Parents at one of Manhattan’s newest waterfront parks say a rotating group of homeless men has turned the sidelines of a girls’ soccer field into a place where children as young as five are exposed to public nudity, obscene taunts and, on at least one occasion, a bench set on fire.
The complaints center on the sports field at Gansevoort Peninsula, the $73 million park that opened in 2023 on the Hudson River in the Meatpacking District, across the West Side Highway from the Whitney Museum.
New York Post reporters who spent Wednesday morning at the field described a man in an obscene rubber mask standing less than 20 feet from the children, then pulling off his shirt and shouting at no one in particular shortly after 9 a.m.
“Everyone wants to party, but no one wants to pay for party!” he yelled, according to the paper.
When he removed the mask, onlookers said, his face was covered in roughly 30 piercings, with studs ringing his mouth, eyebrows and eyes. A second piece of the costume, worn on his head, was scrawled with obscenities.
Parents say nothing changes
Jason Fernández, whose daughter trains with the Gotham Girls Football Club, said the masked man had started waving at the players. “It’s extremely concerning,” he told the Post. “Nothing is being done.”
“When it comes to the kids, something has to happen,” he said. “These men need help, but obviously they’re not getting it and because of that everyone else has to suffer.”
Neighbors across the street told the paper the group drinks at a Mobil station on Eighth Avenue before walking over to the park, where their numbers can swell to a dozen.
A dog walker, Geronimo Silva, said he watched two members of the group have sex on a bench in the middle of the afternoon about a week earlier. “This city is becoming worse,” he said.
During the Post’s visit, one man slept on a bench in front of the children and another lay inside the goal. A fourth panhandled while making an obscene gesture, announcing that he accepted Cash App, Venmo, PayPal and Zelle.
One parent said a man the families have nicknamed “Fire Bug” recently set fire to benches while practice was underway. Fernández pointed out scorch marks on the underside of one of them.
City agencies say the park is not a hotspot
Encampments at the 5.5-acre site, which also has a beach and a boardwalk, were cleared twice last summer. This year the NYPD told the Post it had not responded to incidents at the park and had received no 311 complaints about the group.
The Department of Homeless Services said the location was “not a known hotspot,” but that it would “monitor this location and offer shelter and services to any vulnerable individuals” its teams encounter.
Saad Afif, who owns Manhattan Football Training and coaches at the field regularly, said the open layout makes it easy for anyone to wander into a session. “A few times I had to step in and tell people to either go away or tell security,” he said.
Food vendors said they are targeted too. A 26-year-old kiosk worker described threats roughly twice a week, usually from the same faces and usually over demands for free food.
Parks staff were called to move the group along again on Wednesday. Parents said they expect to see them back.
“The parks people come around every now and then, but the homeless just leave and come back 10 minutes later,” said one parent, Lee, whose daughter also plays for Gotham Girls.
Reporting in this story is based on original coverage by the New York Post, which first reported the scenes at Gansevoort Peninsula, and on statements from the NYPD and the city Department of Homeless Services. The photographs are stock file images, not photographs of the events described.
