NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- New York City’s outdoor dining structures, already criticized as trash magnets in a recent lawsuit, are the subject of controversy again after viral video captured people having sex in them.
The owner of the Silver Apricot restaurant on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village reached out to the NYPD about video of the X-rated scenes, including a woman performing oral sex on a man last Wednesday, the New York Post reported.
Owner Emmeline Zhao said she hasn’t gotten anywhere with police, who told her their hands are tied if the people inside aren’t a current “danger.” She's also frustrated by a “lack of guidance” from the city.
She put up a wire fence around the shed but said a permanent gate would be too costly.
The shed has been a “lifeline” for the restaurant, Zhao said, but it also proved problematic, as “probably high” people are “taking up the space, leaving human s*** everywhere.”
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More than 12,500 restaurants across the boroughs now take part in the city’s Open Restaurants program, which was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and led to thousands of outdoor sheds.
Some abandoned structures have become spots for homeless people to sleep or use the bathroom.
A woman who was resting in a shed on Cornelia Street Monday morning told 1010 WINS that open-air drug use is also going on in the structures.
“Other people take pills. People take methadone. People smoke crack,” she said. “I just go to sleep.”
Dozens of New Yorkers recently sued the city to try to shutter the sheds, saying they’re gritty eyesores that destroy the quality of life for residents with trash, rats and noise.
Mayor Eric Adams has voiced support for keeping the dining sheds around, but Zhao said, “We can’t have them in perpetuity like the mayor wants.”
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