Friday, September 23, 2011

Return of the squeegee men

From the Daily News:

Squeegee men, the aggressive panhandlers who wash your car windows whether you want them to or not, are back.

Armed with buckets and $5 squeegees, a squad of men waded into stalled Times Square traffic Sunday to lather up windshields, swipe them clean and beckon for tips from drivers - some annoyed by the intrusion.

A rare sight when the country's unemployment rate was a mere 5.7%, the reappearance of the crews is an in-your-windshield reminder of 9%-plus unemployment and the highest rate of poverty in 27 years.

For some, they're a powerful symbol that the busted economy is bringing back the bad old days.


Bloomberg had this to say in response:

"The Police Department has a lot to do, but we're not walking away from squeegee guys when they rear their heads ... with their buckets and sponge," he said.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Squeegee men are a powerful symbol of law degradation, that Bloomberg is ignoring as he did with ignoring cleaning the snow off the streets of Queens earlier this year. History lessons are valuable unless the student chooses to ignore it and the net result is that History repeats itself.

Anonymous said...

LOL....Let Jeanette Sadik Kahn head up a squad to take care of the situation.

"OMG....my lovely Times Square plaza besieiged by squeegeemen".

Looks like it's back to the days of Mayor Rudy!

And the "good 'ol 1970s" are returning despite despotic Bloomberg's feeble attempts to upgrade the appearance of NYC....trying to transform it into a municipal Disneyland.

I'll bet that with the increasing crime stats....a lot of would-be tourists will be shunning the rotten apple as a vacation destination.

As "Bogey" said, "We'll always have Paris"!

Anonymous said...

On the bright side, maybe a return to some REAL grit in this city will send all the lily-white, pretentious, suburban cul-de-sac attention whore transplants crying back home to OreWiscoAnsas

FlushingRepresenter said...

Anything to send these hipsters abck to where they RIGHTFULLY belong, in their midwest hometowns.

Anonymous said...

Squeegeemen are Bloomberg's concept of a NYC economic revitalization program. No more Rudy time!

Anonymous said...

Bloomberg's political instincts again are dead. The media and the city un general will go nuts if there's a violent incident with a squeegee man.

And why are they always men? What about squeegee diversity?

Anonymous said...

True diversity would require representation from the chattering classes, to wit,Doomberg himself, ad of course representation from the glorious LBGTQ spectrum, not to mention....Billie Boggs!

Anonymous said...

The police department is ADMITTING TO about ten to twelve thousand less officers on the streets than ten years ago. How much bigger does anyone here think the REAL number is?? They are outnumbered, overwhelmed and concerned more about counterterrorism. Aside from a few temporary initiatives, the squeegee men are here to stay.

Anonymous said...

Da squeegee men won't bother Bloomberg.

He rides da subway to work....LOL!

Anonymous said...

Cul-de-sac?

Better watch out....
CB#7's "follow the buck"
Chuck Apelian lives on one just off Bayside Avenue and
right across from Mr. NYC Comptroller John Liu.

Or at least Liu
maintains a bogus residence there to be legal.

What's his other Connecticut (?) address?