A Brooklyn real estate agent was fired after reportedly hurling a string of racial slurs at a bouncer outside a Bushwick bar.
Chris Giardina, 29, an agent with MySpace NYC, called the black bouncer and another man outside House of Yes various epithets, including the N-word, video of the encounter cited by the New York Post shows.
“Touch me again you f—ing n–r,” Giardina shouted at the bouncer, according to cell phone footage. He then turned to another man shooting the video, and said a slur against Latinos: “Yeah I said it, ‘cause he’s punching me you f––ing s–c.”
The agent had tried calling the police on the bouncer, alleging that he struck Giardina for exiting out the wrong door. When reached by the Post, the agent said he was drunk at the time of the video, but said he wasn’t a racist because someone used the N-word first.
“The word that I used, that I’m embarrassed by using, was being thrown around the entire time. It was already in the air,” he told the newspaper. “It doesn’t make me a racist; it makes me an idiot.”
MySpace’s Shawn Mullahy said he was “embarrassed and saddened” by the video, and that Giardina had been fired over it.
The brokerage has lost several agents in the past few years. MySpace saw the sharpest decline in agent count among Brooklyn brokerages from June 14, 2016 to February 20, 2018, according to a recent analysis by The Real Deal. The company lost 63 agents, representing a 44 percent drop. [NYP] — Kathryn Brenzel