Sign next to elevator doors in the lobby of 310 Greenwich Street apartment building tell passengers that masks are required in the elevators. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
A dispute over mask wearing in a Tribeca building elevator turned physical Sunday morning, leading to a call to police.
The dispute, on the 22nd floor of 310 Greenwich Street, in Independence Plaza, began around 7:15 a.m. when a man and a woman with their dogs attempted to get on the elevator without masks. A man in the elevator told them not to enter. “At which point they began shoving each other,” police said, quoting from the harrassment complaint made by the 57-year-old passenger. There were no injuries or arrests, police said.
Outside the building, shortly after the incident, the Trib interviewed the couple who had refused to mask. They declined to give their names. The man, 63 (referred to in the harassment complaint as the “perp”), said after being told he had to wear a mask, “I started to walk towards the elevator door and he grabs me and shoves me into the adjacent hallway wall. Like a few times.” The man claimed that he was the victim and that he called the police.
Signs in the 39-story building are posted beside the elevator doors in the lobby and on individual floors, telling tenants, “per new CDC guidelines, a mask must be worn in elevators and building lobbies.” Asked why he and his girlfriend chose not to wear one, the man replied, “We’re vaccinated.”
“Are we going to be having to wear a mask until time immemorial?” the woman said. “You do your civic duty and get vaccinated. You’re done with it.”
The man said his mask avoidance was not political. “I wear a mask sometimes, sure,” he said, adding, “If the guy had asked me nicely, but he didn’t. He tried to assert himself. So did I.”
Linda Buongermino, a longtime tenant in the building, said that about half the people comply with the signs.
“I tell people to mask up before getting in,” Buongermino told the Trib in an email. “Most do but one did not a couple weeks ago and he would not get out. So I did!!!”
Comments? Write to editor@tribecatrib.com