NOW THAT’S FUNNY: Businessmen who placed this sign in their window have a laugh yesterday at the expense of Occupy Wall Streeters marching along East 42nd Street in a big to reinvigorate the movement. (REUTERS)
MELEE: A cop, facing a threat from behind him, wields his club at OWS protesters in Greenwich Village yesterday amid rallies that were far from crippling. (AP)
NOW THAT’S FUNNY: Businessmen who placed this sign below their window chuckle yesterday at the bizarre-and ineffective- May Day marchers on East 42nd Street, as OWS tried in vain reinvigorate the movement. (REUTERS)
Occupy Wall Street’s call for May Day mayhem largely fizzled yesterday — but at least provided a good laugh for hardworking people gazing from their office windows at the demonstrators’ antics as cops took a few dozen into custody.
“How can anyone take them seriously? They look like homeless people,” quipped Financial District bartender Kimberly Leo.
“I saw one woman complaining about not having a job, but she had a shirt with the word “nympho” on it,” Leo, 26, said. “These people need a change of wardrobe and a shower.”
The daylong demonstrations featured several thousand protesters doing little more than snarling traffic in sporadic gatherings around the city.
More than 50 of them had been arrested by last night after a handful of clashes with the police armies that flooded the streets.
The biggest flare-up came at around 2 p.m., when 100 protesters with black bandanas over their faces sprinted north from Sara Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side while knocking over trash cans and banging on cars.
They had a giant sign that read, “F–k the police.”
Elliot Epstein, 19, allegedly bit NYPD Chief Thomas Galati during a scrum on Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village.
“[He] fled from an arresting officer, knocked over a scooter cop, and fought with a lieutenant who tried to stop the perp,” a police source said.
After biting Galati, he “then began spitting on Chief Galati and the lieutenant,” the source said. He was hit with a slew of charges including assaulting a police officer.
Another round of dust-ups occurred around 8 p.m. when hundreds of protesters marching south on Broadway were kept from turning onto Wall Street.
One protest leader hopped onto the barricades, and just inches from the cops, shouted, “This is what it looks like to live in a police state!”
Nearby, a demented demonstrator kicked out the driver-side rear window of a police car.
And many who attended the group’s “General Assembly,’’ which drew nearly a thousand people to the area near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Water Street, initially refused to leave at the 10 p.m. curfew. At least six were arrested after cops had to force them to disperse.
The OWS gatherings started at around 8 a.m. in Midtown, where Rich Rollison marched with his daughter, Jude, 9, whom he plucked out of her West Village school.
“I hope that the 1 percent pays their taxes,” said a smiling Jude.
But she was soon crying when her dad was among several protesters who got into a melee with cops.
“She just got scared, the police were shoving everyone,” said Rollison. “That was kind of a tense moment.”
Among the demonstrators was Stacey Hessler, the 38-year-old Florida mom who last year ditched her husband and four kids to camp out in Zuccotti Park with a waiter from Brooklyn. She refused to comment.
Most of her fellow protesters chanted, sang and toted signs — largely in the face of indifferent passers-by.
“I’m here to promote change,” said a demonstrator at Union Square, Aaron Denee, 28, a Manhattan resident who has been unemployed for the past year despite having a master’s degree in education.
But the “International Workers Day” only proved how much the movement has been weakened since the NYPD evicted the protesters from Zuccotti on Nov. 15.
“It’s not working. People are going about their business. I got to work on time,” said Susan Ostrowski, 55, who works at a Wall Street insurance company.
“They should find jobs and protest on their time off. They should get involved politically, register to vote rather than sitting and sleeping on the steps in sleeping bags.”
Samantha Quaid, who works at a clothing store on the Lower East Side, said she was late for work “because of all their protesting.”
“They want more jobs? Well, they almost got mine today,” Quaid, 24, said.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Harshbarger, Kevin Sheehan, Kate Kowsh, Larry Celona & Kevin Fasick