Transfers: Riding Spinners

Cyclists have lately come under fire on our fair isle. Truly, there have been complaints about them for some time now. But Mark Pattinson, the bike-riding, Connecticut-based Brit who holds his country's record for the Race Across America, having twice finished second, might ) well have been motivated by factors beyond popular opinion in selling his floor-through loft at 31 West 21st Street, which he's just done for $7.8 million.      

After all, his place in Westport-a six-bedroom mini estate with a 26-foot stone fireplace-which was last priced for about $4.5 million, would seem to provide a better home base for long-distance training, positioned as it is amid a scenic, semi-rural idyll. (Particularly with the police ramping up bike speed enforcement in Central Park.)

The Connecticut listing, which was held by Alex Ionescu, Lydia Sussek and Irene O'Halloran of Corcoran, suggests that a buyer might want to bring his architect. Mr. Pattinson's old condo, however, doesn't appear to require much adjusting. It proved alluring enough, any-way, to attract founder and CEO of the Persado company Alex Vratskides. (Persado's somewhat creepy corporate aim is to uncover "the language and emotions that make people buy," which the firm seem to do effectively for brands like American Express, McAfee and Verizon.)

An industrial-luxe spread of nearly 5,000 square feet, the apartment occupies the ninth floor of a handsome, 52-foot-wide building in the Flatiron Historic District, affording 360-degree urban vistas punctuated by a dead-on take of the Empire State Building. It's sleek and spare, with II.5-foot ceilings, 29 (I) huge windows and dark shiny hardwood floors. Configured at present as a three-bedroom, the condo has space enough for a comfortable live/work environment-or, the listing suggests, additional rooms like a dining room or a library.

Manipulating people's emotions, as it turns out, is a pretty solid racket.