It was business as usual on Manhattan’s whacked-out West Side on Monday, with a broad-daylight brawl in the street and junkies dozing off on top of concrete barriers — just steps from tourists.
One day after The Post revealed the “humanitarian crisis” plaguing the gateway neighborhood, a man writhed in agony outside Dave & Buster’s, a topless bum wearing a Burger King crown urinated outside the Yankees Clubhouse store and two vagrants duked it out in the bike lane on Eighth Avenue.
Another homeless man in Spiderman underwear snoozed on a concrete barrier — which have been turned into makeshift beds — while tourists gawked at another man who puffed on a crack pipe outside AMC Cinema.
“There’s too many vagrants around, a lot of mentally ill and a lot of drug users,” Hell’s Kitchen resident Jay Hunt, a native New Yorker, told The Post on Monday.
“[Former Mayor Bill] de Blasio started this when he turned a blind eye to fare evasion. Now police won’t even stop a mentally unstable drugged-out guy on the street,” said Hunt, 64. “The whole area around Times Square is a disgrace.”
The sorry state of affairs comes as the city’s homeless and mentally ill have found a safe haven among the glitz of Times Square and the surrounding neighborhoods.
One worker at the Midtown Holiday Inn said the hotel tried turning on the sprinklers outside to shoo away the vagrants, only to have them use the opportunity to take a shower.
While overall crime has dipped across the Big Apple, the NYPD Midtown North sector — which includes the north end of Times Square, the Theater District and Hell’s Kitchen — saw felonies rise by 71% over the week ending on July 28 compared to the same week in 2023, stats show.
So far this year felonies there are up 10% over the same span last year.
“The homelessness and mental illness plaguing the city should be [Mayor Eric] Adams’ top priority,” said Brooklyn resident Llyah Blount, who was in Times Square to catch a movie on Monday.
“Around here you get to see the best and the worst of New York — you get all the bright lights of the theaters but all the homelessness and mental illness too,” Blount said. “It’s not safe around here for anybody. You need eyes in the back of your head, for real.”
In a recent letter to Mayor Eric Adams, District 3 Councilman Eric Bottcher pleaded with City Hall for help.
“We have people who have been arrested 50 or 100 times without any meaningful intervention,” Bottcher told The Post. At what point does anyone do anything to interrupt the cycle?”
He called the current situation “a humanitarian crisis.”
