An old-fashioned photo booth on New York City’s Lower East Side has attracted crowds of serious Zoomers, delighting locals and tourists alike and racking up millions of views across social media.
But the viral sensation has provoked a somewhat less enthusiastic reaction from the neighbor.
Maggie Trakas – daughter of renowned contemporary artist Susan Rothenberg and renowned sculptor George Trakas – is accused of waging war against the brave young couple behind Old Friend Photobooth, a must-visit destination for the TikTok and Instagram set. The fight began in early December and has pitted Trakas, a native New Yorker, against Utah transplants Brandon Minton, 27, and Zoe Lazerson, a 25-year-old social media influencer, who now wants $2 million from Trakas for the problems they claim. she is caused.
“From spreading feces on its fences and planters, to dumping a bucket of urine on Minton and queuing up customers, to supergluing the keyholes in plaintiffs’ maintenance van, to physically and verbally assaulting Minton in front of customers, Trakas apparently won’t stop anything to derail the operation of Old Friend Photobooth,” reads an application for a temporary restraining order filed Friday and obtained by The independent.
Minton, a Salt Lake City native who moved to New York in 2023, and Lazerson, who is also from Salt Lake and runs the photo booth with him, “attempted to engage with Trakas in a friendly and diplomatic manner,” according to a complaint submitted at the same time as the application for a restraining order.
“Trakas is a photographer herself and a member of the art community,” the complaint states, citing her father and late mother as evidence. “… Plaintiffs tried to appeal to Trakas by sharing their appreciation of art and photography.”
Instead, court documents say Trakas declared “war” on the couple and the “narcissistic retards” who flock to their “disgrace” for a destination, expressing concern that the 52-year-old’s “disturbed” behavior is not only creating an immediate health hazard, but may soon “cause someone to be physically harmed.”
Reached by phone, Trakas said The independent that she was served a copy of Minton and Lazerson’s complaint Thursday night and that it contains “a litany of lies by a young, wealthy couple from Utah who have essentially destroyed the quality of peace at the corner of Allen and Rivington. “
“There are definitely two sides to every story, and this is complete fabrication,” Trakas said. “They are basically using my parents and my position in society to extort money from me. My lawyers are well aware of that and we will continue in the coming weeks to present … evidence of the harassment that I have been subjected to for about a month and a half since they opened.”
Trakas, who was born and raised in downtown Manhattan, argued Friday that Minton, and to a lesser extent Lazerson, were the ones who harassed her.
She raged at the “busloads of 20-year-old kids” who descend on the block, populate the sidewalk outside and gather at her front door as they wait for their pictures to develop. When Trakas complained to Minton about his “incredibly disrespectful” customers, “he told me I was a ‘Karen’ and said, ‘Welcome to New York,'” she recalled.
“I’ve been tracked, stalked, harassed, threatened, constantly told that I’m a piece of shit, that I’m miserable,” Trakas continued, describing himself as the aggrieved party in this dispute. “I’ve resorted to some juvenile responses because I’ve been provoked. I live in a landmark building that my family and I renovated and I’m very protective of it.”
This was told by lawyer Robert McFarlane, who represents Minton and Lazerson The independent that he would appear in court Friday afternoon to argue for the restraining order on behalf of his clients and declined to comment further until the case was concluded.
The Old Friend Photobooth concept became a reality in May 2024 when Minton and Lazerson purchased a 1970s photobooth from a former photobooth technician in St. Louis, Missouri. The complaint and TRO, filed in New York State Supreme Court, say the couple drove it back to Manhattan, refurbished it and installed it on the outside of a luggage store on Orchard Street. It was an instant hit, drawing audiences who were only too happy to pay $8 for a strip of four vintage black-and-white snapshots.
The stand was so successful that Minton and Lazerson decided to give it a more permanent home, and in December 2024 Old Friend moved to a street-facing commercial space on Allen Street, according to the complaint.
Within an hour of opening their doors at the new location, Trakas confronted Minton and Lazerson, throwing a “fit,” calling the photo booth a “disgrace” and demanding its closure, the complaint states. It claims she repeated her harangue the next morning, kicking over a bucket of water that Minton used to clean the photo booth, before vowing to destroy his and Lazerson’s lives, screaming: “This is war!” Minton called police, according to the complaint, which says police told Trakas that having a line of customers in front of a business was not a crime.
In mid-December, the complaint says, Trakas began locking several bicycles to the outside of his gate in such a way as to intentionally block customers from retrieving their photos. Minton also found his truck vandalized, with Trakas allegedly supergluing the door locks. The only time Minton, Lazerson and their photo booth saw a moment of peace was during the week between Christmas and New Year’s when Trakas went out of town, according to the complaint.
On Jan. 2, the complaint says, Minton “discovered what appeared to be the frozen urine on the chair and sidewalk next to the photo booth.” He reviewed security footage from the night before and saw Trakas, in fact, dumping urine on his property from her second-floor window, the complaint states.
A few days later, an allegedly drunk Trakas punched Minton as he was setting up the photo booth, saying, “It’s Sunday, go home and f**k your b**ch,” according to the complaint. That afternoon, while Minton was installing new planters outside the booth, the complaint says Trakas leaned out his window and “poured a bucket of urine directly on Minton’s head, causing the urine to splash onto customers in line.” (Trakas later said this was vinegar; Minton and Lazerson’s complaint says police and paramedics who responded to the scene “confirmed it was urine.”)
Last week, things took an astonishing turn for the worse, the complaint reads. That morning, when Minton arrived at the photo booth, he was overcome by “a strong, putrid odor,” according to the complaint. He followed the fumes to one of the newly installed planters, where he then “observed what appeared to be feces smeared and dumped around the planter,” along with additional fecal material “caked together” on a board that Trakas had set up between her building and the photo booth, it says.
“The smell was so terrible that Minton could not stand near the planters without gagging,” according to the complaint.
Minton scrolled through the security video from the previous night, finding “disturbing” footage showing Trakas, wearing a black mask and hoodie, “placing[ing] a paint can filled with brown liquid feces on the planter and proceeds to ‘paint’ the plywood fence with liquid feces,” the complaint reads. “Trakas then proceeded to spray a yellow liquid on the plywood wall using a restaurant-style ketchup bottle. She then finished the job by dumping the rest of the paint bucket of feces into the planters.”
The independent have viewed the videos in question along with photographs of the damage from each alleged incident.
It took Minton and an aide, who donned KN-95 masks to endure the fecal stench, more than three hours to get the booth sufficiently clean again, according to the complaint. He and Lazerson are asking a judge to make Trakas distribute just over $2 million plus attorneys’ fees and want an injunction issued that would formally prevent Trakas from continuing to disrupt their business.
The police have been called to the scene several times, but while officers have taken reports, no arrests have been made.
Trakas now has 20 days to respond to the allegations.