Life after a crackdown on sex work along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens
Each night, Tsomo Dasel, the owner of Himalayan Yak restaurant on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, lets some of her staff leave work hours before closing. The measure is protective: Most of her employees, she said, are female and are regularly accosted by men on the street seeking paid sex.
Dasel, 38, who has owned the restaurant for five years, said sex work on the thoroughfare, while long a community concern, has become more pervasive in recent years and scares away customers. She isn’t immune from the harassment.
“When I'm standing outside my business, men pursue me,” Dasel said. “They come and say, ‘Hey, hello beautiful. Can I get your number?’”
Similar complaints reached a crescendo over this summer from the people who live on, work on and visit Roosevelt Avenue, part of a commercial district serving residents of Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona. The concerns often voiced in community board meetings, phone calls to police, and other forums have also included public drug use, used condoms littering the sidewalk, rising crime and public sex.
Arun Venugopal, senior reporter in the newsroom, has the story at Gothamist.
