Residents Decry Illicit Handbag Trade

By Nick Pinto
POSTED JANUARY 1, 2008

When Cathy Lindstrom of Wisconsin announced she would be visiting New York with her daughter, a friend urged her to go see the bag-sellers of Canal Street. Standing on Canal Street one afternoon last month after her cheerful mother-daughter foray into a nearby blackmarket bag depot on Broadway, Lindstrom said the shopping excursion was one of the highlights of her trip.

“It’s fun. There are a lot of bargains,” Lindstrom said, showing off her new  Chanel knock-off. “It’s not hurting anybody, except maybe the companies that make the actual bags. But I don’t think they’re exactly hurting, you know?”

Lindstrom’s perception that the counterfeit bags are a victimless crime is common among tourists, despite the luxury industry’s long-running effort to link the knock-offs to everything from child labor to terrorism. But a group that feels directly victimized by the handbag market are nearby residents. As warehouses have proliferated, people living on the blocks south of Canal Street are finding themselves more besieged than ever.

Members of the newly coalescing Tribeca North Neighborhood Association say one of their top concerns is an illegal bag warehouse at 65 Lispenard Street, near Broadway.

“I’m used to it being impossible to walk down Canal Street,” said Lorraine Merghart, of 38 Lispenard. “But having the same kind of activity on Lispenard Street is upsetting. It feels like the neighborhood is getting out of control.”

At least one warehouse still in use as of late last month is well south of the Canal Street neighborhood, at 69 Leonard St. on the corner of Church.

“Not long after the previous tenant moved out three months ago, curtains went up and the windows were blacked out,” said Joanne Greenbaum, who lives nearby. “Then we started seeing these young Chinese girls bringing people by, and then the people would leave carrying these black plastic garbage bags.”

Other neighbors called the police, and the location was raided. Soon the vendors returned, though, this time offering Greenbaum $100 not to notify the police that they were back. Police made another bust at the location last month, arresting everyone inside. Two days later, Greenbaum said, the same people were back at work again.

Police say they are doing their best to control the counterfeit sellers, but limited manpower and light punishment make putting them out of business all but impossible.

“We can have all the enforcement we want on the street, but the problem is with the judicial system,” said Anthony Bologna, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s First Precinct. “We arrest these guys, they pay a $50 or $90 fine and they’re back at work the next day.”

Faced with the seeming futility of putting the vendors out of business, Bologna said he has to make strategic decisions about how to use his officers.

“Once an officer makes an arrest, he’s off the street, processing the person and doing paperwork,” Bologna said. “I only have so many people, so the question is, would I rather have them make an arrest as soon as they see something illegal, and be off the street, or stay on the street and be on hand in case something really bad happens?”

The counterfeit trade has long operated on Canal Street. But where five years ago vendors sold their wares in the open from actual storefronts, and more recently out of large garbage bags on the street, increased pressure from police and luxury brands’ own investigators have forced the vendors to be more discreet.

On a recent afternoon, a hawker standing on the corner of Broadway and Canal Street showed a Trib reporter and female friend a laminated card with pictures of the bags in stock. He beckoned them across the street and handed them off to a runner, a middle-aged Chinese woman, on the opposite corner. The runner led her charge down the block to a nondescript door at 412 Broadway, near the corner of Lispenard Street.

Opening the heavy magnetic lock, she took her customers up a flight of stairs, slamming another set of heavily locked metal doors behind her. Inside, a half-dozen vendors were crammed into the changing-room-sized drywall partitions dividing the open loft space.

Each vendor’s area was lined wall-to-wall with bags labeled Chanel, Coach, Gucci, and Prada. Most bags go for $40, far less than the hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for the originals. Customers browsed the wares as they would at any suburban shopping mall. The runner’s walkie-talkie squawked a warning that police were nearby, but the vendors showed little concern.

In a sweep last month, police arrested 38 people for selling counterfeit handbags. According to one officer involved in the arrests, who asked not to be identified, the vendors were back in business by the evening of the same day.

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