dense constellation of eateries—mostly Cantonese, with plenty of regional outliers—some of them incredibly good, almost all of them reasonably priced.

And one more note: those whispered offers for “special” watches and handbags are totally normal here. If you’re hunting for a knockoff of a $1,200 bag—sometimes impressively close to the real thing, sometimes not so much—you’ll find options from $20 to $150. Deals happen in doorways, alleys, and side corners. It’s not dangerous; it’s just Canal Street doing what Canal Street does best: running an underground market in broad daylight...