This bum really can’t catch a break – an Upper East Side antiques dealer has filed a million-dollar lawsuit demanding the vagrant vamoose from the sidewalk grate in front of his shop.
The less fortunate often loiter in front of Karl Kemp and Associates Antiques at 833 Madison Ave., standing on the small grate for heat, but Kemp says they’re cooling off his business by blocking the shop window.
His suit is against three John Does and one Jane Doe, but the main target is a scruffy man who was spotted changing his socks on the vent yesterday – obstructing the view of a $26,000 19th-century mahogany Empire bench from Vienna with lion-head details and cream-colored upholstery.
“I have nothing against the man, but I cannot provide a shelter to him,” Kemp told The Post yesterday from his other store on East 10th Street.
“You make a wonderful effort to have an attractive window, people come out from the building next door, they don’t see him and they trip over him,” he said. “It happened twice last August. One lady hurt herself.”
And the poor people are standing between well-heeled customers and hundreds of thousands of dollars of antiques they may buy.
The somewhat surly vagrant is a fixture in the neighborhood, but none of the shop owners knows his name. Wearing three layers of dingy socks, soiled shoes and layers of odorous old clothing, the bearded man was getting some relief from the frigid cold on the grate yesterday.
“Leave me the f- – – alone,” he grumbled. “I don’t want to be f- – -ing involved.”
Later, the same man walked up to Kemp’s store window after closing, at about 6:20 p.m., and placed two bags of miscellaneous garbage on either side of the warm grate. He got down in the fetal position and did not respond to further questioning.
Kemp said he has called cops, but “that hasn’t helped.”
“The police simply say, ‘There’s nothing we can do. He has the right to be where he wants to be.’ ” Kemp said.
“The police come and they talk to him. . . and he goes away for 10 minutes and comes back.”
The suit asks that the homeless people be barred from anywhere “within a radius of 100 feet” from the store on Madison Avenue near East 69th Street. If a judge grants that injunction, cops would have more power to keep the riffraff away from Kemp’s fine antiques.
Kemp said that the man spotted yesterday also curses at him, and has turned away customers.
“If you look at that shelter 20 blocks up on the Upper East Side, it’s clean, it’s heated, it’s safe,” he added. “I hope I never have to spend the night there, but it is. I cannot provide a home for him in front of my store. That’s what you and I pay taxes for.”
Neighboring merchants said the vagrant can be a problem.
“He’s always there getting warm – he smells very bad, so the smell sometimes comes through the door,” said José Perez, a salesman at upscale footwear store Cesare Paciotti.
But an associate at chic bag and shoe store Miu Miu said the homeless man rarely bothers anybody.
“Where’s he going to go?” she asked sympathetically. “I think that [lawsuit] is ridiculous. Good luck getting the money!”
Additional reporting by
Erin Calabrese