Posted on 06/26/2006 10:35:49 AM PDT by Ellesu
NEW ORLEANS — Robyn Lewis, owner of Dark Charm fashion and accessories for women, represents the first line of defense for the Magazine Street shop owners. She is the first to see them come strutting in their pumps down St. Andrew Street, the bewigged pack of thieves who have plagued the Lower Garden District since May.
Like an SOS flare, Lewis grabs her emergency phone list and starts calling.
“They’re coming,” she warns Eric Ogle a salesman at Vegas, a block down Magazine Street. Ogle, who was terrorized by the brazen crew two months earlier, alerts neighboring Winky’s where manager Kendra Bonga braces for the onslaught.
Soon every shop owner in the 2000 block of Magazine Street has been alerted.
Sarah Celino at Trashy Diva eyes the door, ready to flip the lock at the first sight of the ringleader’s pink jumpsuit and fluorescent red wig.
Down at Turncoats, where the fashion-happy gang once made off with more than $2,000 in merchandise, store manager Wes Davis stands ready.
Davis said it wasn’t supposed to be like this. They survived Hurricane Katrina’s Category 3 winds and the ensuing looters. They reopened despite the long odds of doing business in a devastated city. The last thing the Magazine Street shop owners expected to threaten their survival was a crime ring of transvestites.
“They’re fearless,” said Ogle. “Once they see something they like they won’t stop until they have it. They don’t care, they’ll go to jail. It’s really gotten bad. You know it’s ridiculous when everyone on the block knows who they are.”
Expensive tastes
The transvestites first appeared in March when they raided Magazine Street like a marauding army of kleptomaniacal showgirls, said Davis, using clockwork precision and brute force to satisfy high-end boutique needs.
They first hit Vegas March 31 while Ogle was working.
“They come in groups of three or four. One tries to distract you while the others get the stuff and run out the door. It’s very simple,” Ogle said.
Next door at Winky’s, Bonga heard people screaming inside Vegas, then saw a blur of cheap wigs and masculine legs in designer shoes streak past her door.
“All of a sudden our UPS guy dove out of the store and tried to tackle them and there’s little Eric from next door on the sidewalk with a bunch of stuff he managed to grab from one of the guys,” Bonga said. “The other two guys took off down the street and jumped into a car driven by a real girl.”
Ogle gave police a description of the perpetrators — African-American males ranging in height from 6 feet to 6-5. They all wore the same midriff shirts and wigs with twisted, dreadnaught hair.
“They’re all very skinny and very flamboyant,” Ogle said.
Two hours after the police left, the transvestites returned to Magazine Street to storm Turncoats just a block away from Vegas, and made off with more than $2,000 in merchandise.
“They move like clockwork,” Davis said. “Two thousand dollars is a lot for our store to lose, especially being in the slow summer season. It makes it so I can’t even mark my stuff down as much as I want to because I’m trying to make up for what I lost.”
In the ensuing weeks, the gang of transvestites continued their reign of terror. Sometimes they come dressed as men, though Bonga said it is obvious who they are based on their delicately plucked eyebrows. Sometimes they bring 2-year-old children to add to the level of distraction. They once returned to Vegas holding an “infant” that really was a Cabbage Patch doll wrapped in a blanket.
“They’ll make themselves scarce for a few weeks and then one day you’ll be busy with a customer and all of a sudden there’s a whole slew of them in your store and there’s nothing you can do because you’re there by yourself,” Lewis said.
Scarce evidence
The New Orleans Police Department investigated the Turncoats robbery but unless police catch a shoplifter in the act or in possession of stolen property there is little they can do besides take a report, said NOPD spokeswoman Bambi Hall.
“If store security states that someone took something, and then by the time we apprehend them they don’t have the property, then there’s really nothing we can do because it’s their word against the (suspect),” Hall said.
Lewis said she understands the understaffed NOPD has bigger priorities than to “catch a drag queen running down the street with an armful of clothing.” So the store owners created their own watchdog system unofficially known as the “Drag Queen Alert List,” a comprehensive phone roster of every business on the block with stars next to those who carry guns.
When one shop owner spots a gang member, they immediately warn everyone on the block and raise their defenses in unison.
When they enter Turncoats, Davis said he locks them inside the store, which “freaks them out,” and they leave.
Celino said she doesn’t even wait for them to enter the store.
“A couple weeks ago, a group of them was outside and one looked like the guy who came in here and ripped us off so I locked the door on them,” Celino said. “I know maybe that’s rude, if they really were innocent people, but there’s nothing else we can do. You look like the queens who ripped us off so I’m sorry but I have to lock the door.”
Ogle and Bonga say they regret being forced to resort to such profiling but they feel they have no other choice. The transvestites, Ogle said, appear to be drug-addicted and fearless in their lust for designer shoes, jackets and jewelry.
“The city’s not functioning the way it was and I’m sure a lot of them were getting some kind of government aid, which they probably aren’t getting any more so they’re incredibly desperate,” Ogle said.
And sometimes violent.
When Lewis co-owned Trashy Diva, they attacked one of her partners in the French Quarter location, throwing her to the ground and tossing a heavy mannequin on top of her.
“They’re kind of confused because they think they’re women so they don’t mind hitting women, but they’re dudes. If you get hit by one it’s like getting hit by a dude. ... Because the police are so poorly staffed, we’re kind of on our own but the system we have seems to be working. I haven’t seen them in at least a week but they’ll be back. They’re never gone for long.”•
Since when is grand theft "pestering"?
Is this what happens when the real gangs get driven away to Houston? Sort of like the flea and tick populations exploding when all the fire ants get killed? ;)
The city needs a law allowing security cameras into evidence, and another law mandating very long jail terms. Otherwise, it's just another Katrina, baby.
I can't even comment, the jokes just kind of write themselves.
did one answer to the name of frank? frank furter?
What they need to do is get the business owners who own guns to wait outside for these guys. I guarentee you the presence of police in the area would go up. A gang of transvestites terrrorizing stores doesn't seem to get the police's attention, but I'm sure "vigilante" shop owners would.
This is just too bizarre - I know I shouldn't laugh, but I can't help it. I remember seeing some scary-looking transvestites in N.O. back in the day. I just love that this is where our tax dollars are flowing, haha.
Transvestite Gang Ping.
I think they need to start pumping water in.
That's the price of doing bidness in the Easy.
Had to check the link to make sure this wasn't a joke! Surprised the Trashy Diva still has enough of a customer base to remain open.
What are we doing in this handbasket anyway, and where are we going? (just shakes head)
They are just on the downlow. Just some more unfortunate victoms of the welfare society forced upon them by LBJ and the dummycrats.
Even bubba had enough sense to slack off on the free money.
I am speechless. I am without speech. There is no joke I can make that will add to this. My beeber has been stuned.
I live on the lower end of Magazine St where this takes place. Admittedly I don't go into Vegas or Trash Diva much but I have never heard anything about these creeps.
"Ogle and Bonga" I find names to be interesting.
Kendra Bonga works at Winky's. I'm giggling.
Good question. It would have been more productive, not to mention a whole lot cheaper, to open all the levees and dikes and let the Gulf in.
Carolyn
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The apology for resorting to profiling was the funniest thing in the article. Ann Coulter is soooo right!
LOL!
Hopefully it's not really that bad. It is kind of funny in a sad and twisted way though.
tres gauche right there.
Poor Tim Curry. I bet some days he's embarrassed to admit to that role.
Other days, I bet he regrets the fact that his legs don't look nearly that good anymore.
And you just KNOW platform shoes were involved.
silver lame.
If the cops can't/won't help, firearms are the obvious answer. Obvious to some of us, at least.
Fluorescent Red.
WHAT? no PIX?
I'll bet my Chinese girlfriend has a recipe for that fungus!
It is just so Lower Magazine St. though.
Speaking of clockwork...this whole things sounds like something out of that movie.
Voice Over: This is a frightened city. Over these houses, over these streets hangs a pall of fear. Fear of a new kind of violence which is terrorizing the city. Yes, gangs of old ladies attacking defenceless fit young men.
(Film of old ladies beating up two young men; then several grannies walking aggressively along street, pushing passers-by aside.)
First Young Man: Well they come up to you, like, and push you - shove you off the pavement, like. There's usually four or five of them.
Second Young Man: Yeah, this used to be a nice neighbourhood before the old ladies started moving in. Nowadays some of us daren't even go down to the shops. '
Third Young Man: Well Mr Johnson's son Kevin, he don't go out any more. He comes back from wrestling and locks himself in his room.
(Film of grannies harassing an attractive girl.)
Voice Over: What are they in it for, these old hoodlums, these layabouts in lace?
First Granny: (voice over) Well it's something to do isn't it?
Second Granny: (voice over) It's good fun.
Third Granny: (voice over) It's like you know, well, innit, eh?
Voice Over: Favourite targets for the old ladies are telephone kiosks.
(Film of grannies carrying off a telephone kiosk; then painting slogans on a wall.)
Policeman: (coming up to them) Well come on, come on, off with you. Clear out, come on get out of it. (they clear off, he turns to camera) We have a lot of trouble with these oldies. Pension day's the worst - they go mad. As soon as they get their hands on their money they blow it all on milk, bread, tea, tin of meat for the cat.
This reads like something from the Onion.
Thanks for the chuckle. LOL
When it's in a chocolate town, and when the perpetrators are the enfant terrible of the Anointed.
ATF has classified these as "destructive device" like an 81 mm mortar
"dreadnaught hair."
That's some seriously big hair, lol. But, I think they mean dredlock.
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