New Yorker accused of tossing urine, feces at patrons of TikTok-famous photo booth next door sued for $500K

A pissed-off New Yorker hates the TikTok famous vintage photo booth that’s been set up next door to her Lower East Side home so much that she’s throwing a literal piss and s–tstorm over it, a new lawsuit claims.

Zoë Lazerson and Brandon Minton, the owners of the Old Friend Photobooth, say their neighbor Maggie Trakas has officially “declared war” on them ever since they signed a lease for their booth next door to her building on the Lower East Side.

Since opening in December, the one-sided guerilla battle has allegedly seen Trakas, an artist and jewelry maker, tossing a bucket of urine from her second-story Allen Street window onto a booth owner and queueing customers — “narcissistic r—-ds,” the suit alleges she calls them — and using her artist tools to paint feces along the booth’s fence and planters.

New Yorker Maggie Trakas hates her neighborhood’s popular vintage photo booth so much that she’s throwing a literal piss and s–tstorm over it, a new lawsuit by Old Friend Photobooth owners Zoë Lazerson and Brandon Minton claim. Madison McGaw/BFA.com/Shutterstock

She also super-glued locks and made verbal and physical threats, according to the lawsuit.

“This is war!” said Trakas, just one day after the booth moved to its new home — due to its surging popularity — at 145 Allen St. on Dec. 9, the suit alleges.

Calling her behavior “deranged and health-hazardous,” the legal complaint states that “Trakas will seemingly stop at nothing to derail the operation of the Old Friend Photobooth.”

But Trakas told The Post that it’s all just a ploy to grab cash before the TikTok sensation, which she said draws hundreds of loud 20-somethings in a constant line around the block, loses out once the app is outlawed this Sunday.

“On the weekends and over the holidays, it has been unmanageable,” the lifelong New Yorker said.

“We’re talking up to hundreds of people on the line, all the same age demographic. No one local, not even NYU.”

The owners say Trakas has officially “declared war” on them ever since they signed a lease for their booth next door to her building on the Lower East Side.

To Trakas, the suit is just “wealthy kids from Utah who showed up in 2023” trying to “exploit” her. 

“This is a stunt he’s creating to extort money,” she said, adding that she “absolutely did not” throw her piss at Minton or patrons of the Old Friend Photobooth.

“My sense is because this is a TikTok sensation and Sunday, TikTok might be going away, he’s getting nervous and coming after me and fabricating incredible lies,” Trakas said on Friday.

Trakas’ behavior began as many obnoxious relationships do — passive aggressively — by locking her bikes to block the entrance to the tourist attraction.

But until this past month, the most egregious claim against Trakas was that she had superglued the locks to a maintenance van Minton parks on the block, a deed she grinned over when asked about it on Friday.

“OK, that had a context,” she said before cackling and explaining it was in response to Minton vandalizing her bikes.

The store opened last month, and allegedly, Trakas tossed a bucket of urine from her second-story Allen Street window onto a booth owner and called customers — “narcissistic r—-ds.”

“I did do that.” 

The suit claims that the real “deranged” acts began this month — when she called the booth visitors “narcissistic r—-ds” on Jan. 2.

“I said it was narcissism on steroids,” Trakas told The Post.

The next day, the suit says, Minton discovered “frozen urine” on a chair next to the photo booth.

Video footage shows Trakas dump what the lawsuit calls “urine from her second-floor window.”

The lawsuit also reveals Trakas super-glued locks and made verbal and physical threats.

On Jan. 5, she allegedly “leaned out of her second-floor window and poured a bucket of urine directly onto Minton’s head, causing the urine to splash onto queuing customers,” the suit claims, adding that responding police officers and paramedics confirmed its provenance was piss.

“While the police and paramedics were writing reports of the incident, Trakas was laughing and taunting Plaintiffs and customers,” the suit claims, which also alleges she was drunk earlier in the day and hit Minton’s phone out of his hands.

“It’s Sunday,” the suit claims she said, “go home and f–k your bitch.”

“I threw vinegar on him later that day,” Trakas told The Post.

“It was not urine.”

The legal complaint said her behavior is “deranged and health-hazardous,” while mentioning that “Trakas will seemingly stop at nothing to derail the operation of the Old Friend Photobooth.”

“It was cleaning vinegar because he’s been calling me and threatening me,” she said, adding he’s called her a “scum bag, Karen, miserable bitch.” 

She also denied assaulting Minton and said he was shoving his phone in her face.

But the most outrageous claim in the lawsuit allegedly occurred on Jan. 11.

Minton says that morning, he arrived at his booth and was overwhelmed with “a strong, putrid odor,” and “observed what appeared to be feces smeared and dumped all around [a] planter box,” the complaint says.

The young photo entrepreneur claims that video footage from that night shows Trakas channeling her inner artist and painting a plywood board she recently set up to block her view of the booth with “a paint can filled with brown liquid feces,” dumping the remains of the can into planters installed by Minton, who says he and a team had to don KN-95 masks and spent over three hours scrubbing the booth clean.

But it wasn’t feces, she claims. 

“I was painting a primer,” Tarkas said.

“They’re here all day, I had to come out at night. That is me on the camera … It’s a primer.”

Trakas declined to show The Post any of the alleged tools used in her alleged fecal and urine campaign. 

In addition to being the alleged sole combatant in this pissing war, Trakas is the progeny of world-renowned contemporary artist Susan Rothenberg and acclaimed sculptor George Trakas and has lived at the landmarked circa 1830s home since 1998.

According to a building permit from 2000, Tarkas and her mother — the primary shareholder of the LLC which owns the home — converted it into a single-family residence. 

Minton and Lazerson first moved to the Big Apple from Utah in 2023, according to the New York Times, which wrote a glowing profile of their booming booth in the fall.

Two video producers from Los Angeles show off their photos. Helayne Seidman

The nostalgic booth has been a magnet for youngsters raised on digital photography. Stephen Yang

They and their lawyer declined to comment.

In addition to claiming over $500,000 in damages, a judge has already granted the social media influencers a temporary restraining order preventing her from interfering with or vandalizing the booth. 

On Friday night, just over a dozen people braved the cold to wait for their turn for an $8 selfie. 

A hipster who appeared to be an employee said he was not authorized to speak with the press.

“I’m making no excuses for my behavior but I’m also being stalked and harassed,” Trakas told The Post.

“I am the person that’s been harassed. I’ve been the person whose quality of life has been entirely trashed,” she insisted.