Midtown Manhattan’s ‘8th Ave. Corridor’ plagued by junkies lying at tourists’ feet, fighting in the streets

A stretch of Midtown Manhattan has become a “strip of despair,” where smacked-out addicts shoot up, light up and conk out at the feet of commuters and tourists, locals say.

“I see a lot of things around here,” one shop owner told The Post of the so-called Eighth Avenue corridor near Penn Station, where there is a cluster of addiction clinics and homeless shelters. “Fights, drugs — oh my God — bad things.

“I don’t know if they have knives or guns,” she said, explaining how people who appear to be both extremely high and severely disturbed regularly barge into her shop near the Port Authority Bus Terminal demanding money and harassing tourists.

The corridor, which stretches for about 10 blocks from the Port Authority to Penn Station, serves as a gateway to New York City for hundreds of thousands of commuters and visitors to the Big Apple each day.

But it’s also surrounded by at least four needle exchanges and clinics, numerous homeless shelters, along with the New York State Parole Board office and other social services for mental illness and addiction.

Fed-up locals blame the cluster of services for the area turning into a hotspot for crime.