The Sarajevo Or Beijing Of America

You may think it’s cute to spend a weekend buying counterfeit shit but the truth of the matter is you’re sapping billions from city coffers:

The police call it Counterfeit Alley, and say it is the city’s top haven for knockoff, no-name, and flat-out phony goods. In the last two years, the city has seized close to $50 million in counterfeit goods in the area and shut down, under the same nuisance abatement laws used to clean up Times Square, 15 buildings in the area that they said were once occupied almost entirely by counterfeiters.

But thousands of people still pack the area on weekends. Many are New Yorkers, but some travel hundreds of miles via tour bus, dragging suitcases and rolling duffels full of clothes back home to North Carolina or Pennsylvania. To them, it is a poor man’s shopping mall, an admittedly seedy — and therefore affordable — alternative to the gleaming, teeming Herald Square stores a few blocks away.

“It’s the prices you can get, with what little money you have,” said Ellen Counts, 41, of Belleville, Mich. She comes several times a year for socks, underwear and other clothing for her family, and also buys silver jewelry from the nearby wholesalers for her store back home. “We do our Christmas shopping here.”

Though sidewalk vendors abound in the area, most of the shopping in Counterfeit Alley takes place in a handful of old office buildings along Broadway and the side streets. Most have been divided and subdivided into warrens of dingy boutiques and record stores, run more or less like speakeasies. There are no signs or billboards advertising their presence, only clusters of men at the building entrances muttering questions — “CD’s? Sneakers? What you want, man?”

Answer in the affirmative, and you will be led through the maze to your chosen destination. It is not quite the Galleria. The illicit thrill of entering a room full of $40 faux North Face jackets, for example, is easily sapped by the sound of the door being locked behind a shopper’s back.

. . .

A 2004 report from the city comptroller’s office estimated that New York loses about $1 billion in tax revenue a year from the trade in counterfeit goods, though some analysts say the figure is inflated. The police say they are just as concerned with public safety as lost sales taxes and ripped-off tourists.