William Leroy (born in Amiens, France), also known as Billy Leroy, is an American reality television personality, actor, businessman and appraiser. He was the owner of store "Billy's Antiques and Props" on the Lower East Side of New York City. In 2023 he lives in Greenpoint Brooklyn.
Leroy was born in France and grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. In 1979, at the age of 19, Leroy graduated from the Williston Northampton School. [1] Leroy stars in the Lower Eastside cult movie Dirty Old Town. [2] He is married to Canadian American singer and songwriter Lorraine Leckie, who also appears in the movie.
Leroy's store, Billy's Antiques, was known for being the "last holdout of the old Bowery". [3] Leroy is also known for his unique economic policy - accepting only Euros during the plummeting value of the American dollar in 2008. [4] [5] [6]
Leroy appeared regularly on the American docu-reality show Baggage Battles produced by The Travel Channel from 2012 to 2014 and shown in 23 countries. [7]
Leroy starred in the movie Bourek. [8] In 2021 Leroy stars as the host of the new Discovery series Billy Buys Brooklyn [9]
A variety store is a retail store that sells general merchandise, such as apparel, auto parts, dry goods, toys, hardware, furniture, and a selection of groceries. It usually sells them at discounted prices, sometimes at one or several fixed price points, such as one dollar, or historically, five and ten cents. Variety stores, as a category, are different from general merchandise superstores, hypermarkets, warehouse clubs, grocery stores, or department stores.
Blockbuster Video was an American video rental store chain. It was founded by David Cook in 1985 as a stand-alone mom-and-pop home video rental shop, but later grew into a national store chain featuring video game rentals, DVD-by-mail, streaming, video on demand, and cinema theater. The company expanded internationally throughout the 1990s. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster employed 84,300 people worldwide and operated 9,094 stores.
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Dirty Jobs is an American television series that originally aired on the Discovery Channel in which host Mike Rowe is shown performing difficult, strange, disgusting, or messy occupational duties alongside the job's current employees. The show, produced by Pilgrim Films & Television, premiered with three pilot episodes in November 2003. It returned as a series on July 26, 2005, running for eight seasons until September 12, 2012. The show's setting was refocused in Australia for the final season, called Dirty Jobs Down Under. A spinoff miniseries titled Dirty Jobs: Rowe'd Trip premiered on July 7, 2020. The original series returned on January 2, 2022.
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