Find a tourist spot in town and you might just as well find a Crown Heights exterminator and a floor care specialist from Elmhurst, Queens, with their 12-foot-long, 50-pound albino python, Sunshine, or Big Boy, a boa constrictor measuring nearly three yards in length. And a couple more snakes, too.And for $10, or maybe less, you can get a photo with the reptiles swung over your neck at say, Times Square or South Street Seaport or Battery Park City.
Queens Snake guys introduce tourists to civil serpents
"Snakes got a bad rap because of Adam and Eve. We're trying do them a service," said Dewey Dawson, 52, who concealed his love of the slithering creatures as a kid in Brooklyn.
One day at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, his world changed. He ran into former Mayor Ed Koch, with snakes wrapped around him, all supplied by some Coney Island entrepreneurs.
"That blew me away! I was like, that's the mayor. Everything is okay. I can bring 'em out! I can do that too!" said Dawson. A licensed exterminator, he took to the streets with his new snake business in 1984.
Dawson and partner Mike Richardson, of Elmhurst, said tourists are either gingerly entranced or they flee. Their mission - expel the fear.
1 comment:
Awesome! These two guys should be able to generate enough tax revenue for the city to cover the loss of tax revenue from the big investment banks!
Post a Comment