(Photo:@qedastoria on Instagram)
THE GOTHAM GOOSE | thegothamgoose@gmail.com
At 7:22 one morning, a man stopped outside QED Astoria, purposely spilled his drink onto a sidewalk with chalk drawings and dragged his foot across it attempting to erase it. Then, as QED’s owner described on Instagram from security footage after several incidents, he looked toward the camera and gave it the finger. The chalk announced an art camp for children ages four to eight.
I don’t know what goes through a person’s head that early besides the strong desire to actually drink the coffee. I do know what Hannah Lieberman was doing there. She draws QED’s upcoming events on the sidewalk herself, meeting neighbors, talking to kids and petting passing dogs while she works. For a business that hosts many events each month, chalk is a fun way to advertise. For Hannah, it’s also a way to be part of the block. QED is easy to call a comedy club, but that doesn’t cover it. There are stand-up shows and open mics alongside storytelling, children’s programs, book clubs and fundraisers. Kambri Crews built the place in 2014. When she announced in 2024 that she planned to close unless someone took it over, neighbors responded like they might be losing a national landmark. Fortunately, Hannah, a comedian who had performed and produced shows there, bought it in 2025 and kept it going.
Chalk is supposed to disappear eventually. The issue is a person choosing to come back and erase this woman’s work, then turning his attention to her online and in her security camera to harass her.
Hannah says the erasing went on through the summer. This was not his first reported confrontation with QED. Former owner Kambri Crews says the same man was arrested in 2024 or 2025 after putting Trump stickers on the venue’s windows and damaging them. Crews says she passed documentation from that incident to Hannah. He was returning to a business he had targeted before.
She says two neighbors who confronted the man heard him object to QED’s “We Stand With Immigrant Families” poster. I haven’t spoken to those neighbors, so I can’t tell you what he meant by pointing toward the wall. Hannah has made clear that her support for immigrant families isn’t going away.
As Gotham Goose, I run an Astoria satire page and serve as a self-appointed public nuisance as a native-transplant waterfowl™, poking at neighborhood absurdities and local politics. Before the feathers, I needled employers while organizing a labor union, making memes to get people talking and signing union cards. I know the thrill of getting under someone’s skin. Unfortunately for him, the neighborhood has a goose with a column.
Sometimes there’s a cause; sometimes something is just stupid and deserves a laugh. But as a self-appointed representative of honorable and proud trolls, I object to this man’s branding. Repeatedly targeting someone just because you don’t agree with their politics isn’t a joke. It’s pathetic bullying dressed up as trolling. I recognize the appetite for a reaction, though. Attention can turn even criticism into a prize. If every post becomes a debate about his latest provocation, he gets to set the agenda for a place he doesn’t run. Even by writing this piece and knowing that trolls don’t deserve attention, I recognize he’s probably loving every minute of it.
Hannah found a better use for that attention. On September 18, she invited Astorians to a chalk-a-thon. Kids, artists and neighbors covered the block with drawings. She baked cookies and says they raised more than $250 for the Queens Community Defense Fund, which supports families affected by immigration enforcement. What began as one person’s attempt to remove a message became a larger, brighter version of it. The next day the “Chalk Vandal” returned but faced a sidewalk full of chalk. Footage of him trying and failing to erase it made the rounds and drew laughs.
There is an almost absurd lesson in that. If the aim was to make QED’s support for immigrant families less visible, the result was a sidewalk full of neighbors and a fundraiser for those families. He could erase a drawing. He couldn’t erase the people who came to make another one.
Facebook posts from an account many have already identified as his include insults, a sarcastic claim that QED hired him for publicity and his bogus claim that he is being “doxxed” after his performance on camera. The account then mockingly called her “Hannah Leibersteinshitz,” an alteration many would consider blatantly antisemitic. The other names he used aren’t appropriate to put in this column. Hannah says she made police reports.
After the Facebook posts, she says an officer told her that if she asked him to stop naming her and QED and he continued, she might have a harassment case. She made that request; he changed her name to a crude sexual insult, she says, and she could not reach that officer again. Instead, she says, a detective told her they were “both being petty,” suggested she stop making chalk art and dismissed her concern about antisemitism. I have not heard the detective’s account.
An investigator can decide whether any law applies. But after Hannah followed an officer’s suggested step and reported another insult, suggesting she stop advertising events outside her own business misses the pattern she asked the precinct to examine. No wonder neighbors were angry.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even commented on Hannah’s post that the situation was unacceptable and said her office would contact the 114th Precinct to help keep people safe. That is a welcome response. What happens next matters more than the comment: Hannah deserves to have the full sequence heard and assessed seriously.
The rest of us have a part that doesn’t require learning the man’s name or visiting his page. Go to a show at QED. Bring a friend to a free event. Buy a drink (for me too). Support the Queens Community Defense Fund if you can. Let Hannah know that the place she helped save matters to the neighborhood.
And if you walk past a fresh chalk drawing outside, take a moment to look at what’s on. It might lead you into a room full of people you didn’t know were your neighbors.
From one troll to another: thanks for the publicity. You tried to erase QED’s message and helped raise money for the families it supports. The chalk will wash away. You can’t undo the crowd you brought to that sidewalk—You mad bro? Honk.
