When art and sex met on New York's waterfront
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/manhattan-piers-new-york-waterfront-art/index.html
In Japan, salacious meets personal computer retails. Geeks loving remodeling their own computers were also loving salacious manga. That's why Akihabara, formerly famous as the town selling computer components, became the town famous for contents like manga.
Like Akihabara, New York should have developed the area as the holy site for artists.