Late last week, the American Apparel in Williamsburg was attacked by an alleged band of “retail terrorists” clad in all-black. “They have blogs. Someone took pictures and put them up on a blog,” a store worker said after the attack. They also reportedly lit trash on fire in the middle of the street. See what happens when the weather gets warm? Girls walk around outside in bras, people brunch outside with their unruly toddlers when it’s still too cold to sit outside for an hour, and hooligans unleash all manner of hell. [Free Williamsburg]
American Apparel sent us a statement on the incident:
We’ve gotten a few inquires about an incident at our Williamsburg store last week, and because online speculation can so often go awry, we thought we’d try set the record straight with the facts we have available. About 20 small windows were broken by a group of people on Thursday around midnight. The piece of metal used to smash them was left behind, a few mannequins were scuffed, and nothing was stolen. The police apprehended and arrested two people later that night, a man and a woman, and we’ll likely proceed by attempting to be reimbursed for the destroyed property.
As far as anything goes regarding a black-clad hipster uprising or mobs of angry retail protesters terrorizing Brooklyn, there hasn’t been anything to confirm this apart from a few blog comments. Most retailers have a brush with vandalism at some point, which although unfortunate, is just a reality of being in business. As it stands, this appears to be one of those instances.
