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Charging $1 To Pee At Brooklyn Barber Shop Causes Some Women To Wig Out
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Sep 17, 2011
Modified Sep 17, 2011
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Sep 17, 2011
Modified Sep 17, 2011
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take notice: people get pissed when there is a barrier to peeing. 31-year-old Brooklyn barber Nicholas Curtis learned this lesson after a group of disgruntled, cross-legged revelers from the West Indian Day Parade descended upon his shop. After allowing folks to pee freely all day, they began instituting a $1 fee to use the bathroom after the toilet became clogged, as a "nuisance tax." But it became more of a nuisance for Curtis and friends when a group of women who refused the tax came back with some male muscle. "We're tussling with them. I was just hitting," Curtis tells the Times. But he was actually hitting a woman with a wig: "My hand tangled in her hair and it fell off."
After the group left, they came back again, and the police got involved. "To go and come back? They got to be tough," Curtis says, and when the cops showed up he believed it was to protect him and the shop. Instead he was led off in handcuffs with his friend. "There were like, 17 people in the precinct. Fourteen of them caught with guns." Presumably Curtis was affixed with the Hannibal Lector mask for his heinous, bladder-bruising actions.
Tagged
9/11 memorial
bathrooms
brooklyn
bushwick
pee
west indian day parade
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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