Saturday, August 26, 2006

How to bag a bargain on Canal St.

Weekend hunt for knockoff purses
Cloak and dagger adventure in New York

Who'd have thought that a hunt for a knockoff purse on Canal St. would turn into a cloak-and-dagger operation filled with dank alleyways, windowless rooms and a near-brush with the police?

I knew Canal St. was the place to go for fashionable knockoffs at great prices. But in the two years since I was last there, the whole industry seems to have gone more underground. On this trip, I discovered the back rooms and hidden warehouses where the most coveted stash is sold.

If you've never been to this part of the Big Apple, be prepared for a bizarre bazaar. Canal St. from Chinatown to Little Italy is chockabloc with narrow stalls where vendors sell handbags, perfume, sunglasses, scarves, watches and jewellery. The streets are crammed with bargain hunters, mostly tourists, who barter with hucksters for the bootleg bargains. This is where you'll find "Prahda" handbags or Tiffany-style bracelets sans the jeweller's logo.

But behind some of these storefronts are hidden passageways to secret rooms. This is where you find the blatant knockoffs - the ``pleather'' Prada and the stainless steel Tiffany-stamped jewellery.

I was on a chicks' weekend with five friends and set off for Canal St. with my New York buddy, Maureen, who knew of a good place for knockoffs. We entered a storefront venue where she told the vendor she wanted to see what else they had for sale.

Maureen and I were led to a secret hideaway behind the store, through three doorways separated by dank, concrete passageways. Creepy would be an understatement. Here, we found a throng of shoppers, checking out hundreds of pleather purses hanging from metal hooks on the wall. The labels included Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana and Coach.

The dimly lit room was unbearably hot. The Chinese woman doing the sales had a toddler in tow.

Maureen picked out a Coach Optic Signature Shoulder Tote that was on sale for $35 (all prices U.S.) She got the vendor down to $30. At a Fifth Ave. store, the same bags retails for $400.

The next day I returned with an order from one of the chicks who wanted the identical bag. Sarah and I went to the same muggy location where we found the same woman and little boy. They were sold out of the Coach bag so we headed back outside.

We were approached by a multitude of men and women, who sidled up to us, whispering: "Prada? Chanel? Gucci?" They showed us laminated photos of the bags and motioned for us to follow them. We brushed them off, but after having no luck in my search for the signature Coach tote, we decided to see what they had.

"Follow me," a Chinese woman said. She led us a couple of blocks down the street and across the road where we were handed over to her sister. Both had walkie-talkies, which they used to signal ahead to a warehouse and to lookouts on the way.

We were taken to an unmarked metal door, which was unlocked to reveal a long, dark, rickety staircase.

"Where on earth are they taking us?" a mystified Sarah asked.

"To join the international sex slave trade," I replied, only half joking.

On the second-floor landing, we were passed off to a young man. He led us down a dark hallway lined with storage rooms and opened the door to one of these windowless rooms.

Purse nirvana. The pseudo showroom was brimming with such labels as Kate Spade, Gucci and Fendi. There looked to be hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise dangling from the walls. Of course, it was all contraband. We found the Coach bag we wanted. It came with a matching change purse and we got it for $37.

Sarah and I hadn't set out to buy purses for ourselves, but we couldn't resist the offerings. I got a black Prada shoulder tote for $30 while Sarah picked up a lovely green-and-white Prada clutch for the same price.

Getting out of the warehouse was no easy feat. We had to follow an escort to the bottom of the staircase and were told to be very, very quiet. She received a transmission on her walkie-talkie and a look of alarm crossed her face.

"The police are outside. Run back upstairs," she whispered. We scurried back into the storage room and waited a few minutes until a scout radioed our escort to tell her the coast was clear.

Returning to Canada few days later, Sarah was stopped by Canada Customs at Pearson Airport. Her new Prada bag was the red flag that got her pulled over.

The officer grilled her about whether her Coach was authentic or whether she bought it on Canal St. The answer was obvious when he struggled with the zipper of the bag. She was waved through.

The French and Italian governments introduced legislation last year that makes it a crime to buy fake goods but that's not the case in New York. It's only a crime to sell the merchandise there. Still, police, politicians and manufacturers have stepped up efforts to crack down on bootleggers. But they've responded by taking the trade more underground, into a labyrinth of secret tunnels and backrooms of Canal St.

Guilt set in when I began my research into the counterfeit goods trade to write this story. The consequences are more far-reaching than lost tax revenue. While they may look like mom-and-pop operations on Canal St., it's been argued that this contraband trade has ties to organized crime, the drug trade and even terrorism.

A New York Times article described the connection to sweatshop labour. It told of a private investigator specializing in trademark infringements who happened upon a tiny door hidden behind some boxes at the back of a Canal St. store.

Opening it, he discovered an elderly man locked in a cramped, sweltering room.

Working off a debt to a smuggler, the old man was sitting on a stool, labelling counterfeit purses. In the 43C degree heat, he was wearing only underwear and a T-shirt. There was a jug in the tiny room that he used as a toilet.

While it's nice to have a fashionable knockoff, you have to wonder who's left holding the bag.

Source: thestar.com

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