This park has questionable “morels.”
A half-dozen drug dealers are brazenly peddling psilocybin mushrooms from makeshift stalls in Washington Square Park — a new low for the beleaguered green space that has been marred in recent years by addicts, vagrants, and bloody violence thanks to increasingly lax enforcement, frustrated residents, and sources told The Post.
This week, makeshift tabletops draped with tie-dyes blankets and psychedelic printings were covered with the usual illicit fare of pre-rolled joints and weed-infused edibles — but also jars and ziplock bags stuffed with knobby, dried-out shrooms.
Aggressive vendors barked out prices of their trippy supply — “I got shrooms, $40 for an eighth!” one hollered — while stunned tourists, unsuspecting college students, and silver-haired residents navigated the maze of psychedelia sellers, amid a thick haze of ganja smoke.
A baby-faced dealer who went by the name “Euphoria” called out to a reporter from his bench-side set-up near the statue of 19th-century Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi, offering $40 for an eighth-ounce of the strain “Penis Envy” that he displayed in mason jars for all to see.
The mellow interaction, however, turned violent when a photographer began asking about documenting the shrooms.
“I don’t want to have to kick your ass,” the salesman warned, before bolting off with his supply.
Another dealer, who called himself “A.” explained that he and his partner began selling shrooms in Washington Square Park at the beginning of the year when they realized more people were pining for the funky fungi.
“A lot of people asked for them,” A. insisted, adding that the number of dealers openly hawking the trippy supply at stalls has mushroomed over the past two years.
“When weed got legal, mushrooms took its place.”
Psilocybin is a Schedule 1 narcotic in New York State, and drug dealers could face felony charges for selling a gram of the drug, with up to 25 years in jail.
But state lawmakers introduced legislation earlier this year to legalize psilocybin, and researchers have found the hallucinogen can help with treating mental health illnesses like depression and addiction.
Albert Garcia-Romeu, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine studying the effects of psilocybin, warned that taking shrooms randomly bought on the street is much different from ingesting the measured doses given out in research trials’ controlled settings — and could lead to serious health and safety issues.
“When you’re taking the drugs in an uncontrolled setting, it’s like drinking too much and being out in a foreign city,” he said. “People can take advantage of you, you can get in an accident. People have strong emotional reactions that are hard to predict, so in doing it in an uncontrolled space, there can be a number of problems.”
Law enforcement in the meantime didn’t appear to make much effort to crack down on the flagrant drug dealing in Washington Square Park.
Over the course of an afternoon this week, a pair of Parks Enforcement Patrol officers only briefly spoke with one vendor whose signs advertised shrooms, telling him simply to keep his joints hidden from public view.
Several pairs of uniformed NYPD officers walked past the sea of dealers — including one who touted an open brown box lined with bags of dried shrooms.
“The police and the PEP officers are supposed to do stuff about it, but they don’t,” said exasperated longtime resident Steven Hill, 70. “They walk right past and they don’t do a damn thing.”
Outraged locals meanwhile worry that the unchecked sales will only lead to further helter-skelter.
“It’s not even a slippery slope anymore — it’s full-on black ice,” one fed-up 56-year-old Greenwich Village resident told The Post.
“It’s dangerous, and it feels more dangerous every day.”
During the height of the pandemic, the park devolved into a hotbed of drug use and chaos, with its northwest corner devolving into a hub for heroin and crack users.
For days on end, booze-fueled ragers and fight clubs last well into the early morning hours, terrifying residents who woke up to walk their dogs in the trashed green space.
The brazen drug sales also are coming just weeks after a 35-year-old man was stabbed to death inside the park — likely the first in decades — putting many residents in the historically free-spirited neighborhood on edge.
“It’s a clear and present danger if people are taking psychedelic drugs in a non-controlled environment,” said actor and Greenwich Village resident Bob Hardy, 64.
“I have elderly neighbors that tell me to be careful when I come to the park. They don’t come…because they feel it’s dangerous. I don’t come here after dark.”
NYPD data shows felony assault is up 30 percent so far this year in the 6th Precinct, which covers the park, compared to the same time period in 2022.
Total major crimes this year are on track to exceed those for 2019 by a staggering 29.6%.
“No cops are gonna do anything,” park regular Chris Faye, 70, said about the pandemonium. “They were told to back off and let the criminals do whatever and let the honest people live in fear.”
Law enforcement experts meanwhile worry if the loose regulations persist, it’s only a matter of time until the dealers escalate to selling even harder, deadlier drugs from their open-air stalls.
“This is ‘broken windows’ theory in practice. [Police officers] are not addressing it, so they’re going to get more brazen, they’re going to get braver. Like, ‘Hey, no one’s stopping us, let’s sell other stuff,’” said Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former investigator with the NYPD’s vice squad.
“We used to call it the underground economy, but it’s not underground, it’s right in the open,” he added. “What used to be something that they hid from the police, now it’s just out in the open. That’s indicative of how bold these criminals are becoming.”
