A longtime East Village juice bar wants to close shop and relocate over neighborhood crime concerns – and after frightening harassment from homeless addicts that The Post witnessed firsthand this week.
Juicy Lucy has thrived in a small storefront on Avenue A near East Sixth Street since 1999, but owner René Henricks said lately she’s been “chaperoning” her frightened female workers to and from the store and the last straw came when a wacko smashed her front window.
“There’s more homeless, more drug use, more robberies and some violent crimes around here,” Henricks told The Post of the growing “chaos” in the neighborhood. “There’s human waste along the whole avenue. There was a fatal overdose in the alcove next to our store about a month ago.”
Then on June, a crazed homeless man walked up to the shop with a shovel in his hands and bashed the front window open, then menaced the young employee inside before lurching off.
“We’re an all-female business. Our youngest is 18 and most are in their early 20s. I am concerned for their safety. Their safety is 100% my responsibility,” Henricks said.
“We want to find a place that’s a little quieter,” she said. “We don’t need this constant chaos.”
Dawn Haberman, who’s been the general manager of Juicy Lucy for over two decades, regrets the idea of leaving the neighborhood but agrees they’ve been left without much of a choice.
“We’re concerned for our staff, ourselves and the neighborhood itself. We love this neighborhood, we want to stay in this neighborhood, but it’s a difficult thing. We want to move somewhere close to keep our customers, but we need to find a quieter spot,” she said.
“We see needles around and people who are having a rough time. There are lots and lots of unhoused and drug addicts. There are people who aren’t safe to be around.”
As The Post interviewed the Haberman outside the store on Monday, a homeless man accosted heroutside of Juicy Lucy demanding that she give him a free soda – which the juice bar doesn’t even sell.
“Get the f–k out of here,” the man screamed when she asked him to leave, also calling her a “f–king a–hole” and a “f–king racist.”
“See? This happens all day,” Haberman said as the man continued his troubling outburst. “I didn’t say anything to him. You can see why the young girls get really, really scared.”
“It’s fear, it’s stress and it’s also an interruption to the business as well. We’re afraid for our employees but at the same time we lose business because of it — our customers are afraid of what’s going on.”
Juicy Lucy hasn’t settled on a new storefront yet, but is looking at locations off the Avenue, perhaps around the corner on East Seventh Street.
“I feel sad about the neighborhood, but the move will be good for us, it’s time for us to grow. It’s going to be good,” Haberman said.
Juicy Lucy is not the only shop feeling the effects of crime on Avenue A.
The owner of Takahachi, the sushi restaurant next door to the juice bar, told The Post he’s never seen things so bad in the neighborhood.
“I have been here 26 years, the restaurant has been here for 34 years, and I have never seen so much homelessness and drug use,” he said.
“There are needles right on my steps in front of the door.” he said. “During business hours, especially on weekends when it’s warm, I have to try and move homeless people from my front door.
“They poop, so my employees have to clean it up,” he said, claiming that a delivery driver broke his nose tripping over a homeless person passed out in their doorway.
“Sometimes I have to call the cops, but other times I have to be aggressive with them, but it’s dangerous because you don’t know how they’ll react or what they have in their hands.”
