Just What We Needed

The news that a super-double strength baby stroller may have saved a child from last week’s building collapse on the Upper West Side is being spun as reason to spend $600 on a stroller:

It is impossible to say with certainty that the Mountain Buggy Urban Double Stroller – which costs roughly half the monthly rent of a small Brooklyn apartment – actually saved Abigail Lurensky, 7 months old, as a Manhattan building collapsed around her on Thursday.

But it didn’t hurt.

As word spread yesterday of the stroller’s role in protecting Abigail, the building collapse added even more cachet to the carriage, the $600-plus Hummer of the Sidewalk S.U.V. set. With their maneuverability and inflatable tires providing a smooth ride over potholes, cobblestones and sandy sidewalks, the Urban Double strollers are popular with the affluent, especially those with beach houses.

Albee Baby Carriage, the city’s largest dealer of Mountain Buggy strollers, which is six blocks from the site of the collapse on Broadway at 100th Street on the Upper West Side, expects a 500-stroller shipment in August to sell out within weeks. Even before its presumed heroic role, the stroller was quite popular, said Frank DeMato, the store’s manager in charge of Internet sales.

Still, Molly Smith Simon, a lawyer from Brooklyn who had just bought a $110 stroller from Albee, is skeptical. She doubts she needs such an industrial-strength stroller for either Eamon, 9 months, or Una, 4.

“I looked at the stroller that saved the baby’s life,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s that likely that I’m going to get stuck under a collapsing building.”