FINANCIAL DISTRICT — A cloven-hoofed, bare-chested Hillary Clinton made a brief visit to the Financial District Tuesday — in the form of a demented-looking statue that was quickly taken down.
The figure, which includes a man peering from under the former New York senator's clothes and touching her stomach, prompted arguments on the street soon after it appeared in Bowling Green, according to posts on social media.
One clip posted Tuesday morning showed a man trying to pull the statue up from the ground while a woman sits on it to prevent him from doing so.
Adam Rule, 29, a food vendor on the plaza, said a woman had stopped the crowd who had begun to beat the statue.
"People were hitting it like a piñata," said Rule. "A lady got upset and prevented them. The lady wasn't going to have it."
Demetrius Aspinal, 22, a Bowling Green green market food vendor, heard several women who were outraged over the statue's nudity.
"A lot of women felt offended showing her body like that," said Aspinal. "I thought it was funny. To me it was just art."
Rose Lee, 23, works at the Bowling Green green market and said she thought the statue was inappropriate, describing it as "grotesque."
"It had big breasts, wide hips, big lips, there was clothing that was torn" she said. "They were exposing her."
Lee and her colleague Rigzin Dekang, 33, both expressed dismay that the statue had appeared in the center of a traffic hub during rush hour.
"I was scared," said Dekang. "This is not the place do to this."
"A lot of people are coming out of the subway and going to work," added Lee. "I thought, 'Hopefully there's not a huge riot.' Tempers were running high."
It wasn't immediately clear who put the piece in place, but it comes three months to the day after the artist group INDECLINE placed a naked Donald Trump statue in Union Square.
An NYPD spokeswoman did not have further information.
Officials with the Department of Parks and Recreation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
