Provocative Upper East Side vegan faces $50K suit for refusing to stop feeding pigeons: ‘It’s bulls—t’
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A provocative Upper East Side vegan — who once called humans “the shame of the earth” — is being sued by her landlord for causing a literal s–tstorm as she refuses to stop feeding pigeons outside her building.
Sharon Amram’s flighty actions have resulted in massive amounts of guano covering the fire escape and a ground-floor commercial tenant’s roof at the East 78th Street’s building, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed Wednesday.
“It’s bulls–t,” Amram, 46, told The Post on Thursday from her second-floor apartment that she’s rented since 2011.
The French-Israeli restoration artist contends she doesn’t feed the birds from her apartment, but walks across the street to a nearby synagogue and dumps bucketfuls of pricy artisanal Belgian birdseed on the sidewalk, which costs her $50 per 40-pound bag.
“Are you crazy? I don’t feed them here,” Amram, who has a pet pigeon named Kuku, claimed.
She also insisted that the birds were here long before she was — and that she’s not the only person feeding them.
Neighbors were not buying her excuses, nor was the landlord behind the suit, who said he has asked Amram several times to stop her window-side meal service.
“People are complaining all the time,” landlord Salvatore Gaudio. “It’s not sanitary.”
He said the problem started about five years ago — and he’s paid several city fines for the resultant pigeon poop.
The person most directly impacted in the s–tstorm is the small business owner directly below Amram’s window, who has seen his awning get carpeted in bird dung — prompting him to fashion a tarp-turned-diaper to stop the poop from flowing down the fire escape ladder he shares with the pigeon-lover.
His awning, caked in a heavy patina of pigeon poop, would cost about $20,000 to replace, he said.
“I see her feed the birds every f–king day,” said the owner of the downstairs dry cleaning shop, Tony, who’s been at his spot for 24 years.
“The health department doesn’t give a s–t.”
He said that he has to clean his tarp-diaper once a week or so as it fills up with dark, dried-up pigeon poop, knocking it with a broom handle and sweeping up the fecal fracas.
Somehow, pigeons have found their way into his basement, forcing him to prop up a decoy owl to scare them off. A discerning eye can see the false owl is a sort-of mascot for the block.
In the cooler months, he used to keep his front door open. Not anymore, now that a strong wind means piles of bird feathers rushing into his shop.
“God knows how many health issues I’m gonna have.”
Tony thought the suit won’t amount to much. “She’s never going to stop feeding them,” he said of Amram.
Once a militant vegan, Amram has made statements on her old YouTube page that, “if you (sic) not vegan you are the devil simple as it is.”
The former PETA activist now says she doesn’t care if people eat meat and “turn [their] stomach into a cemetery” — but still views the world as black-and-white.
“There are two kinds of people,” she said, “haters and blessers.”
She says the birds are just following their favorite human home.
“They know I live here,” she said. “They’re thinking: why is she here in the house, why she doesn’t come and feed us?”
The landlord’s suit asks for an emergency restraining order prohibiting her from feeding the birds – and a judgment of at least $50,000.
In addition to the fire escape being covered in poop, it’s also filled with heavy looking statues, old mirrors with gilded frames and other debris.
With a newborn in an upstairs apartment, the property owner said the situation makes him very nervous.
“I don’t care about the money,” Guadio said, “I’m worried about the tenants’ safety.”
Amram, who once served with the Israeli Defense Forces, said those numerous items on her fire escape — all covered in layers of bird poop and visible in older photos submitted with court documents — were just put there recently and temporarily.
She was previously in the news for a provocative poster hung from her window overlooking a busy Second Avenue with the messages “Flat Gaza NOW” and “Kill Them All” scrawled in red paint. On Thursday, only one small sign remained, comparing Hamas to ISIS.
“I didn’t take them down,” Amram said, “they just fell.”
While Amram’s apartment’s exterior resembles a poop palace, inside it’s her own take on Versailles — if it were a railroad apartment.
Filled with furniture gleaned from ritzy estate sales — like French tables and desks dating back to the 18th and 19th-Centuries — Amram said she spent the last seven years painting, gilding and adding moldings to her spot.
She declined to say how much she pays in rent, but units in the 5-story building have recently gone for $3,000 a month.
But its not all gilding and mirrors inside — Amram shares the home with Kuku, the 5-year-old pet pigeon she took in after finding her wounded and bleeding on the sidewalk.
Pigeons, Amram said, “need help — they’re not just birds that they can live, la, la, la, from the air.”
“So if you’re a hater,” she continued, “and if you like animals and the nature … stop to complain and respect the nature, and stop to be snobs — that you are better than everyone else — because animals are equal to humans.”