Residents angry strippers, customers are using local parking lot
Strippers and the customers who pay to see them dance at a recently opened club in Hunts Point are parking under the golden arches of a nearby McDonald’s and residents are not lovin’ it.
At a Community Board 2 meeting at St. Athanasius School on Southern Boulevard on Oct. 24, former board chair Orlando Marin told residents he saw a woman changing into her dancing clothes in her car in the parking lot of the Mickey D’s that sits across from Platinum Pleasures at the corner of Longwood and Garrison avenues a week earlier. Marin said he was driving his mother home from a shopping trip when they stopped off for a meal at the fast-food branch and saw the woman changing garments in a car with Connecticut plates.
Marin said the woman stopped undressing when he warned her he would take a photo of her changing into her dancing clothes and post it on youtube.
“I’m going to make it my mission that McDonald’s gets those cars out of there or there will be no McDonald’s in this community,” Marin said, explaining that “the parking lot was lined with stripper cars.”
Board member Robert Crespo echoed Marin’s angry comments, complaining that the recently opened club has dealt the community a setback in its efforts to clean up Hunts Point.
“Just as we were fighting to get the prostitutes out of this community, they are coming back,” he said.
Board members said they have made calls to McDonald’s corporate office and to the night manager at the local restaurant, but received non-committal responses.
“We don’t control the parking lot,” said Shakaya Clarke, a manager at the local McDonald’s who sometimes oversees the night shift. Clarke said her employees’ safety is her first concern. Customers have up to 30 minutes to park in the lot, she added, and said there is no enforcement of that time limit, or oversight of who parks there.
Management at Platinum Pleasures were not available for comment.
Community Board 2 and NYPD have fought in recent years to keep new strip clubs from opening in the neighborhood and to pressure the state Liquor Authority to deny liquor license applications for existing clubs. Recently, the board won a victory when elected officials announced they would push legislation requiring the Authority to notify community boards before considering applications, allowing community boards to weigh in.
Platinum Pleasures opened in mid-October despite the board’s pleas the state deny the club a liquor license . The state countered that the club’s new owner bought the venue two years ago, before the new regulations were put in place, and was not subject to the new constraints.
“This is the reason Community Board 2 wanted them out,” board chair Dr. Ian Amritt said, adding he would push for “the closure or removal of that institution from this community and any institution that supports them.”
The club is located adjacent to the Bruckner Expressway, with limited nearby street parking. Later on the evening following the board meeting, several vehicles were parked on the side of the McDonald’s lot nearest the club, including a commercial DJ’s van. In contrast, there were few cars parked in the lot nearer the restaurant.
Lieutenant Neftali Betances of the 41st Precinct on Longwood Avenue just across the Bruckner Expressway from the new club said his task force of ten officers will be watching closely for violations from the club. Customers who drive to cabarets from other parts of the city are often a source of trouble, he said.
“Nine out of ten times there are weapons inside that car,” he said. “It’s like weeds, if you don’t cut it it’s going to go out of control.”
Residents and police say they told Platinum Pleasures’ management its dancers and customers should stop using the McDonald’s lot, but say they have met resistance.
“They are obviously in denial,” Lt. Betances said, adding illegally parked vehicles are subject to towing.