The Big Apple may now have to be referred to as The Big Bottom with upskirters on the loose

New York: Cops fear that a wave of copycat perverts will hide video cameras around Manhattan to peek up women’s skirts, as authorities hunt the twisted creep who planted one under an Upper East Side subway grate this week.

And a professional pornographer warned it would be “a cinch” for so-called “upskirters” to film around town.

“I think it would be very easy in a city like Manhattan, where it’s very crowded and no one’s really paying attention to what people are doing,” said Mark Kulkis, owner of Kick Ass Pictures and a former Manhattanite.

Police have retrieved grainy images of what appears to be a school recital in an auditorium from the video camera found on Tuesday under a subway grate on Lexington Avenue at East 88th Street. Technical experts hope to enhance the images to identify the school, and potentially question parents as they cast a wide net to catch the sicko who planted the camera.

Police were also questioning workers of a contracting company doing electrical work for NYC Transit below the grate. One cop warned, “We might have opened a can of worms.”

“I believe there’s going to be a lot of copycats.”

The Internet has thousands of images peaking up the skirts of unsuspecting women, who can be seen walking up escalators, bending down at the supermarket to select groceries, or sitting cross-legged while lunching in a park.

One of dozens of Web sites devoted to “upskirting” brags, “Nothing escapes our shoe-cams and bag-cams.”

Last year, cops nabbed an “upskirter” caught using a camera to shoot up an unsuspecting woman’s skirt on an escalator at Roosevelt Field mall on Long Island – and then found photos of several women’s thighs and underwear in the camera.