BY SCOTT R. AXELROD | For an internationally renowned streetwear clothing and accessory brand like Supreme, it’s supremely difficult, if not impossible, to get anyone working in the small, sparsely stocked storefront shop at 274 Lafayette St. to talk about its products.
Or, for that matter, talk about the fact that area residents have been venting their aggravation over the circus-like atmosphere that occurs every Thursday during the shop’s operating seasons, which run from February to June, and start up again from August to December.
“These product launches have become a scourge for Soho and the Village,” said Joseph Gallagher, chairperson of the Community Board 2 Quality of Life Committee. “The corporation launches a new product in Soho because they know the launch will attract chaos, hysteria and Instagram posts. It’s a gross exploitation of our neighborhood, and absolutely no benefit for the neighboring residents or businesses.
“The Street Activity Permit Office, SAPO, has consistently granted permits for these events despite the community’s staunch opposition,” Gallagher added.
This relationship between retail and residents wasn’t always this tenuous, as Supreme’s flagship shop, which opened in 1994, transitioned from targeting the more low-key skateboarding crowd, to drawing in droves of young “hypebeasts” — consumers who must have and are willing to pay a premium for the latest clothes, accessories, gadgets or Kanye West-designed sneakers.
But after ongoing reports of violence, robberies, public urination and loitering, residential neighbors see Supreme as an unnecessary blight on the neighborhood, and would just as soon see it shuttered.
The Villager spent the final Thursday of Supreme’s spring season speaking with customers lined up for the weekly “drop.” Sandwiched single-file between metal barriers on Crosby St., none offered their real names or wanted their faces photographed. And the fact that most of them admitted to not even showing up to purchase items for themselves, is another aspect of Supreme’s popularity; this enters into the world of secondhand retail entrepreneurs who buy up merchandise and then resell right it on the surrounding streets, online or through a network of secondhand stores in Chinatown and consignment shops that have popped up throughout the city.
A 2015 video by Complex offered a firsthand look at those profiting off the Supreme resale market. And a 2013 article in The New Yorker about “flipping” Supreme merchandise was reportedly not received well by Supreme company founder James Jebbia.
The weekly event — perhaps due to the presence of the press — appeared to have been reined in a bit, as a hired security team, working more like bouncers, kept customers literally and figuratively in line, and controlled the flow of the crowd onto Lafayette St. Most of the security personnel were friendly, but the scene was a bit reminiscent of HBO’s “The Wire,” where “steerers” or “cluckers” call out to a guard on an opposite corner to send over another batch of customers. Anyone seen loitering after making a purchase was presumed to be reselling merchandise and told to move to the opposite side of E. Houston St.
The problems with the shop’s weekly takeover of the area, and the anger of local residents, are well established. But now, besides blocking streets and causing quality-of-life issues in Soho, the situation is affecting local public parks, as well. In May of this year, Bill Castro, the Parks Department’s Manhattan borough commissioner, wrote a sternly worded letter to Supreme’s Jebbia, regarding “unauthorized gatherings” it held at least four times in local public parks, including two in the Village area, since the end of last year.
In each case, Castro said, Supreme failed to get a required “special event” permit and simply commandeered public park space for mass events. This happened on Dec. 5 of last year at James J. Walker Park, at Hudson and Leroy Sts., when, as Castro wrote, Supreme “barricaded and/or blocked off large areas of the park and invited hundreds of people onto the courts and surrounding areas of parkland. Your company not only prevented the public from accessing large areas of public space,” Castro chided Jebbia, “it failed to utilize safety and security measures appropriate to the size of the crowd and the location.
“The nearby [Tony Dapolito] recreation center received multiple attendees with minor injuries,” Castro continued, “and your company’s conduct placed all attendees at serious risk of injury or death. NYPD was forced to shut down the park for several hours,” again denying the general public access to J.J. Walker Park, he noted.
Yet, Supreme didn’t take the hint, hitting the Village with yet another renegade confab just a few months later.
“Despite all of this,” Castro incredulously fumed in his May 2 missive, “your company held another unauthorized event at William F. Passannante Ballfield, Avenue of the Americas and Houston St., on March 13, again without obtaining a Special Event permit from Parks or coordinating with NYPD. It is believed that you subsequently held an event at Hell’s Kitchen Park on April 17 and then again yesterday, both times without obtaining a Special Event permit.”
Castro concluded by warning that if Supreme continued to flout orders by Parks to cancel similar planned events in the future it would potentially face civil and/or criminal sanctions. The borough commissioner said the company also had to publicize the cancellations and post them on any social-media platforms where they had been advertised.
C.B. 2 members recently voted unanimously to recommend that SAPO deny a permit request for a Supreme / Louis Vuitton event at a location at Bond St. and Bowery that the company estimated would bring more than 1,000 attendees flooding to the spot. C.B. 2 also requested that, for any further events, Supreme come before the community board with a comprehensive plan to “minimize or eliminate the unnecessary disturbances that have been plaguing our community for the past several years.” The C.B. 2 resolution added that the 20,000-square-foot four-level Louis Vuitton store on E. 57th St. would be a more a reasonable spot for the event in question than the 2,100-square-foot Bond St. location.
Attempts by The Villager to contact Supreme regarding its contentious relationship with its Soho neighbors were unsuccessful by press time.
Meanwhile, rumors of the opening of a second New York-based Supreme location in Williamsburg have started to make their way around social media.
