After Night of Looting, Tribeca Businesses Gird for What May Be More

Ryan Taylor, the assistant store director of the clothing retailer Todd Snyder at the Liquor Store. The shop was attacked by looters in the early morning of June 1. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

It was 8 a.m. Monday morning when Ryan Taylor got the call, telling him that Todd Snyder at the Liquor Store, the Tribeca clothing store at White Street and West Broadway where he is assistant store director, had been looted at 3:30 a.m. He arrived to see a window smashed in and merchandise, mainly suits, pilfered. “I cried,” he said, standing outside the store Monday afternoon. The shop was just seven months old in March when it was forced to close because of the pandemic. “I hope we survive this,” he said.

Now Taylor waited for his store windows to be boarded up, like others in Tribeca on West Broadway, Church Street, Broadway and Canal Street, in anticipation of another night of post-protest mayhem. Edward Youkilis, owner of the restaurant Edward’s, 136 Broadway, had nearly finished covering his storefront windows while the businesses on either side, Max and Tribeca Apothecary, were now hidden behind plywood. Looters struck both the night before. 

Ann Benedetto, owner of A Uno, the women’s clothing store nearby at West Broadway and Duane Street, had stopped by to watch Youkilis put the finishing touches on his store’s new wooden facade. “My windows have glass sides so there’s no way for [the wood] to adhere to it. And I have 10 windows” she said. “I’m so upset.”

Looting damage to Tribeca businesses also included Gourmet Garage at 366 Broadway and Hudson Market, 111 Hudson St., and, as reported by Tribeca Citizen, Harley Davidson, 376 Broadway, T-Mobile, 270 Greenwich St., and OK Uniform, 353 Church. But even that was light compared other neighborhoods, including Soho, where marauding thieves smashed their way into the Apple Store, Louis Vuitton, Coach, Chanel and Bloomingdales, among many others.

In the meantime, Mayor Bill de Blasio hoped that a curfew, 11 p.m Monday to 5 a.m. Tuesday (which would begin at 8 p.m. on following days), and the doubling of a police presence, would bring a night free of violence and destruction. “The demonstrations we've seen have been generally peaceful,” de Blasio said of the protests against police brutality. “We can’t let violence undermine the message of this moment. It is too important and the message must be heard.”c

Photos below by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib, except where noted.