What a bunch of pricks!
An unhinged gang of vagrants—including a sicko in a grotesque penis mask and a maniac setting benches ablaze—is relentlessly terrorizing young girls at a multi-million-dollar soccer field in the trendy Meatpacking District.
The Post witnessed the chaotic scenes this week, where the man wearing a revolting mask with a dangling penis for a nose glowered less than 20 feet from the wary kids, stripped and screamed in an unprovoked outburst at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday.
“Everyone wants to party, but no one wants to pay for party!” the man bellowed.
He took off his mask to reveal something passersby said was even more frightening — his face, covered with 30 piercings, including a ring between his eyes and a menacing cluster of tiny metal studs circling his mouth, eyebrows and eyes.
Atop his head was the second part of the mask — a balaclava-type contraption featuring a giant middle finger with the words “sex,” “f–k you” and “Mr. Anger” scrawled on it.
The rowdy crew of vagrants — who get drunk at the nearby Mobil gas station on 8th Avenue before trudging over to Hudson River Park according to neighbors across the street — have become a regular presence around the Gansevoort Peninsula field, which sits across the West Side Highway from the Whitney Museum, where they harass girls as young as five and threaten parks workers.
Parents are mortified.
“It’s extremely concerning,” said Jason Fernández, whose daughter was practicing on the field with Gotham Girls Football Club. “Nothing is being done,” he lambasted.
“When it comes to the kids, something has to happen,” he continued. “Today this guy in the mask started waving at the girls. I came back because he gave me a weird feeling.”
“These men need help, but obviously they’re not getting it and because of that everyone else has to suffer,” he vented. “Mamdani is terrible, absolutely terrible.”
About a week ago, at least two unknown members of the mob, whose numbers can swell to a dozen, stripped down and had grunting sex on a nearby bench, entirely oblivious to their surroundings, according to an eyewitness.
“The girl was on the top of the guy. It was unbelievable, like 4 o’clock in the afternoon,” said eyewitness dog walker Geronimo Silva. “This city is becoming worse.”
Silva told The Post he was also harassed by the penis-masked menace — who at one point Wednesday took off his tank top in front of the kids to reveal a “thug life” tattoo plastered across his stomach and more ink on his back that included pistols and skulls.
His buddy, meanwhile, was conked out on a bench right in front of the children, and another man was zonked out right in the goal post.
A fourth man, sporting a “Scarface” tee-shirt, asked for money as he flipped the middle finger.
“I take Cash App, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, all the electronic payments,” he shamelessly declared.
Another dangerous lunatic, some parents nicknamed “Fire Bug,” recently set fires to the benches while the kids practiced, one parent claimed.
“One of the benches, I think it’s that one, you could see it burnt,” said Fernández, pointing to the burn marks on the bottom of the bench.
Since the city opened the $73 million Gansevoort Peninsula in 2023 — a 5.5-acre green oasis with a sports field, beach and boardwalk — homeless people wasted little time turning the park in the swanky neighborhood — where celebs like Justin and Hailey Bieber, Ben Stiller and Jennifer Lawrence live and where a penthouse recently sold for $18 million — into their own personal crash pad and washrooms.
Encampments were twice torn down last summer, but this year the NYPD told The Post it didn’t respond to incidents there, and there were no 311 complaints about them. But petrified parents and parkgoers said the crew has become even more brazen.
“Gansevoort is the worst one because you get crazy homeless people around the field,” said soccer coach Saad Afif, who owns Manhattan Football Training and regularly leads practices there.
“Here it’s out in the open and you can kind of just walk up…a few times I had to step in and tell people to either go away or tell security.”
Vagrants also regularly wash up naked in the park bathrooms even as the kids are using them, parents told The Post.
“There’s a lot of things the kids see that they shouldn’t be seeing,” said the fed up Parks worker, who said he and his colleagues are forced to deal with the drifters, despite the city’s Department of Homeless Services tasked with helping and NYPD with public drinking and disorderly conduct.
DHS told The Post the park was “not a known hotspot” to the department, but that it would “monitor this location and offer shelter and services to any vulnerable individuals” it encounters.
The behavior also frightens nearby food vendors, who said they have been targeted as well.
“They get aggressive and start threatening and intimidating,” said a 26-year-old food kiosk worker. “They say stuff like ‘I got something in my bag’ or ‘I’m gonna f–k you up. It happens about twice a week almost always the same people. They want free food and unfortunately, it’s a business we can’t.”
On Wednesday, park workers were again called to boot the vagrants.
“Ya buggin the f–k out!” the penis-masked man shrieked as he was escorted away from the field.
Parents are resigned to seeing him and his motley crew again.
“The parks people come around every now and then, but the homeless just leave and come back 10 minutes later,” said Lee, whose daughter plays for Gotham Girls Football Club.
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