This week, three friends were having a fashion shoot in the mezzanine of a Palm Beach, Florida, building where they booked a vacation rental when they were met by a neighbor who called them “whore” and “pimp.”
The belligerent resident told the group they were “trespassing” and continuously harassed them, following them from the mezzanine to the lobby, then into the elevator, and all the way to the door of their rental on the third floor of a large residential building, where a caption on the video said the irate woman lingered for 10 minutes.
“They rent their room, not my common elements,” the woman complained to the front desk, referring to communal space in the building where she reportedly owns a unit. “You’re trespassing… on homestead property…Pimp, whore!” she yelled at the guests in a series of TikTok videos uploaded on August 18 by Polina, the woman in the group.
Polina was joined by two men, one of whom was Black, and filmed the entire ordeal, which he posted to his Instagram stories. Iris Grey bravely tried to reason with “Homestead Hattie,” as people have dubbed her in the comments on Instagram, referring to her bucket hat and insistence on calling the building her “homestead.” Sadly, she pointedly referred to Grey as a “pimp” several times.
“Where are you from, exactly?” she demanded of him, and he responded that he was from St. Louis, Missouri.
“You’re not from Florida, are you? Exactly. Maybe in Missouri you can carry on as you do, but now you’re in Florida. Pimp.”
“Does she not know the carrying on that goes on in Florida? 😩😩😩😂😂” wrote one in the comments of Instagram, followed up by jokes that “Pimpin ain’t easy…😂”
In her videos, Polina explained that she was a model, and one of her friends, Alexander Roys, had rented a unit so they could take pictures for his clothing brand. They were taking photos in the hallway, and that’s when “Homestead Hattie” busted up their “whoring event,” as the angry resident described the photo shoot.
Despite the ordeal, the group kept their cool, and Grey even took it a step further, telling her, “I’m sorry you had a messed-up day today, ma’am. I hope it gets better, and God bless you.”
“I’m all blessed the f-ck up. Stay in your f-cking room, whore, pimp,” she snapped back.
“So the workers there just let this woman continue to harass them? Like what?” wondered another. Others commended the friends for their calm demeanor and restraint in a difficult situation. “Bravo for no reaction to hateful behavior,” exclaimed one on TikTok.
“This is why I carry mace,” one person wrote.
Polina posted a follow-up saying that after the confrontation, they never saw the woman again; however, the vacation rental company acknowledged that they had received complaints from other guests about her in the past and offered Polina and her crew a free stay.
