{"id":3180,"date":"2008-03-01T07:14:18","date_gmt":"2008-03-01T12:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/03\/you_know_the_economy_is_hurting_when.html"},"modified":"2008-03-01T07:14:18","modified_gmt":"2008-03-01T12:14:18","slug":"you_know_the_economy_is_hurting_when","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/03\/you_know_the_economy_is_hurting_when.html","title":{"rendered":"You Know The Economy Is Hurting When . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

. . . people physically attack each other over boxes filled with tomatoes and $29<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A money giveaway in Union Square by a company called Cashtomato.com turned rotten Friday when the impatient crowd bum-rushed the costumed organizers and ran off with the loot. One person was injured in the free-for-all.<\/p>\n

“Make it rain!” and “Give me my money!” passersby shouted as the clock ticked down to the scheduled 2:29 p.m. publicity stunt, timed to mark Leap Day.<\/p>\n

With five minutes to go, the antsy mob of 100 surged toward three workers dressed to resemble tomatoes and holding sacks and boxes of prizes up to $29.<\/p>\n

“People grabbed and pulled on the bag,” said Jason Buzi, an executive at the fledgling video-sharing Internet company.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t feel safe, so I let it go.”<\/p>\n

As he fled across the street, his colleagues dropped their sacks and scattered across the park – and a wild grab for the booty ensued.<\/p>\n

Scavengers dove to the ground and elbowed each other out of the way to get at cash-stuffed envelopes and balloons and flyers and fresh tomatoes with bills attached.<\/p>\n

“I got pushed down and trampled, but instead of money, all I got were tomatoes,” said a dejected 29-year-old homeless woman who gave her name as Christine.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Buzi, who said he has organized giveaways in five other cities without incident, seemed dazed by the debacle.<\/p>\n

“They grabbed all the bags and the money from us,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I expected maybe a few homeless people, but it turned out to be a lot of aggressive people,” Buzi said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . . people physically attack each other over boxes filled with tomatoes and $29: A money giveaway in Union Square by a company called Cashtomato.com turned rotten Friday when the impatient crowd bum-rushed the costumed organizers and ran off with the loot. One person was injured in the free-for-all. “Make it rain!” and “Give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,45,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-things_that_make_you_go_oy","category-well_what_did_you_expect","category-youre_kidding_right"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}