Illegal vendors on Canal Street are back in full force, taking over a four-block stretch with displays of knockoff designer purses and watches — as cops scramble to bust up the never-ending counterfeit chaos.
Dozens of bootleg bag peddlers have set up tables and rugs on the pavement from Centre Street to Broadway, leaving only a five-foot sliver of sidewalk for pedestrians, after seemingly endless attempts to get rid of the hucksters.
The cut-throat street cloggers were aggressively jockeying for space this week as they hawked everything from fake $80 “Rolexes” to $250 Dior bags and $20 Prada sunglasses.
“I can’t believe this is Manhattan — it doesn’t look like it,” one local groused of the area, which looked more like the seedy streets of Bangkok than the Big Apple.
Other illegal hucksters spread out their fake fashion wares on sidewalk blankets, selling knockoff Prada sunglasses and fugazi luxury bags.
When a Post reporter visited Friday, an irate vendor shouted, “Get the f–k out of here!” and smacked the phone she was using to record the scene.
A police officer who responded to the incident cited the vendor, who was selling knockoff sunglasses, with harassment — but made no arrests for the illegal vending.
Other vendors then surrounded her, yelling.
One of the vendors was also cuffed by cops on Canal Street at around 4:20 p.m. Thursday, though it wasn’t immediately clear why he was arrested instead of others.
“You didn’t see me selling nothing!” the vendor shouted as he tried to slip away from the police officer, according to footage obtained by The Post. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Michael Nagle for NY Post |
Illegal vendors have turned Canal Street near-impassable, so City Hall’s decided . . . to give the criminals more room.
That pretty well sums up this crew’s approach to public disorder.
Canal Street, long known as an unofficial outlet mall for knock-off luxury goods like fake Gucci handbags or Rolexes, has become especially clogged with foot traffic since the Biden-era migrant boom.
Mostly African, mostly illegal, immigrants — who threaten journalists and beat up competitors — now eat up every available square inch of sidewalk space with their bedsheet displays of counterfeit (or stolen) merchandise, except for the couple of feet they allow for their customers to squeeze through.
Because the political class obsesses with protecting “the undocumented,” the city decriminalized illegal vending in March, making it a civil violation and putting enforcement under the Departments of Sanitation and Consumer and Worker Protection.
So the NYPD only gets involved if vendors ignore orders to stop blocking the sidewalk or if they violate state trademark law to the tune of a hundred grand or more. --->READ MORE HERE
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