Brooklyn Bed Bug Registry Infestation Maps, Residential and Hotel

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One girl in particular in the class had an issue, said the instructor, Bridgett Artise, a fashion designer and an author of 25 Ways to Deconstruct, Reinvent and Recycle Your Wardrobe. She said, I had a problem with a jacket. She said they were in the lining, so it was hard to know they were even there.

They might find a funky 1950s housedress as appetizing as a so-last-year strapless number. Obviously, these bugs do not respect economic level or social status or neighborhood they found them in Abercrombie & Fitch, said Jose Medellin, a spokesman for Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey.

And so secondhand-store buyers worry about something the size of a lentil that could have been on a pipe near the ceiling or in a book on a shelf before it made the jump to clothing or furniture that was consigned or given away. Ms. Born, a nursing student, said she had looked at pictures of bedbug bites online to see how they differed from spider bites and mosquito bites, just in case she ever needed to know.

Ms. Artise said: I only worry about newbies, new vintage shoppers. People like myself already know the telltale signs, and what to do.

The first thing I always tell people who buy vintage clothing is if they see any type of anything that looks like it might have remnants of bedbugs, put it in a plastic bag and freeze it. You keep it in there, I would say, for at least three days. It cant survive freezing. And after it thaws out, I would take it to a dry cleaner.

Lisa Slocum, a lawyer who bought a velvet coat for $33 at the City Opera Thrift Shop I just cant resist a bargain, she said lived through bedbugs a couple of years ago.

I swore if I ever bought anything in a thrift shop again, Id wrap it in plastic and take it right to the dry cleaner, Ms. Slocum said. You really do believe youll never get rid of them.

The infestation was enough for her to stop making the rounds of vintage shops for a while, even though she had no evidence they came from the stores she had frequented. Im a hard person to stop from secondhand shopping, she said as she left the City Opera shop on East 23rd Street.

Managers and clerks at vintage stores said that they were getting a lot of questions from customers but that the bedbug epidemic did not seem to be putting a dent in their business.

Ive never seen a bedbug, said Tiffany Collings, the manager at Beacons Closet, on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where party dresses sell for as little as $10. Weve never knock on wood had a problem with bedbugs, but its absolute and utter sheer luck.

Ms. Collings said some customers asked what precautions the store took. I tell them, If youre worried about bedbugs, Ive read about bedbugs. If you put clothes in a dryer under high, high heat, its supposed to kill the bugs and eggs, she said. Were looking, physically looking at clothes when a customer brings in clothing to sell, and if she saw a bedbug, she said, she would hand the item back.

Housing Works said it fumigated its stores and its processing and distribution center in Long Island City. For furniture, said Matthew Bernardo, the senior vice president for business service, Housing Works has a screening policy: someone from Housing Works inspects it at the prospective donors apartment first.

We always say when people set up for us to pick up furniture that we have the right to refuse, Mr. Bernardo said.

Mr. Medellin, the Goodwill spokesman, said Goodwill Industries sprayed all its 39 stores and its processing center.

We do not take home pickups, and we have not received any reports of bedbugs, he said. We have an ongoing contract with an exterminator. We asked them, Please, make sure that were covered for bedbugs as well.Mattresses are a particular concern, because many consider them the passport for bedbugs through the city. Gale A. Brewer, a city councilwoman who represents the Upper West Side, pressed for a ban on used and reconditioned mattresses. It turned out used mattresses were already covered under a state law passed years ago requiring that they be sanitized, thus killing any bedbugs, before they can be resold. But state regulators have yet to publish standards for accomplishing that.

I tell people given the fact that the Centers for Disease Control has declared bedbugs a pretty big menace, an epidemic, actually, and when you have an epidemic you take precautions that I dont shop in secondhand stores, Ms. Brewer said. Thats everything from the Salvation Army stores to fancy vintage-clothing stores.

And Ms. Born and the sofa at the Housing Works shop? Im not sold on it, she said.

But she did buy a $20 Zara dress.

A dress, she said, you can wash.

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Bedbugs a Worry for Scouring Shoppers at Secondhand Stores ...

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