(p. A20) The colorful bottles have popped up every summer in black and Hispanic communities — from the bodegas of Washington Heights to the stoops of Fort Greene — since the early 1990s. On beach boardwalks, at neighborhood basketball courts and block parties, New Yorkers are drinking nutcrackers, boozy homespun cocktails made from a blend of alcohol and fruit juices.
But this year, the New York Police Department is cracking down on the illegal drinks and the vendors who sell them, vendors and customers said.
. . .
But sellers and customers who believe there is a crackdown are alarmed, saying vital financial lifelines are threatened and raising the issue of which infractions police choose to focus on and which communities are scrutinized.
“It’s just another way to target us,” Dee said. “If I don’t sell nutcrackers, I can’t make my rent. I don’t have a choice.”
Most every Thursday in the summer, Dee clocks out from her job as an exterminator with the city and begins work on her illegal private enterprise.
After spending $600 or so at the liquor store nearby, she will lug her ingredients — cases of vodkas, rums, tequilas and cognacs — to her two-bedroom public housing apartment and into a dim, cramped back room where she will get to work making batches of her best sellers like Tropical Punch, Henny Colada and the Fort Greene Lean.
Dee’s concoctions will be poured into dozens, sometimes hundreds, of stubby plastic bottles and peddled all weekend to her longtime customers: old-timers playing dominoes in Bedford-Stuyvesant, basketball tournament crowds at Gersh Park in East New York, neighbors and friends in her old Flatbush neighborhood. They will all be waiting for her, she said.
On a good weekend, Dee will earn around $1,400 from nutcracker sales, enough to cover her rent, which has risen nearly $700 since 2015, she said.
. . .
“They always trying to beat us down,” said Jay, another nutcracker seller who preferred that his last name be withheld. Jay said he decided to venture into the business this summer as a way to get his music management business off the ground.
“This is going to buy studio time for my artist,” he said, nodding to the cooler he wheeled down the Coney Island boardwalk at sunset. “Ice-cold water,” he said loudly to passers-by, followed by a softer, more subtle “(Nutcrackers.)”
“Ice cold water!”
“(Nutcrackers).”
“These guys are selling things to better their lives,” said Sandra Anguiz, 30, after buying a cream-soda-flavored nutcracker from Jay. “Why are police worried about that?”
(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “Banned on the Beach? It’s Still Nutcracker Summer.” In the passages quoted above, the sometimes slightly longer online version is followed.)
