An angry New Yorker is so disgusted with TikTok's famous vintage photo booth set up next to his Lower East Side home that he's literally throwing piss and storming it, a new lawsuit claims. There is.
Zoe Laserson and Brandon Minton, owners of Old Friend Photo Booth, signed a lease for the booth next to her building on the Lower East Side, and since then neighbor Maggie Trakas has worked with them He said that he had formally “declared war'' against Japan.
In a one-sided guerrilla war since the store opened in December, Ms. Trakas, an artist and jewelry maker, has thrown a bucket of urine from a second-floor Allen Street window at a booth owner and then attacked a line of customers. He is said to have seen them lined up. ” She called them and accused them of using artist tools to draw feces along the fence and planters in the booth.
She also glued the locks and made verbal and physical threats, according to the complaint.
“This is war!” Trakas said just one day after the booth moved to its new location. Due to the rapid increase in popularity — Dec. 9 at 145 Allen St., the complaint alleges.
The complaint calls her actions “erratic and unhealthy,” and says, “Trakas will stop at nothing to derail the operation of Old Friend Photo Booth.”
But Trakas told the Post that this all comes down to the fact that the TikTok sensation, where hundreds of raucous 20-somethings line up around the block, will be banned this Sunday when the app is outlawed. He said it was just a ploy to grab the cash before it was lost.
“Things were out of control on weekends and during vacations,” said the lifelong New Yorker.
“We talk to up to hundreds of people on the phone, all in the same age range. None of us are local, and none of us are at NYU.”
To Trakas, the suits are just “rich kids from Utah from 2023” trying to “exploit” her.
“This was a stunt he pulled off to extort money,” she said, adding that she was “absolutely not angry” at Minton or the patrons of the Old Friend Photo Booth.
“My sense is that this is a TikTok sensation and TikTok may be gone by Sunday. He's nervous and chasing me and fabricating unbelievable lies,” Trakas said on Friday. spoke.
Trakas' behavior began, as many unpleasant relationships do, with him passive-aggressively locking his bike to block entrance to tourist attractions.
But until last month, the most damning allegation against Trakas was that he superglued keys to a maintenance van in the Minton parking lot on the same block. Asked about it on Friday, she grinned about the act.
“Okay, there was context to that,” she said, before giggling and explaining that it was a reaction to Minton destroying her bike.
“I did it.”
The lawsuit alleges that the real “strange” behavior began this month, when she called booth visitors “narcissistic bastards” on Jan. 2.
“I said it was narcissism on steroids,” Trakas told the Post.
The next day, Minton discovered “frozen urine” on a chair next to the photo booth, according to the complaint.
Video footage shows Trakas dumping what the lawsuit calls “urine out of a second-story window.”
On January 5, she “leaned out of a second-story window and poured a bucket of urine directly onto Minton's head, causing the urine to splash onto customers in line,” the lawsuit alleges. It was confirmed by responding police officers and paramedics, he added. The origin was the worst.
“While police and paramedics were writing an incident report, Mr. Trakas was laughing and mocking the complainant and the customers,” the complaint alleges, adding that earlier in the day, while intoxicated, Mr. He also claims that he knocked out his cell phone.
“It's Sunday,” she said, the complaint says. “Go home and fuck your bitch.”
“Later that day, I poured vinegar on him,” Trakas told the Post.
“It wasn't urine.”
“I was cleaning vinegar because he was calling me and threatening me,” she said, adding that he called her a “slut, Karen, a miserable bitch.” .
She also denied assaulting Minton and said he shoved a mobile phone in her face.
But the most outrageous claims in the lawsuit are said to have been made on January 11th.
Minton said that when he arrived at his booth that morning, he was overwhelmed by a “strong odor of decomposition” and “observed what appeared to be feces smeared and disposed of around him.” [a] planter box,” the complaint states.
The young photo entrepreneur said video footage from that night features Trakas channeling his inner artist and painting “paint cans filled with brown liquid feces” on the plywood he had recently installed to block the view of his booth. , claims that footage shows him throwing away the remains. They were able to transfer the cans to the planters Mr. Minton had set up. Minton said he and his team had to wear KN-95 masks and spend more than three hours cleaning the booth.
But it wasn't feces, she insists.
“I was applying primer,” Tarkas said.
“They're here all day, so I had to come out at night. That's me on camera…this is a primer.”
Trakas declined to show the Post the tools allegedly used in the stool and urine campaign.
In addition to being credited with being the sole combatant of this terrible war, Trakas is a descendant of world-renowned contemporary artist Susan Rosenberg and acclaimed sculptor George Trakas. , A landmark house from the 1830s Since 1998.
Pursuant to a 2000 building permit, Tarkas and his mother, who is the majority shareholder in the LLC that owns the house, converted it into a single-family home.
Minton and Laserson first moved to the Big Apple from Utah in 2023, according to the New York Times. The shining profile of the booth, which is booming in autumn.
They and their attorneys declined to comment.
In addition to seeking more than $500,000 in damages, the judge has already ordered the social media influencer to temporary restraining order Prevent her from sabotaging or destroying the booth.
On Friday night, more than a dozen people braved the cold to wait in line for $8 selfies.
A hipster man believed to be an employee said he was not authorized to speak to the press.
“I'm not making excuses for my actions, but I've also been stalked and harassed,” Trakas told the Post.
“I am a person who is being harassed. I am a person whose quality of life has been completely ruined,” she claimed.
