SH**HOLE NEWS: Horror Stories From NYC’s 8th Ave. ‘Strip of Despair’ — Where Stabbings, Drug Use and Public Defecation are the Norm; NYC’s Rat Problem is So Bad It’s Holding a Summit of Vermin Experts to ‘know our enemy’

Horror stories from NYC’s 8th Ave. ‘Strip of Despair’ — where stabbings, drug use and public defecation are the norm:

Business owners and residents along Midtown Manhattan’s “Strip of Despair” are so frequently robbed and harassed by drug-addled “psychopaths” that they’ve stopped trying to resist — or even bother calling the cops for help.

“Almost every day someone comes into my store to steal,” said 45-year-old Arun Kumar, who owns A’s Coffee Spot on W. 39th St. and 8th Avenue.

“They take beer the most — they take it and walk out,” he said.

“It’s too dangerous to try and stop them.”

Kumar’s shop is located in a stretch of Midtown between Port Authority Bus Terminal and Penn Station that’s come to be known as the “8th Avenue Corridor,” where hard drugs are used in the open and emotionally disturbed people wander the streets screaming at passersby.

Several locals told The Post that they’re fed-up and scared of what the neighborhood has become — despite New York Mayor Eric Adams insisting on Monday that it’s actually getting better.

Recent data from the NYPD shows a mixed bag of progress for the Midtown South Precinct — which stretches from 9th Avenue to Lexington.

There have been 172 reported robberies so far this year, down 24% from the same period in 2023, but felony assaults are up nearly 12%, with 245 reported.

Grand larceny is down 16%, but petit larceny is up 11% and retail theft reports are up 3%.

Drug arrests are also up more than 25%.

But it’s clear that lawlessness remains rampant. The Post caught one man urinating in the street in broad daylight on Monday.

Public defecation is also a common sight, residents and shop owners said.

Open drug use often escalates into violence.

The Post obtained horrific footage of a brutal knife fight in April between an alleged drug dealer and a user outside a building which led to one man being badly injured.

Last week, one woman was stabbed to death outside Port Authority, and an emotionally disturbed man was shot in the leg near West 33rd St. and Broadway — both in the same night.

Locals say many of the troublemakers are drawn to the neighborhood by a concentration of homeless shelters and drug addiction treatment clinics in the area. —>READ MORE HERE

NYC’s rat problem is so bad it’s holding a summit of vermin experts to ‘know our enemy’:

New York City is famous for its sights—not least its giant piles of trash bags. And those have made the city so ripe for rat infestation that Mayor Eric Adams is calling a national summit to tackle the problem. This is the mayor who already moved to reform trash collection (what he called a “24-hour rat buffet) and created a position in his administration for a “Rat Czar.”

“New Yorkers may not know this about me—but I hate rats, and I’m confident most of our city’s residents do as well,” Adams said in a statement released Wednesday. “The best way to defeat our enemy is to know our enemy.”

That’s why Adams’ administration is hosting this inaugural summit on September 18 and 19 in partnership with New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University.

The event promises to bring together experts and leaders from across the country to “better understand urban rats and how to manage their populations,” according to the statement. Experts will include academic researchers, pest control managers, and municipal experts and participants from Boston, New Orleans, and Seattle. “Preeminent rat researchers” will be invited, as well.

How bad is the rat problem in New York City?

The rat problem in New York City goes way back—probably further than you’d think. The infestation started developing in the 18th century when Norwegian rats (also known as the brown rat, alley rat, or sewer rat) arrived from Europe, Nicole Carpenter, president of Black Pest Prevention, tells Fortune.

“These days, New York is still trying to solve this problem as rats pose a huge threat to public health and sanitation,” Carpenter says. Indeed, a 2023 estimate from Long Island-based pest control company MMPC says there are as many as 3 million rats living in New York City. That’s 1 million more than were estimated in 2010, previous research showed.

However, Adams said in his Wednesday announcement that rat sightings were down nearly 14% year-over-year in the city’s rat mitigation zones.

“We continue to make progress, but we’re not stopping there,” Adams said. —>READ MORE HERE

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