Why are brick and mortar HiFi dealers so bad?

I live in a small state with no dealers and as such I have always had to buy my gear outside the state. I have a fairly high end system consisting of Rockport speakers, VTL amps, ARC pre and phono pre amp, VPI/Graham TT.  Over the years I have visited high end shops in NYC, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, LA, San Francisco to audition and buy new pieces.  Generally I got the snob approach and condescending attitude. However a few years ago I was in Omaha NE and visited The Sound Environment, a really high end shop.  At the time they were the dealer for the TechDas $90,000 Air Force 1 turntable.  I asked the salesperson, Todd, if I could hear it and also told him I simply could not afford it.  He was gracious and gave me a tour of the different rooms and to listen to various systems. Then he took me to their reference system room with the Air Force table. All in the system was over $500,000.  He asked me what I wanted to hear and for the next 90 minutes we had a great time listening to music. I even met the owner who is very friendly.  He invited me to come back whenever I was back in town.  I have steered my few audiophile friends to Sound Environment and would suggest others to visit them in Omaha or Kansas City. Or simply call them. And I have purchased from them

If NY has more audio stores per capital, which I doubt,  of if not, there must be good ones. 

If you go into an audio "salon" ready to complain about "outrageous prices" and suspicious of being "ripped off", they're not going to show you a lot of love. I used to actually buy equipment I liked from a store once I had enough money to make it happen, while my brother used to go into the same store to argue over what they had and how much they could lower the price to what he wanted. I drank the Kool-Aid- it's true. But I got to audition a lot of gear over the years so I could make educated choices. Another friend I had told me I was crazy to buy "wires that looked like garden hoses", but HIS system just played music which sounded "clean enough", but also utterly lifeless. I was diplomatic about his remarks but went on doing what made ME happy. The store wants to see if you will buy something they have- otherwise you can look around all you want as long as you don't take up their time with demo's and asking a lot of off-topic questions. They can be pretty snobby- it's true.
That is until you show that you're motivated. And the service after the sale is usually pretty good. 

I agree with nquery.  I go back a long ways in the Seattle area and have seen a number of stores come and go.  I have visited most in the Puget Sound area.  I'm rooting for Olsen's Hi-Fi.  They really like music, offer some great deals and continue to bring in interesting equipment.  They just need a larger space and I hope the support continues so they can expand. 

I guess that post struck a chord.  I've never gotten so many replies from a post.  I'd heard good things about Audio Connections.  I will take a trip out there one of these days as Seattle and some other recommendations are a bit far from Long Island.