Boogie down for drug igloos.
Pioneering drug dealers have been openly slinging marijuana from tents on a busy Bronx sidewalk, sparking outrage from locals who called for the city to snuff out the wintry weed teepees.
Video revealing the open-air drug tents – one of which brazenly advertised “Good Weed Deals” on a handwritten menu – went viral on X this week, but nearby business owners said the seedy setups along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard popped up two or three years ago.
Two tents in the Bronx have been used to openly peddle weed, angering locals. NY POST
A handwritten sign on one tent provided a menu of pot products for sale. NY POST
“The mayor should step in this immediately, nip this in the bud, and this is one of the things he should come up here to The Bronx to look at,” longtime local community advocate Angel Caballero told The Post on Friday.
“Something has to be done and the mayor has to do something to protect our kids,” he said.
The wacky tobacky shacks seemingly survived former Mayor Eric Adams’ sweeping crackdown on unlicensed pot shops that sprouted up by the thousands across the city after weed was legalized in 2021.
New York’s recreational weed rollout was marred by lawsuits and bureaucratic snafus at the state Office of Cannabis Management, all while a slew of illegal marijuana peddlers sprouted up.
The alleged illicit pot peddlers in Morris Heights didn’t take kindly to being smoked out by The Post Friday.
A reporter and photographer spied two tents — one black, one red-orange — on the snowy sidewalk, with orange electrical cords running to nearby poles, presumably to provide power.
The red tent had a hand-scrawled sign on a dry-erase board declaring “Shops Open,” along with prices for pre-rolled joints and baggies up to $100.
But as the journos sniffed around the hot boxes, a masked mope holding a phone aggressively confronted the photographer sitting in a car and demanded to know why he was taking photos.
“Can I see?” the hooligan barked, before trying to snatch the snapper’s phone.
One apparent lookout aggressively confronted a Post photographer. New York Post
The man approaches a Post reporter and photographer on Friday.
The photographer drove off with the drug dealers’ apparent lookout still knocking on his window.
After the tense confrontation, cops took two people into custody, an NYPD spokesperson said. They didn’t provide more information.
“If they are selling illegal drugs, then cops should shut them down,” a 22-year-old nonprofit worker who grew up in the area said. “You can buy marijuana legally in New York City, so people do not have to buy from them.
“This is a residential area and that is something that children should not be privy to.”
The cannabis canopies have long burned Caballero, executive director of the Davidson Community Center, where the BJT Bronx Commercial District is based.
He said the group has complained to the NYPD’s local 46th Precinct, but the “very aggressive” dealers keep coming back.
“They don’t care. They sell right in front of the kids,” he said. “They are arrested and within 24 hours they are out.”
Caballero said Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark should nip the pot pests in the bud.
Mamdani’s spokesman Matthew Rauschenbach hazily said City Hall is looking into the matter.
The tents’ occupants seemed to be jacking power. NY POST
A power cable jacked into street lamp post leads to the tent. NY POST
“New Yorkers have many options from which they can safely purchase recreational marijuana, and these tents do not appear to meet the requirements associated with legally selling marijuana,” he said in a statement.
Clark’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson and local reps Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez, state Assemblywoman Yudelka Tapia and state Sen. Jose Serrano — all Democrats.
The brazen blazing bivouacs reached online infamy this week after a TikTok user documented them in a video emblazoned with “Only in the Bronx” — and featuring one bleary-eyed occupant peering out.
The video went viral among critics of Mamdani, who rolled up the ganja awnings with Democratic socialist’s arguably soft-on-crime stances.
“Drug igloos — another remarkable innovation here in the socialist utopia of New York City,” firebrand conservative Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) posted on X.
“Welcome to Mamdani’s New York City! Before you know it the administration will be giving these guys vendors licenses,” said fellow Queens Republican Councilwoman Joann Ariola.
City Council Minority Leader David Carr (R-Staten Island) managed to burn both Mamdani and his progressive predecessor Bill de Blasio.
The tents had been set up for years, locals said. NY POST
“I guess it didn’t take long for de Blasio’s signature open-air drug markets to return to New York City,” Carr said.
“The tents are a nice improvement, though. I guess this is the socialist way of maintaining public order.”
Locals were quick to point out the tents long pre-dated Mamdani’s still-budding mayoralty.
“From someone actually from this neighborhood, they been trapping out this s— way before Mamdani so STFU,” one X user posted.
— Additional reporting by Joe Marino and Vaughn Golden