An Upper East Side co-op is suing one of its residents because his guests allegedly smoke so much marijuana it makes other residents' apartments smell like, well, pot. And also because one time a lady maybe had sex on the 36-story Fontaine building's roof. "They probably did have sex," the subject of the suit, Richard Kempter, told the News. But he says the problem isn't that his friends were fornicating and smoking reefer—the real issue is that his friends are black.
"I think there’s a racial issue here," says Kempter, who lives in a one-bedroom on the East 72nd Street building's eighth floor. "This is a very racist neighborhood." And in case what he is implying wasn't clear enough, he spelled it out for the Post: "My visitors are black. I think it's a race issue. It's an all-white building."
The co-op's $15,000 suit (plus legal damages) has two big complaints about Kempter and his guests. First? Apparently the partying—which residents blame on Kepter's "stepson," though he denies even having one—can get quite intense: "[I]t is 10:45 p.m. and my apartment smells like a party was going on," one neighbor wrote to the building's management. And that's not even the worst of it. They also said that "once, I opened my dishwasher on a clean load of dishes and the smell was overwhelming." The horror!
"The smell of VERY strong marijuana is wafting in through the vent in the bathroom and the stench goes right to my bedroom. This is so offensive, you have no idea," another complained in the suit. Well, at least it wasn't a waterfall of human waste?
The other big issue the co-op seems to be upset about is the time in October of 2010 when a guest of Kempter, identified as "Chrissy," was allegedly caught on security cameras going up to the building's roof to engage in "lewd" behavior. Which Kempter isn't even denying, saying it happened years ago. And as for the pot? "Plenty of other residents smoke pot and cigarettes in the hallways," he says. The hallways? On the UES? Really? The stairwells we might believe...
