Metro

There’s a Pokémon in my restaurant, and business is booming

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L'Inizio Pizza manager Sean Benedetti (from left), with co-owners Tom Blaze L'Attanzio and Anna Maria Riccardi, holds his phone with the Pokeman Go app, which has brought an increase of business to their restaurant.Matthew McDermott
A Pinsir Pokemon lurks in New York's Union Square on July 11, 2016.Chad Rachman
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Alexis Gines tries to catch a Staryu Pokemon on New York's Fifth Avenue on July 11, 2017.Chad Rachman
Jen Theren, from Long Island City, Queens, plays Pokemon with her daughter Natalie, 3, as they eat pizza at L'Inizio restaurant.Matthew McDermott
Steven Mirabile, 43, from Brooklyn plays Pokemon Go at L'Inizio pizza restaurant in Queens.Matthew McDermott
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A Pokemon appears on the screen next to a woman as a man plays the augmented reality mobile game Pokemon Go by Nintendo in Bryant Park in New York City.Reuters
Theodore Belizaire plays Pokemon Go in Times Square.Reuters
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Pokémania is running wild throughout New York, as players of the world’s hottest video-game app go on scavenger hunts that include trespassing, office feuds and walking head-on into poles.

The Pokémon Go game is even helping some city pizzerias roll in the dough as owners figure out ways to rig the game to draw in business.

“The amount of people has been astonishing,” said Tom Lattanzio, the owner of L’inizio Pizza Bar in Long Island City, Queens. “All day long, from afternoon to evening this past weekend.”

L’inizio’s manager, Sean Benedetti, says he paid $10 to have a dozen of the Pokémon characters lured to the store. It drew in so many players, the shop’s business went up 75 percent.

“We had people come down, sit down and get a couple beers and play the Pokémon game,” Benedetti told The Post.

The free app is one of a new breed of augmented-reality games, in which players use their phones’ GPS to travel around the real world while interacting with virtual characters.

The game — which has rocketed to the top of the App Store and which has boosted Nintendo’s stock price 25 percent — has become a craze on the level of the Hula Hoop and the Pet Rock. It’s even created a new lexicon understood only by players.

Gamers wander around in the real world to locations like parks, stores, sidewalks — anywhere, really — viewing the world through their phone screens and looking for Pokémon characters to place in their “Pokédex.”

Dozens of players roamed through Central Park on Monday looking for “gyms,” where players are able to train their Pokémon characters and battle other teams.

Dana Rosa, 20, told The Post she was proud to be a Central Park gym leader after she took the title from one of her co-workers.

“Some guy walked . . . into my job bragging about how he’s the gym leader for the park across the street from here and telling everyone not to touch his gym,” she said. “So on my lunch break, I rolled up and dominated it.”

Meanwhile, multiple New Yorkers claimed to break the law just to capture Pokémon.

“My friend jumped over a fence onto a private property and had to explain to the cops that it was to catch a Pikachu,” said 19-year-old Nick Luisi.

The MTA sent out a tweet with a two-headed bird character from the game that was standing too close to subway tracks. “We know you gotta catch ’em all,” it wrote, using the Pokémon catchphrase. “But stay behind that yellow line when in the subway.”

The NYPD also got in on the action, tweeting a picture of an officer from the 19th Precinct standing in the game screen with his arm over Pikachu, Pokémon’s yellow mouse-like mascot.

People walking around town looking at their phones and playing the game are getting hurt.

“I haven’t been paying attention,” said Frankie Salas, 35. “On 14th Street, there was a pole and I hit into it. I didn’t even know it was there.”

People are playing Pokémon Go in other inappropriate places: 

Additional reporting by Tom O’Connor