A Washington woman was caught on camera berating a gay man getting a pedicure in a Seattle area nail salon, including referring to him by anti-gay slurs.
Christopher Brown was visiting the Casabella Spa & Nails in Lynnwood, Wash., north of Seattle, on Dec. 30, KOMO News reported Tuesday.
A female customer reportedly came into the salon and began having a loud conversation on speakerphone with her daughter while sitting in a pedicure chair a few feet from Brown.
{mosads}“When I asked her to take her phone off speaker, she looked at me, looked back at her phone call, and then said, hold on, let me take care of this f—–, and then hung up her phone,” Brown told the outlet. That’s when he started recording the woman on his cell phone.
“Let’s call 911 and let’s just get it over with because you’re harassing me for no reason, telling me not to be on the phone,” the woman said.
The unidentified customer tells an employee not seen on camera that she would leave the salon if Brown is not asked to go.
“Either he goes, or I go,” the woman said multiple times, adding that she had been a customer at the nail salon for several years.
When Casabella staff refused to order Brown out of the salon, the woman on video stands up and collects her things, saying she should “show him [her] parts” because he probably wishes he had them.
As she makes her way to the door, the woman began hurling anti-gay insults at Brown.
“Keep recording, sissy,” she can be heard saying. “F—–, sissy, queer. Eat my p—-.”
A staff member from the nail salon told KOMO News that Brown was polite during the entire exchange.
Brown, a gay man, told the station that he was in “complete disbelief and shock.”
He said he moved to Seattle from Indiana because of the city’s reputation of being inclusive, telling HuffPost that he “couldn’t fathom something like this would happen in the safe haven of Seattle metro.”
He posted the video on Facebook which received a flood of national attention and more than 341,000 views as of Thursday.
“It took about a week of not sleeping, a week of anxiety, a week of worrying what would happen if I didn’t act, for me to finally step up,” Brown told KOMO.
The woman in the video has not been identified by local media.
“I wouldn’t want to cause any undo harm on her life,” he said. “I would just want her to come to light with what she said, realize that those views are not okay and that you can’t treat people like that.”
Brown credits the employees at the nail salon for acting with “tact.”
“They were very kind, caring, supportive and reassured me her attitude is not reflective of their views as a business,” he told HuffPost.