Illegal smoke shop selling weed across from NYC City Hall
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An unlicensed Big Apple weed shop is blowing off authorities and brazenly keeping the good times — and joints — rolling, right under City Hall’s nose.
Jungle Boys smugly operates out of the landmarked Broadway building that’s also home to some of Mayor Eric Adams’ staff and various city agencies — and just 278 feet away from the august epicenter of New York City government.
“I’m aware we’re selling to them, City Hall people,” shrugged Jungle Boys employee Edward Nunez Lopez, who wouldn’t reveal any bold-faced names.
The shop has enjoyed brisk business — even after a pair of inconvenient police raids that had little lasting effect — since its opening in the fall, Lopez said.
“Everybody who’s in the building comes here. Everybody! People that don’t smoke – they do edibles. People that don’t do edibles – they do chocolates,” he continued.
The pot emporium at 253 Broadway — also located next door to a government office building used by the City Council and state legislators — has been able to remain in business because the state never implemented strict enforcement rules for the future retail market when legalizing recreational weed in 2021, critics say.
“I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry,” said Councilman Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn), one of many predominantly progressive pols who supported legalizing marijuana but are now fuming over the lax enforcement of illegal dispensaries.
“An illegal weed store operating freely across the street from the seat of New York City government just proves how ridiculous this whole thing has become,” he added.
And it shows just how much anything goes nowadays in NYC, said Tom Chzyk, 62, a construction site administrator.
“There’s a certain irony that City Hall is . . . across the street from it,” he said. “It’s a bizarre wacky place, and we’ll just tolerate some things.”
Jungle Boys – which is not affiliated to a prosperous cannabis dispensary under the same name legally operating out of Los Angeles – boasts a wide assortment of marijuana products to smoke and eat as well as $100 bongs and other stoner favorites.
A city-state task force comprised of city deputy sheriffs, NYPD cops and staffers from other agencies raided the joint in both December and January, seizing a combined $175,883 in products, officials said.
Jungle Boys also faces yet-to-be-determined fines after being socked with a bevy of criminal and civil summonses for unlawful possession of cannabis, operating without a license and other wrongdoing, officials said.
Like most of the other roughly 1,400 illegal cannabis shops operating citywide, Jungle Boys’ operators were undeterred.
It restocked the shelves and re-opened Monday without a hitch two weeks after the Jan. 26 inspection by the task force — simply chalking it up to the cost of doing business in the high-profit world of weed, workers said.
City Sheriff Anthony Miranda and NYPD brass testified at a Council hearing last month that existing laws make it difficult to weed out and close the illicit weed shops, adding they can typically only issue measly $250 fines – hardly a deterrent even after seizing pot and edibles.
Just two cannabis shops are legally operating in New York City — with a third slated to open Monday in Manhattan’s Union Square — as a huge unregulated black market sprouted during the state’s slow rollout of its licensed cannabis program.
In a bid to fight back, Mayor Adams and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Tuesday that the city would be beefing up its crackdown on the illegal pot stores — by going after the landlords.
The typically soft-on-crime Bragg said his office sent more than 400 letters to property owners of unlicensed shops putting them on notice to evict tenants selling illegal cannabis — or watch the state do it for them.
Michael Alcazar, an adjunct criminal justice professor at John Jay College and retired NYPD detective, said it’s no surprise that the shop opened across from City Hall, considering “the lawlessness plaguing” New York.
“This is a direct slap in the mayor’s face and state legislators that made this environment friendly for pot dealers,” he said. “The message is loud and clear: New York City has become the Wild Wild West!”
The 19th century-era, landmarked former Home Life Insurance Company building at 253 Broadway is now a condominium complex predominantly owned by the city, but the lower level where Jungle Boys is located is owned by a Mineola, N.Y.-based real estate management company, Malachite Group. The company declined comment.
The Mayor’s Office declined to address questions about the illegal pot dispensary making plenty of green so close to City Hall, instead referring to Adams’ comments Tuesday where he promised to bank on “every level of government to address” the problem of rogue weed shops.
Hazel Crampton-Hays, a spokeswoman for Gov. Hocul, said the state is “using every tool at our disposal to crack down on unlawful operations and keep New Yorkers safe.”
However, some New Yorkers — including city employees who walk by Jungle Boys regularly — say current “crackdown” efforts just aren’t working.
“It’s ugly there,” fumed Daniel Suarez, an employee at the city Department of Citywide Administrative Services. “Especially when tourists come. They are seeing City Hall — and then this!”
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