{"id":363314,"date":"2026-10-03T00:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T00:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/363314\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T00:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T00:12:10","slug":"canal-street-vendor-violently-knocked-my-phone-away-as-i-exposed-the-illegal-activities-flooding-chinatown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/363314\/","title":{"rendered":"Canal Street vendor violently knocked my phone away as I exposed the illegal activities flooding Chinatown"},"content":{"rendered":"

My assignment was simple: film a video about the street vendors who\u2019ve, once again, descended on Canal Street like locusts to hawk duped designer duds<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was not expecting a violent altercation over cheap sunglasses with phony logos<\/a> but that\u2019s what I got.<\/p>\n

The sidewalk was carpeted with fake items from every high-end designer I could think of all being sold at a deep discount by aggressive sellers running amok at the new frontier of counterfeit luxury.<\/p>\n

Canal Street in lower Manhattan, which has long been a site of illegal vendors selling counterfeit goods, is pictured on Thursday, October 1, 2026, in New York. Caitlyn Becker \/ NY Post<\/p>\n

A Canal Street vendor attacks New York Post reporter Caitlyn Becker, Friday, Oct. 2, 2026. Caitlyn Becker \/ NY Post<\/p>\n

The vendors immediately noticed me filming and were visibly angry, demanding I stop. Some of them tried to hide their faces and others called me names. One especially furious vendor<\/a> informed me that I couldn\u2019t record him without his consent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I could and I said as much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The words were barely out of my mouth when his hand shot out and slapped the phone out of my hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGet the f\u2013k out of here!\u201d he screamed in my face, lunging towards me from the side of the table.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Canal Street in lower Manhattan has long been a site of illegal vendors selling counterfeit goods. Caitlyn Becker \/ NY Post<\/p>\n

The sidewalk was carpeted and tabled with fake items like sunglasses and other fashion accessories from every high-end designer imaginable. Caitlyn Becker \/ NY Post<\/p>\n

Panicked, I looked around for help or, at least, someone to share in my shock. Instead I was met with a dozen seething street vendors and a blonde lady too busy asking about a \u201csmall Hermes bag\u201d to notice me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I called 911 but the police couldn\u2019t help much at all. Due to a technicality, the smackdown didn\u2019t rise to the level of assault so the man was only given a toothless citation for harassment. Meanwhile the other vendors weres shouting \u201cfucking p\u2014y\u201d at me as they walked by.<\/p>\n

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The ordeal left me shaken.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also answered a question I didn\u2019t know needed asking: \u201cWho\u2019s in charge of Canal Street<\/a>?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The answer, it seems, are the guys shoving<\/a> Shmendi and Fucci bags in our faces at bargain basement prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My assignment was simple: film a video about the street vendors who\u2019ve, once again, descended on Canal Street…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9098,57,9,24,55,54,56,58,10026,3301],"class_list":["post-363314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-chinatown","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-us-news","tag-vendors","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}