An old-fashioned photo booth on New York City’s Lower East Side has attracted throngs of earnest Zoomers, delighting locals and tourists alike and garnering millions of views across social media.
But the viral sensation has elicited a somewhat less enthusiastic response from its next-door neighbor.
Maggie Trakas — the daughter of renowned contemporary artist Susan Rothenberg and acclaimed sculptor George Trakas — is accused of waging war against the modish young couple behind the Old Friend Photobooth, a must-visit destination for the TikTok and Instagram set. The battle began in early December and has pitted the 52-year-old Trakas, a native New Yorker, against Utah transplants Brandon Minton, 27, and Zoe Lazerson, a 25-year-old social media influencer, who now want $2 million from Trakas for the trouble they claim she’s caused.
“From spreading feces onto its fence and planters, to dumping a bucket of urine onto Minton and queueing customers, to supergluing the keyholes of Plaintiffs’ maintenance van, to physically and verbally assaulting Minton in front of customers, Trakas will seemingly stop at nothing to derail the operation of the 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 photobooth with him, “attempted to engage with Trakas in a friendly and diplomatic manner,” according to a complaint filed alongside the restraining order application.
A screengrab of security footage showing Old Friend Photobooth co-owner Brandon Minton, seen here at bottom, as a bucket of urine is dumped on his head (New York State Supreme Court)
“Trakas is herself a photographer and member of the arts community,” the complaint states, naming her dad and late mom as proof. “… Plaintiffs attempted to appeal to Trakas by sharing their appreciation for art and photography.”
Instead, court filings say Trakas declared “war” on the couple and the “narcissistic retards” who flock to their “disgrace” of a destination, and express concern that the 52-year-old’s “deranged” conduct is not only creating an immediate health hazard but may soon “cause someone to get physically hurt.”
Reached by phone, Trakas told The Independent that she was served a copy of Minton and Lazerson’s complaint on Thursday evening and that it contains “a litany of lies by a young, wealthy couple from Utah that has essentially destroyed the quality of peace on the corner of Allen and Rivington.”
“There are certainly two sides to every story, and this is utter fabrication,” Trakas said. “They’re essentially using my parents and my position in the community to extort money from me. My attorneys are well aware of it and we will proceed, in the coming weeks, to present… evidence of the harassment that I’ve been under for the roughly month-and-a-half since they opened.”
Trakas, who was born and raised in downtown Manhattan, argued on Friday that Minton, and to a lesser extent, Lazerson, were the ones harassing her.
She railed against the “busloads of 20-year-old kids” who descend on the block, populating the sidewalk outside and gathering by her front door while they wait for their photos to develop. When Trakas complained to Minton about his “incredibly disrespectful” young customers, “He told me I was a ‘Karen,’ and said, ‘Welcome to New York’” she recalled.
“I’ve been tracked, stalked, harassed, threatened, constantly being told that I’m a scumbag, that I’m miserable,” Trakas went on, describing herself as the aggreived party in this dispute. “I have resorted to some juvenile responses, because I’ve been provoked. I live in a landmark building that my family and I renovated, and which I am very protective of.”
The Old Friend Photobooth’s proprietors say they have tried to accommodate neighbor Maggie Trakas, but that she remains angry about their presence (New York State Supreme Court)
Attorney Robert McFarlane, who is representing Minton and Lazerson, told The Independent that he would be appearing in court Friday afternoon to argue for the restraining order on his clients’ behalf and declined to comment further until after the proceedings were completed.
The Old Friend Photobooth concept became a reality in May 2024, when Minton and Lazerson bought a 1970s photobooth from a former photobooth technician in St. Louis, Missouri. The complaint and TRO application, filed in New York State Supreme Court, say the pair drove it back to Manhattan, refurbished it, and installed it on the outside of a luggage shop on Orchard Street. It immediately became a hit, drawing crowds all too happy to pay $8 for a strip of four vintage black-and-white snapshots.
The booth was so successful, Minton and Lazerson decided to give it a more permanent home, and in December 2024, moved Old Friend 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 while throwing a “fit,” calling the photobooth a “disgrace” and demanding its closure, the complaint says. It claims she reprised her harangue the next morning, kicking over a bucket of water Minton was using to clean the photobooth before vowing to make his and Lazerson’s lives miserable, screaming, “This is war!” Minton called the police, according to the complaint, which says the cops told Trakas that having a line of customers in front of a business was not a crime.
Police have been called to the scene multiple times, but the bad blood between Brandon Minton, Zoe Lazerson, and Maggie Trakas, right, remains (New York State Supreme Court)
In mid-December, the complaint says, Trakas began locking multiple bikes to the outside of her gate in such a way that intentionally blocked customers from retrieving their photos. Minton also found his truck vandalized, with Trakas allegedly having superglued shut the door locks. The only time Minton, Lazerson, and their photobooth saw a moment’s peace was during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when Trakas went out of town, according to the complaint.
On January 2, the complaint says Minton “discovered what appeared to be the frozen urine on the chair and sidewalk next to the photobooth.” He reviewed security footage from the night before and spotted Trakas in fact dumping urine onto his property from her second-floor window, the complaint states.
A few days later, a drunk Trakas smacked Minton as he was setting up the photobooth and said, “It’s Sunday, go home and f**k your b**ch,” according to the complaint. That afternoon, while Minton was installing new planter boxes outside the booth, the complaint says Trakas leaned out of her window and “poured a bucket of urine directly onto Minton’s head, causing the urine to splash onto queuing customers.”
Last week, things, astonishingly, took a turn for the worse, the complaint goes on. That morning, when Minton arrived at the photobooth, 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 all around the planter box,” along with additional fecal matter “caked onto” a board that Trakas had put up between her building and the photobooth, it says.
“The odor was so horrible that Minton could not stand near the planters without gagging,” according to the complaint.
A planter by the Old Friend Photobooth, packed full of fecal matter (New York State Supreme Court)
Minton scrolled through security video from the previous night, coming upon “disturbing” footage showing Trakas, clad in a black mask and hoodie, “plac[ing] a paint can filled with brown liquid feces on the planter box and proceeding to ‘paint’ the plywood fence with liquid feces,” the complaint alleges. “Trakas then proceeded to spray a yellow liquid onto 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 has viewed the videos in question, along with photographs of the damage from each alleged incident.
It took Minton and a helper, who donned KN-95 masks to endure the fecal stench, more than three hours to get the booth adequately clean again, according to the complaint. He and Lazerson are asking a judge to make Trakas fork over a little over $2 million, plus legal fees, and want an injunction to be issued that would formally bar Trakas from continuing to disrupt their business.
Police have been called to the scene multiple times, but while officers have taken reports, no arrests have been made.
Trakas now has 20 days to respond to the allegations.