Graffiti Vandal Hits Five Vehicles in Garment District

New York’s finest are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying and finding the whereabouts of a man with hate in his heart and a black marker in his writing hand.

On the night of Thursday, Jan. 30 at approximately 10:19 p.m. at 138 W. 38th St., which is a side-street address of the well-known art deco Bricken Broadway Building at 1385 Broadway, the vandal left hateful if somewhat mysterious scrawls on five vehicles.

Call it the Garment District, call it Midtown South, call it the 14th Precinct too: All are true. It is not clear why the unknown vandal would strike here, using a black marker to write two terms considered hateful on five vehicles, including:

“F*g” (a male homosexual slur); “Ch**k” (a Chinese slur); and, mysteriously to some, “Yee.”

“It was not clear what ‘Yee’ referred to,” the Daily News averred.

Still fresh from its pulse-pounding—with loud drums! and confetti guns!—on-the-spot Lunar New Year’s reporting, Straus News suspects that “Yee” could very well be a Chinese person’s surname.

Indeed, standing at 81 Bayard St. between Mott and Mulberry in Chinatown is the Manhattan headquarters of the Yee Fong Toy Association, a benevolent organization dedicated to Chinese people with the surname Yee.

Located in a six-story building with red-painted fire escapes, the Yee organization played host on “Super Saturday,” Feb. 8, to wondrous Lion Dance, music, and martial arts performances, including the ritual feeding of the lettuce to the lions (and dragons).

That the vandal—who is described as a male with a light complexion, medium build, and wearing glasses—used the word “Yee” in conjunction with the other slurs suggests some possible familiarity with Chinatown, or the Chinese in New York generally.

The suspect, who was last seen wearing a black hat, a black jacket, and black sneakers, fled on foot, going westbound on West 38th Street toward Eighth Avenue.

This incident is being investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X @NYPDTips.

All calls are strictly confidential.