‘The horse guys hate to see me coming’: Viral TikTokers are taking on Central Park’s horse-drawn carriages

For more than 150 years, horse-drawn carriages have been a fixture in Manhattan’s Central Park. Now, a growing online movement is trying to push them out.

“Pure joy—the feeling I have when I ruin the sale of a horse carriage guy,” Kristina Papilion, who posts under the handle @spare_time_gurl, said in a video posted last month. “The horse guys hate to see me coming,” she added in another.

Papilion never intended to become a “horsefluencer,” as she calls her now-viral series. A New York City local who visits the park almost daily, she felt compelled to speak out after a carriage horse named Lady collapsed and died last month.

“At the end of July, I was in California when I recorded a video about how the industry needs to end,” Papilion tells Fast Company. “I decided to wait and re-record when I got back to New York, thinking it would carry more weight. But before I even could, Lady collapsed and died on 11th Avenue. That’s when I posted—the same day she died.”

Lady’s death has revived a long-running debate over an industry some see as a tourist draw and others as animal abuse. (Fast Company has reached out to the Transport Workers Union for comment.)

Since then, Papilion has made it her mission to educate tourists about carriage horses and push back against handlers who, she says, work them during periods of extreme heat. While the drivers may resent her, many commenters cheer her on. “Girl, thank you for what you’re doing,” one wrote. “You’re literally my hero,” added another.

“My hope is that the more people see how outdated and cruel this practice is, the harder it becomes to ignore,” Papilion tells Fast Company. “If the videos push things in the right direction, it’s worth every aggressive run-in.”

Papilion is not the only influencer using their platform to speak up about the practice. “This is the type of shit that pisses me the fuck off,” TikToker Dylan Kevitch remarked in a video posted last month as he biked through Central Park. “Just give me five seconds.”

A few seconds later, he rode past a carriage pulled by a white horse. “Put the fucking horse back in the fucking barn,” he shouted at the handler. The clip has since gained 2.6 million views.

“I go to Central Park almost every day to ride a bike, and it kills me to see these adorable horses in the beating sun,” Kevitch tells Fast Company. “I wanted to take advantage of my platform and use my voice.”

Lady’s death comes three years after another high-profile death of a carriage horse named Ryder. The horse’s death spurred Ryder’s Law, a bill introduced in 2022 to phase out and ban horse-drawn carriages in the city by 2026.

For the first time, the Central Park Conservancy has thrown its support behind the bill, arguing in a recent letter to the City Council that the horse carriages have become a public safety concern in an increasingly crowded park. This comes after the third horse this year got spooked and bolted without anyone at the reins.