Squeegee men, scourge of the ‘90s, are back in New York
By Sam Raskin and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
New York Post
February 16, 2020
Just when you thought they were washed up, the notorious squeegee men are streaking back to Big Apple streets.
The panhandling window-washers, who became the face of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s quality-of-life crackdown in the 1990s, were back peddling their spotty services in Manhattan over the weekend.
A trio of the in-your-face glass swabbers were spotted plying their trade on 40th Street and Ninth Avenue on Sunday — figures from the annals of New York City history that some folks weren’t in the mood for.
“Get out of the road!” yelled Randy Brechler, 62, a tourist from Florida, as he disembarked a cab. “This is a way of just panhandling. It’s forcing people to do something they don’t want to do.”
Wife Helen Brechler, 55, called the situation “scary.”
“I think it’s nerve-wracking to have somebody to come up to your car, especially in today’s world.”
Overly aggressive window washers were a mainstay of city intersections in the 1980s and 1990s, squirting car windows at stoplights without permission — and at times terrorizing motorists by threatening to break windows or windshield wipers if they didn’t receive a tip.
Giuliani used the windshield cleaners as a symbol of the general disregard for law and order when he took office in 1994 — and made them a focus of his bid to improve the quality of life in the city.
Then-NYPD Commissioner William Bratton deployed New York’s Finest to get the pesky beggars back on the sidewalk.
A city law passed in 1996 elevated aggressive panhandling from a violation to a misdemeanor — though it also acknowledged individuals’ constitutional right to beg “in a peaceful and non-threatening manner.”
The crackdown all but cleaned up the squeegee men, although there have been occasional sightings over the years.
One window-washing beggar remained so prolific that he had nearly 180 busts for aggressive panhandling by 2014.
Locals said the squeegee men spotted this weekend have been on the block since September, appearing mostly on weekends.
One of the window washers told The Post the part-time gig actually brings in more than the minimum-wage job he once had.
“I make enough. More than minimum wage,” said the man, who declined to give his name. “That’s a fact. I’m a vet, so I get money every month. I had a construction job.”
His partner in grime, who also declined to give his name, said they are generally left alone by cops — and when they are shooed along, as they were by Port Authority police Sunday, they just wait and come back when the gumshoes are gone.
“The mayor don’t want to f–k with us,” the second man said. “This is nothing. Washing windows, asking for an honest buck. It’s nothing.
“They can’t lock us up for our s–t. We’re just supporting ourselves.”
Most folks in the neighborhood didn’t have a problem with them.
“If you’re trying to make a living, and they’re doing it in a legitimate way … that’s fine,” said Will Turner, 48. “I can’t knock somebody for trying to make a dollar.”
Resident Marc Kalter agreed.
“This is New York,” he said. “This is something I’m familiar with. You didn’t see it for a while, and now it’s starting again. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it matters.”
Panhandling is legal unless beggars physically touch a person or car, block passage or prevent access to an ATM, according to city law.
NYPD officials did not respond to a request for comment.
A police source blamed 2017 criminal justice reforms for emboldening the rogue rag men.
“We don’t even arrest people for pissing in the street anymore, why would we arrest a squeegee guy?” a police source griped.
“They know they won’t get arrested, so why wouldn’t they come back?”
__________
Return of squeegee men a sign of the decline of de Blasio’s New York
By Bob McManus
New York Post
February 18, 2020
What goes around, comes around — including that venerable symbol of pre-Giuliani municipal disorder, the squeegee man.
So what’s next, trashed autos in West Side Highway pull-off alcoves, no wheels, sitting on cinder blocks and waiting endlessly for a city tow truck?
Hey, why not?
When French tourists can be slashed randomly in Harlem, when double-digit index crime increases are the new normal, and with subway cars serving as rolling homeless shelters, Midtown sidewalk traffic impeded by peddlers’ blankets and public spaces everywhere crammed with aggressive panhandlers, why wouldn’t there be squeegee men in busy intersections — like there were over the past weekend, around the approaches to the Lincoln Tunnel.
Though it’s not just over the weekend, it seems: Neighborhood folks say they’ve been there for some time.
Again, why not? Disorder unresisted is disorder triumphant — or soon to become so. And Bill de Blasio — ideologically blinkered and epically lazy — has shown no appetite whatsoever for pushing back.
Squeegee men essentially are extortionists: They shmush dirty water on your windshield, sort of wipe it off, hold out a hand for a “tip” and are as likely as not to key your car if you don’t cough it up.
It’s an easy field to enter: All one needs is a dirty rag, a squirt bottle of water, a cheap squeegee — and, critically, the tacit acquiescence of the police.
When all that is forthcoming — as it was in the ’80s and early ’90s — the result is a socially debilitating sense of municipal chaos, followed by rising crime of a more serious nature.
Sounds sort of like de Blasioville, 2020.
Case in point: John Jay College is reporting a massive drop in quality-of-life law enforcement since 2017, with high double-digit declines in tickets and arrests for public urination, open-container violations and so on.
Combine that with the de facto decriminalization of both turnstile-jumping and the public use of marijuana — where can one go in Midtown and not smell it? — and why be surprised that some people take it all as permission to flout the law, if not an open invitation?
Then blend in Albany’s misbegotten criminal-justice “reforms” and the sharp increase in serious crime noted since New Year’s Day seems almost to have been inevitable.
Indeed, taken against the 27 percent increase in shootings so far this year and the 35 percent hike in robberies, the return of the squeegee men might seem like small beer.
But it’s not. Symbols matter.
Back in the Dinkins era, the ever-present squeegee men broadcast a message: Gotham, a great global city, had all but given up on itself.
And those who took a second look saw the abandoned cars, the cracked-out vagrants arrayed across public spaces and a legion of highly aggressive beggars — a confirmation of surrender.
Sound familiar?
New York’s not quite there yet — thank God for the dramatic decline of crack — but it’s not hard to see the trend lines. That is, the fissures in the facade that signal real crises.
The sad fact is that New Yorkers have elected a political class lacking the fundamental self-respect, and the courage, to stand up to the nihilists now dragging the city down. And, indeed, some of them are nihilists themselves.
Political squeegee men and women, even.
They put up with it, but there’s no reason for hardworking New Yorkers to. Not with any of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment